Wholesale Supplier of Jewelry Findings
and Beads for Professional Craftspeople

Stories from the road

Or, a funny thing happened on the way to the bead show...

When you've put on over 500 bead shows and attended a ton of trade shows besides, you're going to have a close acquaintance with the oddities of the bead world. This doesn't just mean "bead mania", "bead frenzy" or whatever the psychologists tell us we beaders have. Other strange things have a way of happening too, when you least expect them. Rings & Things is very, um, experienced with all of this, and sometimes it helps just to talk about it. Trusting that there are sympathetic ears out there, Rings & Things would like to share some favorite stories from the road...

• Evidently there was a woman who was in such a hurry to get to our show that she pulled a U-turn to get into the parking lot. A policeman promptly pulled her over. She said, "There is a bead show and I am a bead wh*re, I have to get there!" The cop let her off, and at the show she told her story and spent extra money, rationalizing, "It would have gone to the ticket, so might as well spend it on beads."

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• Bead shows are the only situation where you'll find customers calling us up and complaining they didn't spend enough! It actually happens quite a bit, and it goes like this: A customer sees a cool strand of beads that's slightly pricey, and they have a neat idea for it. We have about five of these strands at the bead show, but being fiscally conservative, they only buy one that day. They construct their idea and it sells right away! They call to try and get more - and of course we've sold the rest at our other shows, and may not be able to get any more. That's when we get the complaint, "I should have bought more!"

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• Then there was the time our booth for a Seattle show hadn't been wired for power by the electricians when we showed up, because the giant WTO protests had disrupted the whole city for days...

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• ...And the time we arrived at the hotel we were staying at to do a bead show, and our room was occupied by two guys painting the walls...

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• There's a running joke in the bead world of "How to hide your bead buys from your husband" stories. (Check out some of the beading blogs for some good ones.) Well, at one of our shows, a woman answered her cell phone while looking through the beads, and everyone there could hear her saying, "I'll be there soon" ...(pause, continues bead shopping)... "I'm in the car right now!" (Everyone chuckles.) At this point a helpful Rings & Things employee loudly made honking noises, causing the room to fill with guffaws. The customer in question stayed for another half hour!

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• Some bead-show stories just can't be boiled down to a sentence or two. There was one show we were at that, for starters, got postponed twice. The promoter had assured us there'd be 1,200 buyers attending, which seemed a bit high for the location. Somehow the promoter never got around to saying how many--and it later turned out that some exhibitors had tried canceling but couldn't get a refund, so were forced to attend. The promoter was pretty scarce at the show, though!

  At the start of the show, the room was empty, but eventually the full 10 exhibitors showed up. Most were upset, having been "assured" that there'd be 100 to 200 exhibitors. Some exhibitors were so angry that they threatened to pack up and leave. The food service did. Despite not being able to buy three-day-old Subway sandwiches for $7.50, our crew valiantly carried on. Attendance was light, and turned out to be mostly customers we'd invited; at least they were happy to see us. A wreath-making vendor took off, leaving his stock at his booth, with the amusing result that a big Army guy (the show was held in an armory) was left guarding his booth and selling his silk flowers.

  On the second day, the three vendors who'd threatened to leave did. They drove their trucks right into the exhibit area, past customers and all, despite the promoter's rule against this. The promoter may have lost some respect by this point! By the end of that day, most of the other exhibitors had left.

  On the third and last day, Rings & Things was the only exhibitor left after the first hour or so. We waited on the last few customers to show up, then closed early as well.

  We knew the show would be funky...but we didn't think it'd be that funky! Some of the other exhibitors talked about suing the promoter to recoup expenses. However, this probably wouldn't get us much money, so we'd only join in if it didn't cost much!

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• Because we travel quite a bit to put on bead shows around the country, we ask a lot of our truck and our cars. Sometimes the vehicles don't answer... Our very first tour was around the Pacific Northwest, only 300-400 miles away from our Spokane base, but it got pretty interesting in this respect. We have some of our general manager Kim's notes from that time (way back in the 1990s...notice how few of us had cell phones!):

  "Started out according to plan. Ed picked me up in Spokane at 7AM. Russ and Dee [owners of Rings & Things] were already in Seattle. We headed for Everett, WA and our first show to start at 3PM.

  Right past George, WA, we heard kind of a POP in the engine and then an unpleasant rapid tap, tap, tap sound. We pulled over and the engine was covered with oil, evidently we had blown a head gasket. The engine still ran OK tho, as long as we put in a quart of oil every 70 or so miles! Although we didn't know all that at the time -- we made the choice to keep driving and hope it didn't break down completely, because we really didn't have any other choice. I had a sick feeling in my stomach as we drove down the road -- knowing that the whole tour could go up in smoke if the engine blew!

