Author Archive: Kevin on The Fresh Daily

It’s that time of year again — we just did inventory. Every bead, finding, cabochon, pearl, and foot of chain has been counted.

Cathy and her team did an awesome job getting it all counted. They even uncovered some items that weren’t already for sale at Lima Beads. We’re calling them “Cathy’s Collection” in honor of all their hard work during this year’s inventory. We’re also putting them on sale for 20% off for a limited time (see below for details).

They found some great stuff. There are a lot of gemstone strands that range from boulder opal to ruby crazy lace agate. They also found some awesome midnight blue and sky blue freshwater pearls!

See all of Cathy’s Collection now!

Things to remember…

The sale ends on Sunday night at midnight (August 1, 2010). We can’t offer any rain checks, so make sure to place your order by that time in order to get the sale prices! Start saving now!

What do you remember about celebrating the 4th of July as a child? I remember that I had just gotten out of school for the summer (reason enough to celebrate!), family and friends came over, the hot dogs were HOT, and the soda was cold. It was a great time. And then, at night, my dad would break out the sparklers. Something about sparklers makes people happy.

Know what else makes people happy? An awesome SALE on beads. We’re having one for the next 5 days and we’re calling it The Sparkler Sale because, well, we think it’s THAT good

What’s On Sale?

Red, White, and Blue gemstone beads – 15% off

All Vintaj & Stampt Metal – 25% off

All TierraCast & Chain – 20% off

Sale Ends Monday Night, July 5th

The only bad thing about sparklers is that they run out–and so does this sale. Be sure to place your orders by monday night at midnight (July 5th, 2010) to get the sale prices. We can’t offer rain checks on these items, so make sure to grab them while they’re hot!

Today, we’re releasing our newest product, a crystal clear, 5 minute, 2 part epoxy.

LimaStudios Crystal Clear 5 Minute Epoxy

I think you’ll find that this is the stickiest darn stuff you’ve ever seen. We’ve tested it extensively in a lot of different applications and we’ve been very impressed.

Why we Love It

• It Sets quickly (5 minutes)
• It’s ultra super duper sticky
• It dries clear
• It’s easy to cap and reuse
• It works on a wide variety of materials
• - It’s non-flammable, non-volatile & very safe to use

Get a FREE Cabochon & Setting

Try our new epoxy before the end of June, 2010 and you’ll receive a free black sardonyx cabochon AND a free setting!

FREE with LimaStudios Epoxy purchase thru 6/30/2010

Not familiar with two part epoxy?

We’ve got step-by-step instructions! Check out our sample project:

Using cabs, settings, & epoxy

The products you’ll need:

• Cabochons
• Settings
• LimaStudios Epoxy

It’s Thursday, which at Lima, usually means: new additions to our shop! We’re doing something a bit different today. For the first 5 days they’re on the site, these new beads will be on sale for 15% off. That means for the first time ever, if you purchase today’s new additions by the end of Monday (6/14), you’ll get them for 15% off.

We have an assortment of new gemstones , including some Botswana agate with incredible pattern, fire agate, fossil coral, and more.

In other news, it has been a crazy couple of months! There are three new Lima babies and all sorts of things happening at Lima! I’m happy to say that all Lima team members are now back in full force (including Ali) and that we have some exciting things planned! More designs, new products (including resin), and lots of other fun stuff. More details too come very soon

From now through Sunday (4/29/10 – 5/2/10), 13 of our most popular gemstones are on sale for 15% – 20% off! The stones are:

• Amazonite
• Blue pearl
• Muscovite
• Picture jasper
• Yellow turquoise
• Porcelain jasper
• Olive jade
• Seraphinite
• Smoky quartz
• Apple jasper
• Imperial jasper
• Mookaite
• and Leopardskin jasper

Don’t miss your chance to get these beauties at a discount! Please note that inventory on some of these items is a bit low and we’re unable to offer rain checks if any of them sell out. At midnight on Sunday May 2nd, prices of these items will go back to regular price, which will be reflected in your shopping cart.

