The Pearls of Kalama
Here's MORE Pearl Outlet news to share...this article appeared in the November 30, 2005 issue of the Longview (Washington) Daily News (the originial article can be found HERE).
The Pearls of Kalama: Entrepreneur gets intimate with Far East to make living online
By Courtney Sherwood
Nov 30, 2005
It all started with a $35 strand of pearls.
When Terry Shepherd traveled to China for his software design job in 1998, he had no way to know he was about to embark on a million-dollar jewelry venture.
He made a side trip to a Beijing jewelry market, where he bought the pearls that would launch his second career.
Today, Shepherd, 33, owns The Pearl Outlet, a Kalama-based business that tallied more than $1 million in sales last year, and expects even more in 2005.
His first sale was that $35 strand, appraised at $500 back in the United States and auctioned away at a big profit on the Web. He was hooked.
"I went back and bought a few thousand dollars worth of pearls," Shepherd said. He put them up for auction on the Web. "They sold immediately."
Though he still worked full-time for Hewlett Packard, Shepherd started making more frequent trips to Asia. He soon stopped buying pearls in Beijing, preferring to go directly to the rural towns where the jewels are cultivated.
Finding his distributors was a sometimes scary process at first, Shepherd said.
After three days of travel --- by plane, ferry and car --- he often would find himself alone with his guide, unable to speak the language, the only westerner within hundreds of miles.
"One time I was traveling down a dirt road for hours. I was getting nervous. All of a sudden the road led into a huge stone city," Shepherd recalled of an early trip to China. "It was like I'd gone back in time 500 years. There was no electricity, and the pearl farm was right there."
To maintain relationships with pearl distributors, Shepherd started making a half dozen international trips each year, traveling to Hong Kong, Japan, China and French Polynesia, he said.
He became credentialed as an appraiser. Within six months, his wife, Crystal, 34, had become involved in the business, working from the family's home in Idaho, where they lived at the time.
In 2000, The Pearl Outlet was officially incorporated, and the Shepherds stopped auctioning their pearls. Instead, they set up a Web site to market the jewelry.
Three years ago, HP transferred Shepherd to its Vancouver office. He bought a home near Kalama to be closer to his parents; he's a 1990 graduate of Woodland High School.
A year after he moved, Shepherd decided to resign from Hewlett Packard.
"I thoroughly enjoyed working with computers," Shepherd said. "But I was putting so much time into The Pearl Outlet that I either had to give up the business or leave HP. The scariest thing I ever did was quit a job where I had benefits. "So many computer jobs are being outsourced overseas, and here we're shipping pearls into the U.S. and creating work for people here."
Today, The Pearl Outlet employs four full-time employees, contracts with jewelers to design and build orders and hires temp workers over the holidays.
The Web site offers saltwater and freshwater pearls in necklaces, earrings and bracelets, with jewelry for men and women.
Buyers come from around the country, and 12 percent of orders are placed overseas --- including from some of the countries where Shepherd buys his pearls, he said.
This should be another banner year for The Pearl Outlet, which has nearly doubled sales each of the past several years, Shepherd said.
Monday was the start of the online holiday shopping season --- the first work day after Thanksgiving, when Web businesses start seeing big sales, as office employees use company computers to place Christmas orders.
Hundreds of people logged on to http://www.thepearloutlet.com to buy on "Cyber Monday," Shepherd said, and this is just the beginning.
"During the month of December, we'll have hundreds of orders a day," he said. "There have been times when we quit working at 2 a.m., then get up at 5 a.m. and start processing orders again."
Even as his business grows, Shepherd has his eye on his competitors. After all, one of them is his brother.
Jeremy Shepherd runs Pearl Paradise out of Santa Monica, Calif., at http://www.pearlparadise.com.
Terry and Jeremy both made trips to China in the late '90s, and each had the same idea.
"We are both very much entrepreneurs," Terry Shepherd said.
Growing up in the 1980s, "We'd pick the apples off the trees and sell them to our neighbors."
There's plenty of room for both businesses to grow, Shepherd said.
The Pearl Outlet will soon introduce a new collection of lustrous pearls, and Shepherd said he wants to supply pearls to more online retailers and jewelry stores.
"It's a lot of fun," he said. "When you look at a pearl, you have to love it."
