Lau­ra Dowrich-Phillips

For shop­pers, the Bead Cafe, lo­cat­ed in Fred­er­ick Court, up­per Fred­er­ick Street, Port of Spain, is a bead­er's nir­vana, re­plete with beads of all shapes, colours, tex­tures and sizes.Pa­per beads, plas­tic beads, wood beads, acrylic beads and In­di­an glass beads, to name a few, are at­trac­tive­ly laid out singly and in strands in this coun­try's first re­tail bead store, along­side books on jew­el­ry mak­ing and oth­er para­pher­na­lia need­ed for that ex­er­cise. For Tamei­ka Fletch­er-Birm­ing­ham, the store is the cul­mi­na­tion of a love af­fair with beads, which be­gan in her child­hood when she watched her moth­er use beads to em­bell­ish the clothes she de­signed. At first, she col­lect­ed beads and al­though she al­ways loved craft, it wasn't un­til she taught it at a camp in Kalam­zoo, Michi­gan, that she de­vel­oped a re­al pas­sion for it.

Af­ter grad­u­at­ing from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies with a man­age­ment de­gree in 2003, she start­ed mak­ing jew­el­ry un­der the Kol­lectibles la­bel while work­ing at Bang Bang, which her par­ents own.

"I ob­served the jew­el­ry they were sell­ing, stud­ied the com­po­nents and de­cid­ed to make some. I made lots of mis­takes but I did a lot of ob­serv­ing and read­ing on­line to learn," she said. Though she went on to a steady day job as the com­mu­ni­ca­tions of­fi­cer at the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty, the 32-year-old jumped at the op­por­tu­ni­ty to open her own store when some space be­came avail­able at Fred­er­ick Court dur­ing her va­ca­tion last year. The store al­lows Fletch­er-Birm­ing­ham to share her cre­ativ­i­ty and love for jew­el­ry mak­ing with the world. She does not just sell beads but helps oth­er peo­ple to en­hance their skills or learn new ones at class­es that she holds every Sat­ur­day in a loft stu­dio in the store.

Some of the ma­te­ri­als used by Fletch­er-Birm­ing­ham.

"A lot of peo­ple don't now how to make jew­el­ry and I al­ways want­ed to help small busi­ness de­vel­op­ment. I teach every­thing, how to make jew­el­ry, pack­ag­ing and how to use ma­te­ri­als that are avail­able. "I want to train peo­ple to start a busi­ness on a bud­get, you just need cre­ativ­i­ty and pas­sion for a craft busi­ness," she said, point­ing to some white cut­ting boards she bought at the $10 store to use as work­sta­tions. For be­tween $50 and $150 a ses­sion, you could learn to make any kind of jew­el­ry you fan­cy at Fletch­er-Birm­ing­ham's class­es.

How­ev­er, beads aren't just lim­it­ed to ac­ces­sories, she said. They can be used for dec­o­rat­ing, key chains, book­marks, hats, and home fur­nish­ings. She sub­scribes to bead mag­a­zines that cus­tomers can pe­ruse to get cre­ative ideas. She even plans to hold class­es for chil­dren over the hol­i­days since, she said, it can be used to aid chil­dren's de­vel­op­ment through count­ing, sort­ing and pat­tern-mak­ing. Though class­es are on­ly avail­able in Port-of-Spain cur­rent­ly, she plans to make them avail­able at the Bang Bang stores in Trinci­ty and Gulf City Malls.

Fletch­er-Birm­ing­ham is pas­sion­ate about craft and the de­vel­op­ment of a prop­er craft in­dus­try in Trinidad and To­ba­go. To this end, she is hop­ing to con­nect with peo­ple who make lo­cal beads and as­sist oth­er ar­ti­sans such as those who do leather­work to learn about new ma­te­ri­als and tech­niques to en­hance their mer­chan­dise. "Busi­ness skills are need­ed. For ex­am­ple, leather san­dals are great. I think every­one should have a pair but the styles nev­er change so they lose busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ties," she said. Turn­ing her at­ten­tion to the just con­clud­ed Fash­ion Week, Fletch­er-Birm­ing­ham lament­ed the ex­clu­sion of lo­cal crafts peo­ple from the event. "We have to ex­pand it. Clothes are just one as­pect of fash­ion but we have lo­cal shoe­mak­ers and jew­el­ry de­sign­ers that should be a part of it," she said, shar­ing her vi­sion of a craft as­so­ci­a­tion and a craft ex­po with prop­er brand­ing, mer­chan­dis­ing and show­cas­es.