We recently connected with Tracie Campbell and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Tracie, thanks for joining us today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

In the early Days of the online marketplace Etsy, I was successfully selling unique jewelry making supplies through that website, while at the same time not so successfully selling my jewelry designs at local markets in NYC. Like Etsy, most markets was saturated with jewelry designers. So it was tough to compete with so many other jewelry makers online and in person.

Though selling the jewelry supplies was bringing in the income, I did not want to compromise the create part of what I really loved to do, make jewelry. No one else in the marketplaces were doing this concept at the time, so I decided to bring the supplies out on the table for the customers to shop in person, allow the customer to design it, and I would to make it for them right on the spot. It seemed like people were hungry to be more creatively involved in their fashion and accessories. This concept was received very well by the community in Brooklyn right off the bat. Within a year of introducing the “charm bar” concept to my business, i was able to open Brooklyn Charm, my first brick and mortar in 2010.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

At 15, I started selling beaded bracelets to my schoolmates, teachers, and friends. I continued to make jewelry throughout college, majoring in fine art with an emphasis in jewelry design incorporating metalsmithing, ceramics, and woodworking. After graduating college, I moved to NY to try and make it in the big city with my jewelry designs. I started selling jewelry supplies on Etsy in their early days around the same time. I was also selling my jewelry designs at local markets like Artists and Fleas, Brooklyn Flea, Bust Craftactular, Renegade Craft Fair, and more. I also had a space where I had a full metalsmithing studio that I used myself, as well as rented out benches for other local jewelry designers to use and make their own designs. It was a great way to build a community of friends in the crafting and art world of Brooklyn.

As passionate as i was about making jewelry, I tend to have an addictive shopping behavior. Curating the charms, seeing how well they sold at reselling them gave me a rush that selling my jewelry just did not. And maybe that was because I was simply making a good living off of selling the supplies, and not so much the jewelry. Since I was an art major, a lot of the jewelry I was making when I first lived in New York was actually being used in photo shoots, and being rented out to stylists for artists, models and musicians to wear for music videos, visual art performances or print.

I worked with showrooms and stylists to put my jewelry designs/art out there to the world. I sold my jewelry designs to local boutique shops in NY, as well as bigger wholesale orders to companies like Anthropologie, Madewell and Urban Outfitters. Mind you, this was all before social media, so getting your work out there was different than today’s social media opportunities. It definitely felt like in order to make it big, you had to be well connected, already have money, or just get lucky by getting seen by the right person/brand. As well as I was doing selling my jewelry designs and loaning out my editorial jewelry, the jewelry supplies online was what was paying the bills.

So in order to not compromise my creative soul, i came up with the concept to offer customized jewelry in person. This allowed for me to offer my creative input, while still putting out all the jewelry making materials I curated and loved to work with. It made my time at the markets more fun, lucrative, and interactive with the customers. If it were not for all the experience I had selling at markets and online, I do not think I would have made it to the “charm bar” concept.

Let’s move on to buying businesses – can you talk to us about your experience with business acquisitions?

Over the years, I have bought out several jewelry and jewelry supply companies. This is something I really love to do, because it ultimately is the best deal I could ask for when it came to buying jewelry supplies. There had been many bead stores that went out of business over the past couple of decades. I always used to joke around about how there was the “death of the bead store” due to the internet. In fact, I really feel like that MTV song where they sing “Video Killed the Radio Star” could be sung as “Internet killed the retail store”. I saw so many bead stores closing left and right. So as they did, I would reach out to see if they were willing to sell off their remaining inventory. I was able to acquire a lot of my unique, historical inventory that way.

The first business I bought out was in 2012 from this lovely woman Daryl. She owed a wholesale jewelry company that made a lot of jewelry for the local Manhattan Museums such as the Moma and Smythsonian Museum. Her jewelry was mostly beaded. I must have bought 1000+ pounds of beads from her. I had to help her empty out her storage unit in the Upper East Side to get it all out. To this day, I still have some inventory from her collection of beads. And I actually acquired a lot of her jewelry that never made it into the museums. I have a nice collection of delicate beaded eyeglass holders that I still often sell at my shop. Some of them were not finished off, so we broke them down into little strands of beads to sell as jewelry making supplies in the shop.

Have you ever had to pivot?

Covid was the biggest shift in our company. We were living half time in NY, and half time in CA running the shops we had on both coasts. We eventually made California our main residence. So when Covid happened, we had to make the difficult choice to either move back to NY full time, or close up shop in NY. It was one of the most difficult decisions we have ever had to make, but we decided to close the store in NY temporarily in order to buckle down in CA until things blew over.

So while we stayed in CA, we started selling vintage clothing, and I set up a few booths at a local antique dealer store. Selling the clothing was lots of fun, because I always had an eye for vintage clothing, but never took it to an entrepreneurial level. It was only during Covid did I decide to take my eye for vintage clothing and try to make a living off that too. We kept our online company selling jewelry supplies going, while still doing the custom charm jewelry concept in Ventura. But now with clothing.

After about a year, we opened back up in New York, but this time with a partner, a longtime Brooklyn Charm employee, and good friend Adrienne Nappi. She brought Brooklyn Charm back to Chelsea market with Artists and Fleas, and after about a year of being set up there, she re-opened Brooklyn Charm in Greenpoint in summer of 2023.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.brooklyncharm.com
• Instagram: @brooklyncharm
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brooklyncharmshop

Image Credits

none to credit. these are all our photos.