New Gemstone Beads

We’ve also added some incredible gemstone beads to the shop this week. The pink shell is fabulous for summer and the cuts of ametrine, hessonite, and yellow smoky quartz are simply stunning.

Check them out!

In December, we told you there were Three Lima Babies on The Way. Andrew, Matt, and I all got new baby boys within a 3 week period! It’s been a crazy time, but everyone is doing great.

The Lima babies:

Douglas

Andrew’s wife labored for 11 hours on this little guy. In January, Andrew moved back to Richmond, VA, so the rest of us haven’t had the pleasure of meeting Douglas yet. Andrew says that he didn’t cry for nearly 24 hours after he was born. The doctors confirmed that he was happy and healthy, just very relaxed and curious about his new world. He still doesn’t cry very much (thankfully) but he can really belt it out when he’s hungry! He’s happy to be surrounded by grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins here in Richmond.

Douglas: Born March 24 at 6:06pm. 7 lbs. 7 oz. - 20" long

Henry

Matt’s wife endured 19 hours of labor. He was born on Matt’s birthday and is a very good sleeper. He takes about a 3 hour nap around lunch, a shorter one around dinner, and only gets up once to eat in the middle of the night. We put him down at 9 and he gets up at 9. Henry is blessed in the grandparent department. The grandparents are always looking for excuses to come visit. For instance, I mentioned that I needed 4 C batteries for his swing. Within a couple of hours, we had 8 brand new C batteries and 4 grandparents over the house.

Henry: Born April 7 at 5:50pm. 9 lbs. 7 oz. - 21.5" long

Gable

After Ali’s 26 hour labor with our daughter that ended in a c-section, her doctors weren’t messing around. We had a c-section scheduled for 8am, and 46 minutes later, we had our little boy. He’s already the most relaxed person I know. He only cries for a few minutes per day, usually when he’s hungry. If he’s not eating, he’s maxing and relaxing in his bouncy seat. His big sister Payton (now 23 months old) loves him so much. She has to know where he is at all times. Ali is still a bit sore, but we have two sets of eager grandparents helping us every day, which has been a blessing.

Gable: Born April 14 at 8:46am. 9 lbs. 10 oz. - 22" long

Payton loving her new brother

The 2010 Easter egg hunt is here! We were blown away by the popularity of last year’s hunt and by the amount of fun everyone had with it! This year, we wanted to make it bigger and better!

100 Easter Eggs

That’s right, there are 100 eggs hidden on the web site RIGHT NOW. They’re all over the place – no page is off limits! As you find eggs, you’ll see this status bar:

We don’t want anyone to go crazy, so we should tell you up front: finding all 100 Easter eggs will be difficult. Some of them are very well hidden. It’s not really about find ALL of the eggs this year, it’s about finding the most

The Leaderboard

For this year’s hunt, there’s a leaderboard that shows the top 100 hunters. It will show the position of each person, but not the number of eggs they’ve found — we’ll reveal those at the end. See the Leaderboard.

Prizes

The more eggs you find, the more prizes you get. When you reach 10, 25, 50, and 75 eggs a new set of prizes will be unlocked. You can choose from a variety of FREE beads and even a 15% discount on a future order. There are also prizes associated with the Leaderboard. At the end of the Easter Egg Hunt, the top 10 people on the leaderboard will be entered to win The Grand Prize, a $250 Lima Beads Gift Certificate. Everyone else on the leaderboard will be entered to win second prize, a $100 Lima Beads gift certificate. See all the prizes.

Rules

• The contest ends at 11:59pm on April 4 (Easter). This means you need to make sure and do the following by this time:
  • Collect all the eggs you can find.
  • If you unlocked any prizes, add them to your shopping bag and place your order—all prizes (except the discount code explained below) must be redeemed by the end of the contest.
  • If you unlocked the 15% discount prize, write down your coupon code (you can use it any time until the end of 2010)
  • Watch the blog for an announcement about the $250 drawing
• There are a total of 100 Easter eggs that we’ve hidden for you to collect. Those are the only ones that count toward the prizes, and you must click on them to collect them. You might see some picture of eggs in promotional materials (like the ones in the grass at the top of this page)… those don’t count toward your total.
• We can’t offer rain checks on the prizes, so make sure to place your order when you’ve unlocked the prizes, because they’re only available while supplies last!
• We think we have enough free beads to go around… but in case we run short, we reserve the right to substitute a product of equal value as your prize (hey, it’s free, right? . We can’t offer rain checks on unavailable prizes. We also reserve the right to update this list of rules if it needs clarification later.
• Please don’t share the locations of the eggs. This ruins the fun for everyone Location sharers will be disqualified from winning prizes!
• The most important rule: have fun!

