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By Donna Harris
Cherokee Tribune Staff Writer
What started out as a scratch for a creative itch turned into a fun business for Mary Guay and her family.
Thinking she wanted to retire, the Woodstock resident took a class in hot-glass work at the Spruill Art Center in Dunwoody as an outlet for her creative energy, but what she found was a new career as a glass-bead maker.
Mrs. Guay and her son and daughter-in-law, Brent and Analisa Guay of Marietta, own Glassbaker Inc., a company in northeast Cobb that produces 30,000 handmade glass beads a month for jewelry that's sold all over the world.
"We're expanding to three times that (amount) by the end of the year," Mrs. Guay said, noting the company is the leading producer of handmade glass beads in the country.
Right now, she has 38 trained artists, mainly in north Cobb and Cherokee counties, who make the beads by hand at home and sell them to the company.
"The beads we do can't be done in a factory or by a machine," she said, noting her son, Chris Guay of Marietta, is "our best artist." "Every one is made one by one by a real person."
Beads are made from long rods of glass - mostly Murano glass from Italy but some American-made glass - in every color imaginable.
"The colors are endless because you can take two and mix them," Mrs. Guay said, noting some glass also changes color when it's heated. "(In some rods) colors are encased in glass, and that makes swirly designs."
Small pieces of glass are shaped into a circle around a mandrel, and decorations like small dots, 24-karat gold, sterling silver and copper are added.
"We use 24-karat gold leaf, the same as our Capitol dome," she said, noting they have four designs made with gold. "A lot of designs have sterling silver in them."
Then a strip of clear glass encircling the bead is added, and it's melted down into its final form.
The company has almost 100 standard designs that are sold in all 50 states as well as Spain, Denmark, the Netherlands, England, Germany, Australia, Canada and Puerto Rico.
"We're adding products all the time," Mrs. Guay said. "We add three to 10 new designs every quarter. The possibilities are just endless for what we can make."
All beads are subject to strict quality-control standards, and those that are the wrong size, have a core that's not just right or have even a "miniscule" crack in them are tossed aside as seconds, she added.
The beads are given creative names like Cheetah Spots, Orange Meringue, Moody Blues, Red Energy, Endless Summer, Spring Fling and Aqua Swirl and are individually packaged. There's also a Disney line that has Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse ears.
The company sells wholesale to distributors only, though it used to do retail sales until it could no longer meet the demand.
"The end product is sold in jewelry stores," said Mrs. Guay, who hopes to get back into retail some day. "The beads get in the stores through distributors."
Bracelets, necklaces, pendants and earrings made with their beads retail for $20 to $30, she added.
The business started in 1999 after Mrs. Guay took a two-hour class to learn how to make glass beads with her daughter-in-law, who was then her son's girlfriend.
"We never let it go," she said, noting she immediately went out after the class and bought everything she needed to make the beads at home. "It just caught our eye."
Beadmaking wasn't common then so they took what they learned and experimented.
"Most of what we've done, we figured out ourselves," she said. "A lot of the products we use today weren't even available then."
They began making beads and selling them on eBay out of Mrs. Guay's basement, and it "grew from there," even though they never really intended for it to become a full-time business.
"When we started, I had just left my job, and I just wanted something creative to do," she said. "We sold a lot on eBay, more than I thought. We worked with individual jewelry artists, and it was a lot of fun."
Then their products were picked up by a new New York-based jewelry distributor, Chamilia, and "we started working together," she said.
Six months ago, the owners opened a training center in northeast Cobb where they taught artists how to make the different designs of beads, but they were "tripping all over each other" after only a few months, Mrs. Guay said.
Last week, they moved to a larger warehouse facility but "didn't skip a beat" in getting out their orders on Friday, their shipping day, she said.
By August, they plan to have 40 portable workstations up and running for training new bead makers.
"They come here to train for a few weeks then work from home," Mrs. Guay said, noting the artists are taught to make the beads in the standard designs. "They can come in here (to work), if they want. It's a lot of fun, and they can get experience from other beaders."
The artists, who work at their own pace, come from all backgrounds.
"We get folks from everywhere -- retired military, people who are tired of the corporate world, people just starting out," she said. "We get a lot of frustrated artists who are doing customer service or something and are just dying to get back to doing something creative. It's a nice change, and they can make nice money."
Mrs. Guay, whose husband, Jim, helps out with the business, said she the best part of her job is "working with all these guys."
"They're so creative, it's unbelievable," she said, noting the artists come up with many of the bead designs. "I was a computer network person, big company, typical big-company atmosphere. This is so different. They're happy. They make something new, get excited and show everybody."
By the end of the year, the company needs to have 90 trained artists to keep up with the demand, she said.
"Our No. 1 goal is to meet demand," she said. "We can't produce as much as they order so we have to grow to keep up. Almost everything we make goes right out the door so we don't have much inventory."
dharris@cherokeetribune.com
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