Looking back on almost three decades of steady travel, Sally Roesler listed the countries she has visited in her life almost seamlessly — as if she was checking items off a grocery list.
There was Nepal, Bali, India, Thailand, Fiji, Malaysia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and more.
“I know it sounds like a lot but in reality, I’ve been to a few of the same countries many times,” said Roesler, who travels about six months during the year searching for some of the most distinctive and rare beads in the world.
“There are definitely some countries still on my bucket list. For instance, I’ve never been to South America or Africa. But there’s only so much time in the day.”
Roesler is the owner and founder of Beadniks in Virginia Beach, an activity-based retail store that sells ready-made jewelry and also offers classes, events, work space, tools and assistance for visitors of all ages.
The store opened in 2o15 on Laskin Road, just a short distance from the beachfront, and will piggyback on her successful wholesale operation, The Bead Goes On, founded in 1990.
“We are very happy here in Virginia Beach,” said the 60-year-old Roesler, a New Jersey native who moved to the area with her partner, Craig Sexton, nine years ago.
“I’ve been doing this a long time and I learned my lesson about franchising — don’t do it. A lot of work for very little reward.”
Before she moved to Hampton Roads, Roesler ran the very first Beadniks store for 24 years in Martha’s Vineyard, Mass. It was a successful venture but because of her heavy international travel schedule — Roesler buys most of her product while visiting Indonesia, Thailand and Nepal — she ultimately moved the shop down south to co-exist with her wholesale business.
“It really is incredible. Sally literally has relationships with people from all around the world,” said Kelly Conedera, a local jewelry designer with XO Gallery, who used to order wholesale materials from Roesler by catalog when she was in Martha’s Vineyard.
“I was ecstatic when she moved to Virginia Beach. Now I can just walk in the back door of her shop and do everything in person. I usually buy metals from Thailand and African beads from her that no one else sells.”
Through travel, it was obvious Roesler had found a niche in rare jewelry and materials.
During her run in New England, she franchised eight additional stores across America. Between 2004 and 2008, Beadniks had a presence in Chicago, Denver, Salt Lake City, Santa Monica, Calif., West Chester, Pa., Sarasota, Fla., Naples, Fla., and inside the Mall Of America in Minneapolis.
During the 2008 financial crisis, several of the stores closed but that did not thwart Roesler’s cross-country selling aspirations.
“Domestic travel is for business,” said Roesler, who left this week for a three-month trip where she will feature her jewelry and beads at different trade shows across America.
She will drive a van from Virginia Beach to Pasadena, Calif. for her first trade show.
“[Route 40] is a much more interesting highway,” she said.
Route 40 is one of the original 1926 U.S. Highways and crosses a total of 12 states. Three former and four current state capitals lie along the route.
Roesler will pick up her sister in Las Vegas and then visit Death Valley in eastern California before the four-day show in Pasadena. After that, there is another long drive to Phoenix to visit a cousin. There will also be stops stops in Tucson, Ariz., Santa Fe, N.M. and New York City for other trade shows.
And in the middle of this U.S. domestic tour, Roesler still has the urge to travel globally.
“I’m sneaking a trip to Iceland in March before New York City and Santa Fe,” she said. “Why not?”
Driving across the country — something Roesler does about twice a year — is fun but adding to those international frequent flyer miles is her passion.
Roesler credits her mother with passing on the travel bug to her as things really started to pick up steam in 1985. That is when Roesler used the proceeds from selling a house to travel around the globe for a year and a half.
After driving across the country, she hit Hawaii and New Zealand. Then, according to her web site: “She danced at the ‘sing-sing’ with tribes in Papua, New Guinea, trekked the mountains of Nepal, made the pilgrimage to Muktinath, traversed to jungles of Thailand on the back of an elephant with a bad attitude, hit golf balls off the beach in Bali, hopped a Russian freighter to Fiji, drank coffee in Java, lost her passport in Pakistan, ate bugs in Malaysia, sunbathed in Sri Lanka, and caught malaria along the way…”
And that was just the beginning.
During that same trip, she also toured through Singapore and visited India before she found herself in Turkey recovering from an illness. A doctor there urged her to return home to get better and that was only the first time she considered coming back to America.
“Yes, but that didn’t last long,” Roesler recalled. “Four months later, I was back in Asia and living in Bangkok. That’s when I started buying beads.”
30 years later, Roesler now buys and sells beads for a living and calls Virginia Beach her home. Plus she has hundreds of stories and a plentiful bounty from her travels.
But each trip presents another lesson and that usually starts before she even gets to the airport.
“I’m used to living out of a suitcase but I still hate packing,” Roesler said. “I want to travel light. That’s always the goal. Then the insecurities kick in and before I know it, everything including the chandelier is in the suitcase.”
She sees herself in Virginia Beach for the foreseeable future but along with Sexton, who works for DuPont and travels a few weeks each month, they are always on the lookout for the next location.
“I often think about retiring and maybe doing that outside of the country,” Roesler said. “We do have a plan: When we plan vacations, we have to consider if that would be a place we would like to retire. At the moment, there are way too many options.”
For more information or to have your recent trip highlighted in our travel section, email travel editor Aaron Gray at [email protected]