The Lima Beads Spring Cleaning has begun! Each year, we accumulate a lot of beads that never end up for sale in the shop. There are many reasons. Sometimes, we receive something and we’re not sure what to call it. Other times, it looks too similar to something we already sell or we didn’t receive enough quantity to add it as a regular item. Some things we return to the factory and others we hold on to because we like them

In an effort to keep ourselves from being overrun by beads, we do spring cleaning! Over the next couple weeks, we’ll have items that we would like to get out of here, so we’ll be offering them at or below our cost. These items will be sold on a First Come, First Served basis. We’ve done this a few times before, so you may already know how it works. If not, check out the notes below. Some of these items will sell out in 3 minutes, while others may stick around for a few days. If you see something you like, don’t wait! We just finished counting everything and I can tell you that we have fewer than 10 strands of many items. Finally, I want to make it clear that these are not items of bad quality, color, or consistency. Anything that doesn’t meet our quality standards gets returned to the factory immediately. These are just items, that for one reason or another, we can’t sell in the shop.

Week 2 (starting March 11)

Lapis, African Turquoise, Pyrite, Hematite (lots!), Pearls, Petrified Green Opal & more!

SHOP Week 2 now.

Important First Come, First Served Notes

• In order to secure these items, you need to place your order and complete the transaction. If they sell out before you do that, they will be removed from your shopping bag.
• These items are all FINAL SALE, so we can’t accept returns for them
• We can’t offer rain checks–when they’re gone, they’re gone!

Each year, we try and think of a few major things we could do to improve Lima Beads. Fresh Picks, our new & improved shopping cart, The Garden, and The Design Gallery are all results of this annual goal setting.

This year, we want to do some things to improve the core of Lima Beads. The last few years have been crazy. We’ve grown a lot and to be honest, we’ve outgrown a lot of things that we put in place when it was just Ali, Steve, and me. We want to go back and fix a few things that will make us more efficient, more accurate, and able to continue our growth. I’ve come up with three goals for 2010 that would help push us in this direction.

Goal 1: Reduce “out of stock” items

We answer a lot of phone calls and emails from beaders asking when items will be back in stock. Having items out of stock in our shop is frustrating for them and it’s frustrating for us — if we don’t have it, we can’t sell it! We have completely redesigned the system we use to communicate with our suppliers. Last week, Matt began building new software that will allow factories around the world to assess our needs and help us keep things in stock. It’s our #1 2010 goal to make sure that you can get your beads and supplies when you need them.

Goal 2: Continue to extend our product lines

It’s hard to believe that as recently as 2008, Lima only sold gemstone beads, freshwater pearls, and cubic zirconia. In the past 2 years, we’ve pushed hard to add great lines like Vintaj, Green Girl Studios, TierraCast, Stampt Metal, as well as lines of chain and findings. In 2010, we want to continue this trend. In the next couple of months we’ll be adding lockets and a line of big, funky chain that I think you’ll love. Next, we hope to add some great Murano glass. We’ll also have an exciting announcement about riveting — what many are predicting to be the hottest beading trend of 2010. We’ve been working hard to become a one-stop-shop and we’re not going to quit anytime soon!

Goal 3: Make The Garden even better

A wonderful, interactive beading community has developed around Fresh Picks, The Design Gallery, and The Garden. When we launched these features, we weren’t sure if anyone would like them. We’re thrilled to see beaders from around the world building friendships and inspiring each other right here at Lima Beads. We want to make some major enhancements to The Garden in 2010 to make it one of the best beading communities anywhere.