The Pearls of Kalama: Entrepreneur gets intimate with Far East to make living online
By Courtney Sherwood
Nov 30, 2005
It all started with a $35 strand of pearls.
When Terry Shepherd traveled to China for his software design job in 1998, he had no way to know he was about to embark on a million-dollar jewelry venture.
He made a side trip to a Beijing jewelry market, where he bought the pearls that would launch his second career.
Today, Shepherd, 33, owns The Pearl Outlet, a Kalama-based business that tallied more than $1 million in sales last year, and expects even more in 2005.
His first sale was that $35 strand, appraised at $500 back in the United States and auctioned away at a big profit on the Web. He was hooked.
"I went back and bought a few thousand dollars worth of pearls," Shepherd said. He put them up for auction on the Web. "They sold immediately."
Though he still worked full-time for Hewlett Packard, Shepherd started making more frequent trips to Asia. He soon stopped buying pearls in Beijing, preferring to go directly to the rural towns where the jewels are cultivated.
Finding his distributors was a sometimes scary process at first, Shepherd said.
After three days of travel --- by plane, ferry and car --- he often would find himself alone with his guide, unable to speak the language, the only westerner within hundreds of miles.
"One time I was traveling down a dirt road for hours. I was getting nervous. All of a sudden the road led into a huge stone city," Shepherd recalled of an early trip to China. "It was like I'd gone back in time 500 years. There was no electricity, and the pearl farm was right there."
To maintain relationships with pearl distributors, Shepherd started making a half dozen international trips each year, traveling to Hong Kong, Japan, China and French Polynesia, he said.
He became credentialed as an appraiser. Within six months, his wife, Crystal, 34, had become involved in the business, working from the family's home in Idaho, where they lived at the time.
In 2000, The Pearl Outlet was officially incorporated, and the Shepherds stopped auctioning their pearls. Instead, they set up a Web site to market the jewelry.
Three years ago, HP transferred Shepherd to its Vancouver office. He bought a home near Kalama to be closer to his parents; he's a 1990 graduate of Woodland High School.
A year after he moved, Shepherd decided to resign from Hewlett Packard.
"I thoroughly enjoyed working with computers," Shepherd said. "But I was putting so much time into The Pearl Outlet that I either had to give up the business or leave HP. The scariest thing I ever did was quit a job where I had benefits. "So many computer jobs are being outsourced overseas, and here we're shipping pearls into the U.S. and creating work for people here."
Today, The Pearl Outlet employs four full-time employees, contracts with jewelers to design and build orders and hires temp workers over the holidays.
The Web site offers saltwater and freshwater pearls in necklaces, earrings and bracelets, with jewelry for men and women.
Buyers come from around the country, and 12 percent of orders are placed overseas --- including from some of the countries where Shepherd buys his pearls, he said.
This should be another banner year for The Pearl Outlet, which has nearly doubled sales each of the past several years, Shepherd said.
Monday was the start of the online holiday shopping season --- the first work day after Thanksgiving, when Web businesses start seeing big sales, as office employees use company computers to place Christmas orders.
Hundreds of people logged on to http://www.thepearloutlet.com to buy on "Cyber Monday," Shepherd said, and this is just the beginning.
"During the month of December, we'll have hundreds of orders a day," he said. "There have been times when we quit working at 2 a.m., then get up at 5 a.m. and start processing orders again."
Even as his business grows, Shepherd has his eye on his competitors. After all, one of them is his brother.
Jeremy Shepherd runs Pearl Paradise out of Santa Monica, Calif., at http://www.pearlparadise.com.
Terry and Jeremy both made trips to China in the late '90s, and each had the same idea.
"We are both very much entrepreneurs," Terry Shepherd said.
Growing up in the 1980s, "We'd pick the apples off the trees and sell them to our neighbors."
There's plenty of room for both businesses to grow, Shepherd said.
The Pearl Outlet will soon introduce a new collection of lustrous pearls, and Shepherd said he wants to supply pearls to more online retailers and jewelry stores.
"It's a lot of fun," he said. "When you look at a pearl, you have to love it."
posted by Greg at 9:16 AM
1 Comments:
Hi, I was surfing the internet and came across your blog. I'm quite impressed , with how it makes such good reading.
This is one to watch.
Many thanks,
NEWCU Credit Union Warrington
Post a Comment
<< Home