We were lucky to catch up with Rex/Gene Nockengust/Allen recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Rex/Gene, thanks for joining us today. Let’s jump right into how you came up with the idea?

We had been living in New York City and had traveled the world as professional actor/singers and decided to move to Hawaii. Our meditation space has always been the beach where we often picked up sea glass. In the back of our minds we wondered if we can make jewelry out of these pieces. We trained ourselves and over the years built a business selling our handmade pieces from sea glass, silver and other beach finds.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

We got into the sea glass jewelry business after moving to Hawaii. Beach Glass Bingo started mostly as a wholesale business in 2000 in Honolulu. After a few years we were lucky enough to have a sales rep who soon got our work into more than 40 stores in Hawaii. We really wanted to change our business and sell more directly to customers at art fairs across the mainland US so we moved to San Diego in 2006. Since 2007 we have been traveling around the country selling our work at juried higher end art shows. One of the things we are really proud of is the fact that we only use real ocean/surf smoothed glass and also the fact that we rivet and forge all of our silver pieces. We are self taught jewelers learning how to make our work as we go along. Throughout the years we have many friends from our loyal and repeat customers.

How’d you meet your business partner?

We are partners in the business but also life partners (husbands). In 1990 when we were both living in New York City and were in line to get free tickets to Shakespeare in the Park Taming of the Shrew with Morgan Freeman and Tracey Ullman, from the moment our eyes met we knew that something was there. When we got our tickets they were at opposite ends of the theatre. Luckily Rex was doing an off-broadway show and Gene was able to get in free with his actor’s union card. After the show they began talking hours every day on the phone and after 3 weeks (they had very busy schedules at the time) a first date happened and the rest is history.

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

Interesting question, being artists our whole lives we have always been able to come up with money for supplies and travel expenses ourselves. If you talk to most artists who are on the traveling art circuit they will tell you that it’s really hard to scale our business and the money often times is provided by credit cards. That being said, it’s so amazing that enough people buy our work helping to provide us with enough capital to travel the country and meet new people.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.beachglassbingo.net
• Instagram: @beachglassbingojewelry
• Facebook: Facebook.com/beachglassbingo

Image Credits
Gene Allen