That should keep us busy for awhile

If you have any suggestions for us, please tell us by using the feedback page. We would truly love to hear from you.

Thanks!

They say good news comes in threes. They couldn’t be more right! Imagine our surprise not too long ago when we found out that not one, not two, but THREE Lima Beads babies are due in the spring.

Andrew’s wife Elizabeth, Matt’s wife Deidra, and Ali are expecting little Limas on March 27th, March 30th, and April 11th respectively. And guess what? They’re all boys!

The newborns will be the first for Matt and Andrew, and of course Payton is excited about having a baby brother. So far, everything is looking good and we are all excited as can be. Stay tuned for more updates and if you have any boy name ideas, we’re all ears.

Also, if you want any beads, make sure you get them before the 3rd week of March. Things are going to get crazy around here!

It’s time for another round of First Come, First Served deals!

The past two times we’ve done this, the majority of the items have sold out within hours, so if you see something you like, get it fast! This particular batch of items could be considered a sample sale. These are all items that we’ve purchased as samples over the past couple of years and decided not to carry for various reasons. The most common reasons are price (too expensive) and material availability (we can’t reliably stock them). None of these items have quality issues. Because they were ordered as samples, most of the quantities are very low. We have an average of 10 strands of the gemstone beads and about 20 pieces of each CZ item. See all of the items now!

You’ll find some interesting stones that you’ve never seen at Lima Beads and also some funky CZ cuts that we’ve decided not to carry on a regular basis. Good luck!

About First Come, First Served items

Before you add these deals to your shopping bag, you should know that all of these items are FINAL SALE. So take a good look at the photos! If you like what you see, we’re confident that you’ll love the beads. Here are a few more guidelines to read over before you place your orders:

It’s that time of year again. Starting tomorrow, the holiday season is officially in full swing. We’ll eat great meals, give and receive some gifts, and hang out with friends and family. All of the lucky Lima Beaders get to do one more thing every holiday season — they get to choose FREE BEADS with every order they place at Lima Beads. We do it every year to say thanks for another great year and for helping us make the Lima Beads web site a special place.

We’ve got some great gifts this year. We’ve expanded the number of selections to as many as 8 per level. With any order you can get Stampt Metal, Vintaj, TierraCast, or choose from some great gemstones. If you spend $75 or more, your choices include: olive green or pearly white pearls, Green Girl Studios, African green jasper, or some awesome smoky quartz nuggets.

Sapphire CZ

Get up to $150 and it really gets interesting. We’ve got the most popular piece of Green Girl Studios pewter (owl), amethyst (A) round 8mm, big gorgeous pearls, and two pieces of CZ never before seen on the Lima Beads site. This is the only way to get them. A lot of people ask for sapphire blue and ruby color CZ and the fact is, it’s just too expensive to carry. We ordered samples this past year and they’re gorgeous, but we’ve decided not to sell them, but we thought, why not give them to our customers?!

Tanzanite Rondelles

If you get all the way to $300, you can get the coolest toggle clasp I’ve ever seen (Green Girl Shibuichi), Mexican fire agate nuggets, or (and I’ve saved the best for last) a strand of blinding tanzanite faceted rondelles.

See All The Gifts

Again, thanks for being with us this year. Lima Beads has grown a lot with full lines of chain, metal beads, and findings. The Lima community has also grown, which is shown by more than 2,000 gorgeous designs in the design gallery.

Next year, we plan to keep pushing forward with more stringing material, more silver, and a Stampt Metal surprise that is going to provide you with hours of fun.

Thanks again everyone. Have a safe and happy Thanksgiving!

-Kevin

Ali and I just got back from trick-or-treating with Payton. It was a perfect Halloween. Cool, crisp air. Orange, red, and yellow leaves strewn about and a couple of neighbors that are really into Halloween. Payton was Snow White this year and I might be biased, but she definitely achieved maximum cuteness. We got all of the usual goodies: M&Ms, Snickers, Twix, Licorice, Milk Duds, and my personal favorite, NERDS. Lucky for me, at only 17 months, she’s not allowed to have much candy.

