Here’s a unique offering. This interview spotlights one of my clients who needs to remain anonymous due to the nature of her profession. She agreed to be interviewed as long as I didn’t reveal her identity. She trades in Native American jewelry and other artifacts, a mostly male-dominated field in which one’s contacts are closely guarded secrets, as is one’s area of expertise.

We sat down for dinner and wine recently at her home here in Arizona to talk; we’ve actually known one another for about 10 years, and are coincidentally both former Iowans who arrived in Arizona in the early 70′s. Our meeting wasn’t clandestine, however, the presentation of her story has kind of a rarefied, cloaked feeling, so sit back and enjoy the mystery.

ktcosmos: What is it you actually do?

Trader: I’m an Indian Trader and I do Indian jewelry at the wholesale level. I then retail it to some of our National Parks.

ktcosmos: You’ve been a business owner for about twelve years, is that right? And before that you were employed in the retail end of the Indian jewelry business for many years?

Trader: Right, 8 years in the business with my husband. The biggest change for me was when he died four years ago and I took over the entire business.

ktcosmos: What was that like? Did you already know the business inside and out and just take up the reins, other than the obvious trauma of losing your husband?

Trader: No, I didn’t know the people we’d be trading with and selling to, because he was always the front person. I DID know where to buy inventory, and knew most of his sources, but I didn’t know anything about running the business end of it. I guess my skills were limited to sending out an order and knowing the key people we dealt with. I didn’t know how much money was involved every year in buying inventory, or how much money we made annually. I didn’t know the addresses of where to send things because he had those in different places. He always handled the shipping, for instance, so I didn’t need to know the addresses.

There was a division of labor and there were just so many gaping holes. You know, when there’s a person you’ve done business with for twenty years, you don’t want to call them and say, “Oh, by the way, what’s your address?” [we both cracked up here] So, I would spend hours looking for the addresses.

ktcosmos: Did you make a plan together about the continuity of the business after his passing, or did you even know for sure that you would even continue with the business?

Trader: About a month before he died, he said, “You know, I’m giving you the business. I assume you want it?” And I said to him, “Yeah, I do. I need to make a living.” And that was all that was ever said. That was it.

ktcosmos: Then I imagine you had to start from scratch working out your own systems. Talk about that a little bit.

Trader: I kept his system of how to keep track of the jewelry that’s been sold since it’s all consigned and they send me the payment when the items have been sold. It’s not like I just go and sell it outright, it’s more complicated than that. I kept that system, but I switched to a computer, which was very hard.

I also had to learn how much money I needed to have each year to buy the jewelry to keep the business viable, and how much I would need for taxes, and all that kind of stuff. These were things I was unaware of when I acquired the business.

ktcosmos: Wow.

Trader: Yeah.

ktcosmos: Well, how long did it take before you felt you had stamped your own imprint on the business, or that you knew business colleagues were taking you seriously?

Trader: About three years. When I went into one of the shops where I buy, and they came up to greet me and said, “Hey Blank!” and they were happy to see me. You know, at first it felt like people felt sorry for me and they were just being supportive, out of respect for my husband. And that was great and I appreciated it. But then after awhile they were happy to see ME, and I thought, “I guess I’m an Indian Trader after all.” And I felt like, when that happened, I could feel my husband patting me on the back. It’s the only time I ever felt his presence after he died. He was saying, “I know you are a Trader. I knew you could do it.”

ktcosmos: Now that you’ve got enough years under your belt on your own and people know who you are, do you do any kind of annual planning process or have you initiated any new contracts, or projects?

Trader: I don’t do a formal thing, but I do try to set up every year what I’m going to do. Like, I do tourist trade jewelry but my husband did a whole Indian Trader thing which is dealing in higher end stuff, like baskets, pottery, and old antique jewelry. So, every year for the past two years I’ve gone to Santa Fe to try to deal in that arena, which is a whole different market. That means I have to buy old jewelry and then see if I can sell it for a profit. For the first time this year, I had put aside a certain amount of money for purchasing things to sell.

Before, I was just selling off some of the nice old pieces that he and I had around, that either he alone or the two of us had collected over the years. This time I knew how much I was paying for everything I planned to resell. On some things I broke even, or on others I made maybe $50.00. That’s not bad. I don’t need to mark it up as much as on the items I send to the national parks, because THEY take such a high percentage.

ktcosmos: You’ve told me before that this is a unique profession and that there aren’t too many people in the “club.” About how many other Traders are there?

Trader: Maybe, all over the country there would be a couple thousand. Maybe.

ktcosmos: How does your competition work? It’s said that competition is healthy and keeps you on your toes. Is that true for you, too, in this particular trade?

Trader: Yeah! I try to do a really good job! Yes, competition is healthy and there are people I can compete with. I don’t have a contract, so if the people I sell to found someone they liked dealing with better, they would just buy from the other person and quit ordering from me. So, I don’t think I can offer a better price, and I don’t think I can offer a better variety. But I do offer really good service. I figure that’s my strongest suit. I’ve heard that a lot of my competition are good old boys who are kind of lackadaisical and they don’t pay their bills on time, or if they say they’ll get something done, they don’t take care of it. I get it done. As far as I can see that’s the only attribute I have that I can offer my customers.

ktcosmos: How many women traders are out there?

Trader: You know, maybe ten? Oh, there’s more than that, but it’s predominantly male.

ktcosmos: Do you ever see that as an obstacle?

