Russ Nobbs never liked what he calls big business. In fact, he still doesnt like it, even though hes now at the helm of a company that does millions of dollars in sales a year.


Nobbs and his wife, Dee Mueller, own Rings & Things, a Spokane-based bead and jewelry-component wholesaler that occupies 16,000 square feet of floor space in The Bon-Macys building downtown. The 31-year-old company began as a craft shop that sold earrings in Second City, an incubator for creative businesses that thrived here in the 1970s, had a retail store in the old River Park Square for several years, and has grown into a healthy Spokane concern that employs 70.


Its annual sales have increased about 20 percent in each of the last three years, due in part to a sales strategy it employs, and its poised for even more growth, Nobbs says. At the same time, Rings & Things clings to its nonconformist roots and the relaxed attitude of its founder.


Although were a (relatively) big business, I try not to run it in the rigid ways that a lot of big businesses are run, he says.


The company, which got out of the retail business three years ago, sells just about anything needed to make jewelryfrom the tiny clasps that hold together bracelets to strands of real pearls. Its customers include professional craftspeople, jewelers, and other businesses. It offers 20,000 to 25,000 different items, including delicate hand-blown Italian glass beads, 200-year-old trade beads, religious crosses made of turquoise, and colorful round beads that look like giant frosted Cheerios. The strands of beads and stone pieces cost anywhere from $5 to $1,000, with most priced under $100, and the jewelry hardware, or findings, cost $5 to $60 per gross, Nobbs says.


Nobbs declines to disclose the companys annual sales figures, but says theyve been between $5 million and $10 million the last three years. A lot of money flows through our handsway more than a business I own should be making, he says. Im more interested in, Can we get some interesting stuff to sell people?


Rings & Things has 40,000 clients, mostly U.S.-based craftspeople and jewelry and bead stores, he says. The largest orders, though, come from further away.


Five of our 10 best customers are outside the U.S., but overall only 2 percent of our customers are based outside the U.S., Nobbs says. Rings & Things biggest client, which he declines to name, is based in Japan.


The company sells the products over the Internet, through its 244-page catalog, out of its warehouse, and, in an innovative sales strategy that has worked well, at trunk shows it holds in hotel conference rooms throughout the country. The trunk shows, which the company hosts on its own without other bead wholesalers, have become a key revenue source, Nobbs says. He declines to disclose the shows average sales, but says, We do in a single day at the trunk shows what my retail store (in the old River Park Square) did in a month.


At the shows, Rings & Things sets up about 30 display tables and lays out its merchandise for clients to sift through. Rings & Things began holding the shows about 10 years ago. Roughly half of the about 45 trunk shows Rings & Things holds a year are in the Northwest, and the others are in Florida, Massachusetts, North Carolina, and elsewhere.


We started doing them heavily after 9/11, Nobbs says. People were afraid to travel, so wed come to them with the beads. They like being able to handle the beads, rather than having to guess what theyre like from the catalog.


In addition to its sales growth, the company has boosted its employment since 1999, when it employed about 10 in its retail store and about 45 in its wholesale operation.


Even the sluggish economy has helped the company, Nobbs contends.


When the economy is bad, people sell stuff at weekend craft markets to make extra money, he says. Many turn to Rings & Things for components for their crafts.


There was a time, though, when the bead business wasnt rolling, he says.


Beads were dead for a while in the 80s, Nobbs says. Macram died off in the early 1980s, and beads just didnt fit in any more.


Interest in beads picked up again during the late 1980s and early 1990s, though, and Rings & Things wholesale operation has been growing since then, he says.


Nobbs founded Rings & Things in 1972 in a 10-foot-by-10-foot retail space at Second City, surrounded by other small retail shops, galleries, and restaurants that occupied the old Kroll Building downtown. Nobbs made chandelier earrings, which are wide, delicate earrings with several small dangling pieces, by hand and sold them by the thousands, he says. The earrings were so trendy, he began selling them to drugstores and at craft shows, then added turquoise-and-silver jewelry, which also was popular in the 1970s, to his repertoire. In the mid-1970s, he started selling beads.


