Being a merchant.
I’m a merchant, now, but I haven’t always been one. Straight out of high school, I interned as a deck officer on a commercial container ship out of South Africa. Then I was an officer in the Rhodesian military during the bush war in the 1970s. After the war ended, I emigrated to the U.S. (California) and after a few months working in construction and as a tow truck driver, I settled into a retail loss prevention work with a large national department store chain, working my way up into middle management. Then after graduating from law school, and passing the state bar, I became a trial attorney. Finally, after retiring from that, I joined my wife’s retail bead business full time and became a merchant. And I liked it. I could sell, and sell well.Between us, we became importers, and traveled the world searching for beads, buying, creating, designing, beads and buttons from factories, or buy from warehouses and markets. Not only beads and buttons, but glassware also. Mostly we go to the Czech Republic to find these items, but also Germany, France, the Netherlands and Italy. We also went to Latvia, z Lithuania and Poland to find Amber. On the beach, in the water, and in factories and markets. Amber nuggets, Amber beads, jewelry, buttons. Of course, in our hunt, we would find other things like clothing, hats, eyeglasses, dolls, suncatchers, toys, maps, books, coins, stamps, and we would buy them, mostly for resale, but occasionally for ourselves. Like oil paintings And art.We also go to Hong Kong, Thailand, and the Philipinnes for pearls, gemstones, wood and shell beads. Beads and buttons are our main business, but like I said at the beginning, we are merchants… so during our travels, we keep our eyes open for other things.