Trader: It’s an advantage. Men have a different attitude and women are more able to work with people. So I call and ask what they need. I read fashion magazines, just to see what the jewelry trends are. The good guys and girls [traders] follow fashion, too. They don’t talk about it that much. But they’ll say, “Our wives went to New York and they saw the Ralph Lauren show.” So, yes, the good ones do that, but not many people do that, because this is an old, very traditional business, traders tend to like traditional jewelry, and it’s an old-style way of doing things.

Some of the people I deal with now days are corporate and they’re not from the Western tradition, and it irks me. But at the same time, I try to say to myself, “Well, they got hired for another reason,” and not let that difference in background affect my attitude when I’m working with someone like that. Maybe they don’t know good jewelry, but they do know what sells, so I try to start there.

I’ve found that within traditional Indian jewelry, I make mine VERY traditional. I try to use the good sense acquired from working in retail. Like, I know that this earring is too heavy. A woman wouldn’t wear it. This isn’t going to look right if she has an open neckline, but this would work great with a scoop-necked shirt. You know, I try to think of, or I try to buy jewelry by knowing what people look like in it. And that’s all from retail experience.

ktcosmos: So you combined your retail experience and the fact that you’re trained as an interior designer, and you are trained as a painterâ€â€?you’re an artist, yourself. If you combine the aesthetics of all those aspects of yourself, it seems that you could really use that skill and expertise to your advantage. Do you find that other Traders have any kind of background in other arts?

Trader: Yes, there’s a high proportion of them who do. They’re painters, or potters, or they just have the eye. You have to have discernment, especially if you are going to trade in old pieces. It’s got to hit youâ€â€?you’ve got to be able to see if the turquoise is good or not. Almost all the Indian Traders I know have excellent eyes and good taste.

ktcosmos: Sometimes people who are artistic are not thought to have good business sense.

Trader: Most Indian Traders are odd in that they ARE good at that. Most are cut-throat businessmen with a very good eye. They have to have both. They don’t have to know how to talk to people well, but they do have to know how to get in touch with the right people to sell things to.

ktcosmos: Is there any of that in what you do? Finding things for a collector?

Trader: That’s other people. I don’t really do that too much. Now that I’m branching outâ€â€?you know that store in Santa Fe, she has clothing and cowboy stuff, Native American stuff. So, I’m trying to get into that a little more. Sometimes when you buy stuff, you find that the people who’ll want to buy it might also be into cowboy stuff. They might have a really nice buckle or like Mexican jewelry, too. Well, I don’t sell Mexican jewelry right now because that’s not allowed by the Forest Service (they only allow Native American made items), but I’m trying to learn more about the prices of that, and find more outlets for it, because some Mexican jewelry is really beautiful.

ktcosmos: Do you have plans to expand into other parts of the country, say, the East Coast?

Trader: No. I have enough to keep me busy. I’ve taken a lot of small shops out here and deal with them, take them some pieces sometimes. So, I have little places that I outlet to. Some of them have ended up making more money than I would have thought. In one in particular, a museum shop in Prescott, the manager has a background in retail jewelry of this kind, and she has tripled my sales since she’s been there. Initially, I just placed some things in their shop as a favor, but since her volume has tripled, it makes it worth my while AND it’s fun.

ktcosmos: What about economic factors, like, is your merchandise in the luxury item category? Is it always going to be something that people will buy, regardless of economic downturns?

Trader: Yeah. People always buy art. They see it as art, and they will buy it. Even with the high gas prices, my business has held pretty steady. You might think that even if the tourists do still come to the parks for vacation, they’ll forego that trinket for Grandma because of fuel prices. But my business held steady. Everybody in the business is saying “Wow, we’ve all had a good year, and we don’t know why!” It’s not like it was a banner year, but we expected it to be depressed and it wasn’t. And also, the price of silver was high. I mean, $16.00 an oz. Now it’s back down to $10.00 an oz. So, one, the Indians weren’t making jewelry. You’d go and try to find it but they wouldn’t pay the price and they just weren’t making it.

Like, I couldn’t get those silver boxes all summer. But when I went to Gallup yesterday, there were BAGS of silver boxes and I bought a lot of them. I said, “I see you finally have silver boxes and little pots,” and they told me, “Yeah, the lady finally started making them again because she could buy the silver at a price she thought was reasonable.” If she bought the silver at $16/oz., and the price went down, she can’t sell it at that extra high price.

I keep up with things like that. Usually my Gallup contacts tell me those kinds of things. All of that: the price of silver, the price of turquoise, where the turquoise is coming from, it all has an impact on the business.

ktcosmos: Yours is a totally home-based business, and there would be no reason ever to change that, right?

Trader: Right.

ktcosmos: How many people would you ever want to employ, at most? Would you ever see a reason to expand?

Trader: I’m 55 and so I don’t think I need to keep too much busier. All I have is myself to take care of. I make a really good living. For me, where my challenge lies is, you know, I do the National Parks. How many National Parks are there? Where you make the money is with the old stuff. You buy a pot at one price and sell it for three times what you paid for it. Dealing with more beautiful and expensive items is the challenge for me, but is what I would like to do more of.

Lately, I’ve been pondering starting an interior design business. But, I like the Indian business, I like the people in it, I know a lot of people in it. I’d always like to find more sources of old jewelry. I love the stories of where things came from and love the history behind it. Most of the people that are in the business are interested in history as well. They’re an odd amalgam of traits. Some are better business people than others, but they all understand the basic idea is to buy low and sell high.