Meanwhile, Mueller, a craftswoman, was selling her work at shows. People often asked where she found the beads, clasps, and other components of the pieces she made. Shed direct them to her husband, who had been printing an eight-page catalog of jewelry components since moving here from New York in the mid-1960s. His East Coast connections gave him access to unusual findings, things that craftspeople here had no idea how to hunt down, he says.


I did some of those drawings of the merchandise pictured in the catalogs, he says, laughing while flipping through one of the flimsy old staple-bound publications.


In the late 1970s, the Kroll Building was torn down to make room for the Farm Credit Banks Building that Metropolitan Mortgage & Securities Co. now owns and occupies. Rings & Things moved its retail store to the old River Park Square, and Nobbs opened a second retail outlet there called The Jewelers Bench, which sold fine jewelry. He set up Rings & Things growing wholesale operation in the malls basement.


The Jewelers Bench went out of business around 1992, he says. It was a great store, but it never really made any money. At that point, the wholesale side really began picking up.


Around that time, Nobbs moved Rings & Things wholesale operation to the Bon-Macys building. Meanwhile, the retail performance of the Rings & Things store was falling off, but Nobbs says he felt an obligation to keep the shop open.


I closed the retail side in 2000, probably three years later than I should have, he says. I felt like downtown needed to have retail. Nobbs says moving the shop to Coeur dAlene might have saved it. People go there to buy interesting stuff, not to go to the Gap.


As soon as Rings & Things shuttered its retail operation, though, the wholesale side of the company soared.


A downtown warehouse


Because its a wholesaler, now without a storefront, Rings & Things downtown location is unusualthat is, according to Spokane standards, Nobbs says. Its operation on the ninth floor of the Bon-Macys building is a maze of offices and storage rooms where dozens of employees buzz past, each fulfilling time-sensitive duties to get merchandise to customers. The walls are covered with posters that tout benefits of hemp and recycling; plants drape over cubicles, and musicby the rock band Supertramp on a recent Thursdayprovides a backdrop beat.


Nobbs says, though, that in bigger cities, operating a wholesale business in a downtown office building is the norm.


On 34th Street in New York City, they have the beads on the ground floor and the warehouses above, he says.


Operating from a location on the West Plains or in an industrial park somewhere else here would be more convenient, but Nobbs says he doesnt want to leave downtown.


His office there is strewn with stacks of papers and souvenirs from bead-buying trips abroad that literally spill into the hallway, where they run up against even more stacks of stuff.


Many of the employees, all but one of whom work full time, have been with Rings & Things for 20 or more years, and Nobbs and Muellers son and daughter also work for the company. Others are in their early 20s, were on the fringes of mainstream society in high school, and came to Rings & Things hunting for work because of the companys relaxed reputation and nontraditional work culture, Nobbs says.


To say that employees there dress casually doesnt accurately describe the apparel that they wear. While plenty don subtly colored slacks and shirts, others have spiked hair and multiple piercings. Nobbs himselfin a bright striped shirt, suspenders, and jeans, sporting a long gray beard and ponytail and wearing a beaded necklaceredefines business casual.


More buying overseas


During the next few years, Nobbs plans to increase the amount of overseas buying Rings & Things does itself. He recently returned from China, where the company bought $200,000 worth of beads and jewelry components.


Doing our own buying overseas is our current push, Nobbs says. That allows us to drop the price and potentially increase profitability.


Rings & Things also hopes to start taking larger orders and become more of a distributor to larger businesses in our trade, he says.


One hurdle to overcome, though, is freight delivery times. A similar business in Seattle could meet a cargo ship at the dock and pick up its merchandise in its own trucks. Rings & Things, though, often has to wait several days for commercial carriers to have enough cargo to make a trip to Spokane, Nobbs says. He recognizes that some work is being done to increase Spokanes cargo volume, but contends that economic-development organizations here arent putting enough emphasis on the needs of companies that rely on freight being delivered to Spokane, focusing instead on needs for outgoing freight.


I never would consider moving out of Spokane, but a bunch of companies, like ours, could be supported by better infrastructure, Nobbs asserts.


The fact that his company is handling such large quantities of merchandise would have baffled Nobbs 31 years ago, he says. Although Rings & Things has had slow periods, he never imagined it would be as successful as it is today.


I was a little hippie entrepreneur, he says. A lot of things weve done havent been intentional. Weve happened onto them.