Our first trick-or-treating

I hope you all had a great Halloween. Now, onward to Thanksgiving…

Today, we’re back to adding new gemstone beads AND we’ve continued to expand our chain and findings sections!

Huge Rainbow Fluorite

“HUGE” seems to be the theme of the gemstones Ali has chosen to add this week. There are quite a few large rondelles and rounds. There’s also some good focal material like new jade carved pendants, lapis off-center donuts, and a yellow turquoise carved oval pendant. If you’re looking for an inexpensive accent bead, we’ve also added a couple of rounds in the $3 range that should do the trick!

16mm etched jump rings

If you’re lucky enough to have been on vacation for the past two weeks, you’ve missed the biggest expansion in Lima Beads history. For the first time ever, we added chain, findings, and a huge selection of metal beads to our site. This week, we’ve continued the expansion with new styles of chain, crimp beads, and some cool jump rings (check out the 16mm etched ones!).

We’ve got more to come! Between now and the end of 2009, you’ll be seeing new gemstone beads almost every week, lots of new chain (especially sterling), more metal beads, more findings, and…. wire!   Stay tuned

If you’re an avid Lima Beads fan, you know that we’ve been talking about adding chain, findings, wire, and more metal beads for years!

As far back as I, Ali, or Steve can remember, we’ve always spent the majority of our time focusing on our line of gemstone beads. We wanted to build a line of stones we could be proud of and we all feel really good about what we’ve done so far, but it is time to expand. We wanted to expand much sooner, but as many of you know we just moved into a new building and our old office space made it impossible to add new products lines.

Lima Beads has chain!

We’ve spent over a year researching and quality testing chain, wire, findings, and metal bead lines. We’ve chosen a lineup that we know we can be proud of and that we feel will be a great addition to the Lima Beads family.

In the coming weeks, you’ll be seeing thousands of new items, including:

• Over 100 styles of chain in 5 different metals
• 1000’s of metal beads
• Findings, such as: earwires, headpins, eyepins, leverbacks, clasps, links/connectors, bails, lobster clasps, etc. in sterling, copper, and gold-filled.
• A full line of TierraCast beads and findings
• Wire
• A wide variety of metal beads and charms

But, is Lima Beads still going to be focused on gemstone beads and its other product lines?

Yes! Have no fear, we have big plans for our other lines as well. A huge load of new gemstone beads is on the way here as I’m writing this. Ali tells me that we also have some crazy cool new designs on the way from Green Girl Studios.

With that, we all take a big, deep breath (ahhhhhhhh) now that we’ve gotten the ball rolling on these lines.

Let us know what you think as we continue to add items!

After 1 huge moving sale, lots of painting, tons and tons of beads and shelving units carried down the stairs, 1 broken down moving van, a long battle with the phone company, and lots of excitement watching our new building come together — we’re back!

The First Load

It was 2 weeks ago today, when Steve told you that the moving sale had started and we were starting the move to our new building. A lot has happened since then. The last two weeks have been the biggest, most fun, most important, and most stressful in the history of our little company. When we moved into our old space 5 years ago, Lima had 3 shelves of beads and no idea of what was to come. I think it’s safe to say that we didn’t understand how much we’d grown until we set out to move all of our stuff

On that Thursday 2 weeks ago, we put the moving sale on our web site and shut everything down to move. On thursday night, all day friday, and all day saturday, we focused on getting all of our product and its shelving to our new building. It went pretty well, except for one small thing. Steve borrowed a moving van from his friend and it broke down. We had to hurriedly call Uhaul to find out that they had one truck available, so we grabbed it!

Starting to pack orders

We took Sunday off because we were all quite sore, but we were back in on Monday. We had only planned to have everything shelved by the end of Monday, but because everyone worked so hard, we were actually able to start packing orders on Monday afternoon. The moving sale was an overwhelming success. We had almost 5 times as many orders to ship out than we normally would on a Monday. We got them all shipped by Wednesday as planned (a miracle) and since then, we’ve just been trying to get settled. This blog post is the first work I’ve actually done at my desk since the move started and it feels great!