  But we made it. Customers started showing up at about 2:30 -- we were mostly set up -- just trying to price things by hand because someone had forgot the pricing gun! The Everett show was pretty busy, we were packed up by about 8 and went to a Thai/Italian (really) place for dinner. Then Ed and Russ played in the engine for a 1/2 hour or so...

  The next morning Russ and Dee got up early to drive to Auburn to make sure their truck would make it. When they got there they found out that the front desk had read our reservation wrong and given the conference room to someone else! So...we set up in the lobby. We were ready early again -- which was a good thing since people this time showed up as much as 45 minutes early! We were busy before our scheduled noon starting time.

  There was a craft show open until 8pm that night in Portland, OR (our next stop) so Ed and I jetted outa Auburn to get down there quick and hand out leaflets. But our car died just as we were going up the onramp to I-5, we could not go anywhere -- so we pushed the car off the road a little and called Russ on the cellular phone. We were right outside of Tacoma, they came and picked me up (we left Ed with the car) and we headed into town to find a rental car. We stopped and asked and were directed south 5 miles to a motel -- driving up we could see lots of rental cars in the lot, but when I went in -- the Avis place was closed -- no one there could help -- so... We headed back 20 miles north to SeaTac Airport. As we passed by our dead vehicle we dropped off Dee to keep Ed company and so she could be there if the AAA tow truck arrived.

  Russ dropped me at the airport and was going to wait for me to come out with a car. Then I was going to follow him either back to where the car was on the side of the freeway -- or -- to wherever it had been towed to if the tow truck had already showed up. He and Dee had the phones -- I did not -- so hence I had to follow him. I went in and rented a car -- decided to go to the bathroom before I left and went in to a little restroom near the baggage claim area. I was on the way out and almost ran right into my Dad! I gave him a hug -- and told him I wish I could talk but I have two people waiting in a dead car by the side of the freeway and another circling the airport in a van! He just stood there stunned -- watching me go up the escalator.

  I came out of the airport and never found Russ -- evidently the rental cars dump out of the airport in a totally different place than the regular vehicles. I knew I had no way to know where they went if the tow truck got to Dee and Ed before I did -- so I gunned it on down the road -- about 15 miles to where they were -- trying to figure out what I would do if they were already gone. (Which would have been to wait there in the same spot for 45 minutes or so -- and if they didn't come find me -- jet on down to Portland by myself.) But I got there about 3 minutes before the tow truck showed up! We loaded everything from Dee's car into the rental and Ed and I started once again for Portland. (About 1 1/2 hours later than planned! The craft show would have to be leafleted in the morning.) Russ was still waiting at the airport...but Dee called him and they got things arranged and were on their way to Portland about an hour after us.

  We got to the motel and they had our reservation screwed up -- No room for Russ and Dee. Sheesh! But luckily they were not sold out so it was no biggie.

  Meanwhile this whole time Dee and Russ were struggling with sleep due to jetlag (just back from China). Their bodies were all screwed up and it didn't help that their son called them every night at about 1AM, because he too was screwed up!

  The next morning Ed and I got up and leafleted the craft show in the Portland Convention Center. Our show that day saw people a whole hour early and Ed and I so backed up it was crazy. It was a total frenzy for about 3 hours... Early in the show all of a sudden the lights went way down, we turned 'em up -- then they went down again, we tried turning them up again and again they went back down. It turns out the large meeting room had been partitioned off into segments, but they had not flipped the switch which separated the light controls! The group in the other room was trying to show a film! Whenever they turned the light down we turned it back up -- must have been pretty funny for them as well! After we packed up Russ and Dee went back to their room and their keys didn't work! Sheesh.

  From then on, things went pretty smoothly. Chances are good that we will make this a regular event! (Without the car trouble, please!)"

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• As soon as they'd packed up after one show, our crew left town early to avoid rush-hour traffic next day in another city. But busy small-town streets ate up their head start... Then, at our hotel, no one could find any boxes of stock that we'd had shipped to us. We spent 1½ hours tracking the shipment, watching video surveillance tapes and finally, finding them in the restaurant storage. One box (of 16 boxes) was marked "Plated Chain" so the hotel had put it all with Plates and China in the kitchen!! Our general manager Kim was disappointed that lunch was not served on "plated chain."