Halstead Bead, Inc.

Our Mission

Supporting small jewelry businesses is what we are all about! Halstead began as a small biz with a young family’s dreams and a lot of hard work. Sound familiar? Our purpose is to make life easy for the thousands of jewelry studios we work with around the globe. We want to take the headaches out of sourcing so you can focus on the part of your job you love most, creating beautiful jewelry!

Beads helped us get our start, but nowadays they are a very small part of our collection. We are a full service jewelry supply firm that caters to both large and small studios in every facet of the jewelry industry (pun intended). Jewelry artists trust us for quality chain, findings and metals…to your doorstep, fast. 

Halstead believes in the power of small businesses to support hard working families who want to live life on their own terms. Small business drives our economy and the American dream for many entrepreneurs. We know how tough it is and we respect the tenacity it takes to build a jewelry studio. We endeavor to be an advocate and indispensable supply chain partner for small jewelry businesses around the world.

We take it a step further by helping emerging artists with our prestigious annual Halstead Grant awarded each summer since 2006. The annual jewelry grant is awarded to a new designer based equally on their portfolio and business strategy. Participants say that the experience of preparing an application helps them to form the strategic plan that drives their growth through the start-up years. The process is designed to help entrepreneurs think through critical challenges and seek out resources to build their businesses.

We support our maker community with sponsorships of grassroots jewelry events as well as engagement wherever possible. We love to get involved with organizations and projects that unite diverse, talented makers.

Our History

Tom and Suzie Halstead launched Halstead Bead, Inc. in Phoenix in 1973. It has been owned and operated by the Halstead family ever since. Their daughter, Hilary Halstead Scott, is now at the helm and the third generation even comes in after school sometimes to count stock and fill orders along with our amazing team. We take great pride in being a small family business that puts people and integrity first every single day.

The Halstead Bead story began when Tom bought a strand of antique African trade beads because of his interest in archaeology and anthropology. He showed his purchase to colleagues at work and immediately had orders from half the women in the office. Tom and Suzie made jewelry for local craft festivals for a number of years. Eventually, the Halsteads stopped making finished pieces and started reselling all kinds of jewelry supplies. The business continued to grow until they took the plunge in 1975, quit their jobs, and gave the company their full-time attention.

We are based in the beautiful mountains of Prescott. This is not the hot, dry desert most people associate with Arizona. Prescott is in the spectacular northern part of the state. At 5,000 feet elevation, our town boast huge blue skies, rocky mountains, breathtaking vistas, tall pine trees and burbling little brooks. You still see the occasional cactus, but it might just be covered in snow in the winter or buried in bright yellow cottonwood leaves in the fall. It is an outdoor enthusiast’s paradise with world class mountain biking, hundreds of miles of hiking trails and even a few small lakes for paddling. Prescott is famous for the World’s Oldest Rodeo and a little bit of cowboy culture mixed into the town hodgepodge of college kids, artists, retirees and kooky characters.

Our Impact

We strive for big impact and no impact all at the same time. We take sustainability seriously at Halstead. 

We believe that sustainability is ultimately about people. We know our team is our greatest asset. We invest heavily in continuing education for our entire staff including job specific development as well as company-wide free metalsmithing classes in our in-house teaching studio. We provide full benefits including health insurance, generous paid time off, a retirement plan and a casual work environment. We make sure our folks can juggle work-life balance to be home with their families as much as possible.

We take ethical sourcing seriously by looking at all our relationships in decades instead of short term transactions. We source very carefully with great attention to ethical operations, reliability, environmental impact and consistent quality. Our factories use recycled material as much as possible and while not all of the collection is 100% recycled, we get darn close. In 2017, we converted our facility to solar power with a major panel installation project.

Trust is critical in our industry but we know that you have to back that up. So, we run random laboratory assay tests on our products every single quarter to make sure our metal alloys are always what we promise. We provide important industry content in the Halstead Jewelry Blog such as educational articles, trend reports and technique tutorials. All of us in the jewelry industry are responsible for transparency and accurate product information for our clients. Halstead is a great resource so you can provide full disclosures to your clients.