We’re incredibly happy to be in our new space. The contractors aren’t quite finished with our kitchen yet, but everything else is finally up and running. As promised, there are exciting things to come now that we have room to grow! I can’t give away all the secrets, but within the next 6 weeks, you should be seeing 5 of the following 8 things for sale at Lima:

• Lots of chain
• Full line of Tierra Cast
• Lockets (awesome lockets)
• Sterling & gold-filled findings
• Chainsaws
• Murano glass beads
• Tires
• Refrigerators

It’s a new day at Lima! We have an adequate space for the first time in a long time. It’s going to allow us to expand our product offering, be better about keeping things in stock (yes, I’ve been getting your emails ), do more fun and interesting things and continue to grow and provide what I hope is awesome service to you!

Here are some photos from the move:

The first moving van

Steve pulling up in the Uhaul that saved us!

Getting back to work

The kitchen coming together (slowly)

As always, thank you for your support and for taking this wild ride with us. It’s about to get even better

Kevin

In case you missed my post back in June, Lima is moving! It’s something we’ve needed to do for a very long time, but kept putting it off. Who would want to move tons (literally) of stones, cz, pearls, and metal? We finally broke down and got a new building…

We’re all very excited and tired. We’ve been going over to the new building after work to get it ready for the big move. Steve, Matt, and I were there until midnight last night painting the conference room and the break room. The owner of the building is also doing a lot of work to prepare it for us. Two more weeks and we should be in! I know what you’re thinking… when is the moving sale??? It’s soon. We’ve been so busy that we haven’t had time to prepare the beads for the move. Once we do that, we’ll know exactly what we want to put on sale. It may come as a ton of first come, first served items, because we have a lot of things with small quantities that we just never ended up selling I’ll keep you posted! Here are some photos of what’s been going on at the new space for the past couple weeks:

2 new offices taking shape

We had to dig a trench for the kitchen!

Steve standing in what will be our new kitchen

Playing on the scaffolding

Stay tuned…

For today’s Fresh Daily Deal, we’ve chosen a green vein jasper tumbled nugget. If you’re not familiar with our Fresh Daily Deals, check out my original blog post about them.

As I mentioned last time, now that we are moving into a new space and starting to pack up all of our belongings, we are finding beads we didn’t even know we had! Ali and I were digging around in the order checkin room last week and we found these great little green vein jasper nuggets. This is an interesting stone. The base is a dijon mustard color and the veins are a forest green color that seem to glow from the inside. This tumbled nugget is one of my favorite shapes too because of its versatility and variation. Each one is different!

This entry continues: Read the rest…

One week ago today, we launched The Design Gallery. Matt, Steve, and Ali worked hard on it for about a month because a lot of people had been asking for a feature to share designs. We finished it up, Steve put up a blog post called The Design Gallery is here! and we crossed our fingers that: 1. it would work and 2. people would like it.

Corpse Bride by Wickwire Jewelry

Well, that was a week ago and so far, the gallery has functioned properly (for the most part) and there are already 270 designs uploaded, so I think we know the answer to #2 as well I can’t believe the awesome designs that have been shared so far. I knew that we had some talented customers, but to see the actual photos makes us really happy. So far we’ve seen cool combinations of stones, incredible wire work, custom made beads, symmetrical designs, asymmetrical designs, large focals, small focals, earrings, necklaces, bracelets, earrings, sets, and more!

This entry continues: Read the rest…

It was almost 3 long months ago when I wrote about how Lima was Shopping for Space. After a long search and looking at what felt like every office/warehouse space in Ann Arbor, we have found the perfect space!

On the About Lima page, we talk a little bit about the kind of work environment we like. We definitely don’t want to be out in a boring warehouse in the middle of some industrial park, but we’re also getting a little too big to be in our downtown loft. For the past 5 years we’ve managed to grow every year with no elevator, cramped spaces, and bathrooms that are showing their 70 year old age. We set out 6 months ago to find an office space that would give us the convenience of a warehouse environment (large open space with an overhead door) and the “coolness” of a loft/downtown that we have in our current space.

This entry continues: Read the rest…