Beaded jewelry conceals medical information - September 19, 2004
Beaded jewelry conceals medical information
By Margo Harakas
Knight Ridder Newspapers
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Tina Sprigg would have been content selling her beaded jewelry to the usual clientele. But an unexpected request for a medical ID bracelet opened up a whole new specialty area for the Fort Lauderdale entrepreneur, one linked with deep satisfaction.
"My youngest client was a 14-month-old girl with a heart condition," says Sprigg.
The mother found Sprigg’s Beadin’ Beagle Web site and ordered a bracelet of glass flowered beads for her child.
Another mother, doubting she’d ever get her diabetic daughter to wear any medical alert jewelry, ordered a Sprigg creation, anyway. The girl was so thrilled with the colorful bracelet, the mother reported, that for three days she refused to take it off.
Today, 15 months after fashioning her first such bracelet, Sprigg is selling 15 to 20 a month, at prices ranging from $20 for children’s bracelets to $35 for an adult’s.
Most are custom-made for children with diabetes or food allergies or medication dependencies. Featuring semi-precious gemstones, crystals, pearls, glass beads, and sterling silver, the possibly lifesaving wrist ticklers offer a fun and attractive alternative to the usual clunky metal jewelry of the medical genre.
For girls, designs include red-and-black ladybugs, flower beads, and pastel beads interspersed with baby pearls. For boys, Sprigg conjured a rugged-looking number (test-marketed on her neighbor’s three sons) that alternates beads of wood with beads of bone.
Most children, notes Sprigg, reject the traditional medical jewelry because they don’t want to call attention to their ailments. Her creations, on the other hand, are viewed more as fashion. The essential metal plate is there, of course. But it’s upstaged by an eye-catching beaded band. The nameplate (which bears on the front the wearer’s name and the medical alert symbol and on the flip side the specific medical warning) is provided by the customer. To assist customers, Sprigg’s Web site, www.beadin- beagle.com, has a link to Oneida Nameplate Co.
Sprigg knows well the importance of the nameplate. "My dad was a fireman in Memphis for many years," says the 33-year-old Fort Lauderdale resident. When he showed up at accident scenes, he always made sure to check the wrist of an ill or injured person "because that’s going to tell you a lot."
Sprigg’s cottage industry (named for her beagle, Jake, who sits at her feet as she does the beading) began about a year and a half ago. She had received a beaded bracelet as a gift, and thought she’d like to try her own hand at jewelry making. She bought books and materials and was off and running. Her first efforts were college bracelets, done up in school colors, and sorority bracelets, and bracelets sporting the names of children or pets.
She also did fancy pieces, and fun pieces which she began to peddle online and eventually at house parties. But it wasn’t till she got a call from a colleague in the small business group she belongs to, that a new, unexpected opportunity arose.
The woman, who had breast cancer-related lymphedema, "asked if I’d be interested in making her a medical ID bracelet."
Sprigg happily obliged and posted the finished piece with similar samples on her Web site. "It just exploded," she says, with orders rolling in even from Alaska and Canada.
Sprigg, who works by day in her family’s security and surveillance business, knows she is not the only bead jewelry maker on the Web. Still, she hopes eventually this sideline will become a full-time occupation. She has expanded her medical line with what she calls loopies, decorative pieces hung from belt loops. Soon to come are necklaces, keychains and zipper pulls. Her husband, Bill, gives input on new designs.
"I use the highest quality materials," she says, including Swarovski crystals, as well as sterling silver charms, clasps and findings. Her beading wire is "49-strand stainless steel covered in nylon. I don’t want a product that breaks. I want people to have a quality product," she says.
Each piece (medical as well as her general fashion line) is made to order. "The customer has complete creative control," she says.
Sprigg, who has suffered her own medical problems both as child and adult, feels a special pride when a child gets excited over one of her bracelets. "I get such a warm feeling when parents e-mail me," she says. To change a child’s attitude about wearing a piece of jewelry that could save a life, she feels, is work well worth doing.
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