How did you get into the beads business?
About 15 years ago when I was travelling in Italy I fell in love with glass beads and I went back several times to take lessons. I began to make some for fun for friends and family every Christmas. I was fascinated by the beads because each piece is different; no two are the same. It also relaxed me. I was running my own insurance business back then and it was very stressful. In 2004, I moved back to Beijing with my parents. My husband was very supportive and we bought a house to settle down there. One day, our dog Snowy swallowed a plastic chewing bone and our doctor friend upstairs came down to look at it. She saw my glass-bead jewellery and asked where I bought them. When I told her I made them, she persuaded me to provide some to sell in a boutique she was running. Her business was struggling then but in about a week nearly all my pieces were sold. She came back for more, and suggested I open a store.
Why did you choose the Silk Market?
My husband and I have spent most of our lives in America and we preferred to be somewhere in touch with foreign customers. The Silk Market had only just moved indoors that year, and the stall spaces were very tight. But the day we scouted, there was one stall vacant at the very end of the floor. Perhaps because of the secluded location, the owner of the stall adjacent was keen to sell us his spot, too. So my husband and I thought it was meant to be and rented the two stalls. Initially people here had a laugh at us selling beads. The management did not understand the attraction of glass beads, and was worried that we could not survive as we did not sell knock-offs of jewellery from places like Tiffany's. But soon our business became popular, and now, two years since we started, we have opened eight stalls on the fourth floor, and a shop on the fifth floor.
Silk Market is famed for its fake goods. Has that been a problem?
Yes, l remember one time a customer did not believe my Swarovski crystals were authentic and changed his mind only after I told him, 'You shouldn't buy this if you don't have trust in us'. He was very pleased with the design and the crystals in the end but he still refused to have the jewellery packed in a Silk Market bag. These things do happen. But the management is trying to move away from that, and has put in tremendous efforts to remove knock-offs since last year. The manager has also become more professional and internationally-minded since we came. He travelled to Europe and North America to see how malls are run there. And he is even considering franchising the Silk Market overseas.