Fire Mountain Gems and Beads - Feed your bead addiction!
Written: Mar 25 '07 (Updated Mar 25 '07)
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Nobody starts out thinking they’ll become an addict. It’s just a hobby! A few little glass beads here, some earwires there, maybe a couple of sparkly crystals if you’re feeling especially sassy. Then it happens. You realize that you’re spending most of the grocery money on bead organizers. The money for gas? All poured into gemstone strands. You’ve hit rock (faceted semi-precious rock) bottom. You are a beadaholic.
For those of us who dwell in this dark (yet extremely well accessorized!) domain, there are a plethora of online and brick and mortar stores to feed our addiction. They range from hippie-style patchouli scented dens of Bali silver and organic wooden beads to huge warehouses filled with every color of seed bead ever manufactured to specialty stores with hand blown and vintage glass beads or beautiful semi-precious stones. Fire Mountain Gems and Beads sort of falls in the middle, carrying quite a bit of almost everything.
Fire Mountain could potentially be a one stop bead shopping Mecca. They carry gem strands, precious metals, base metals, glass beads, crystal and a huge selection of jewelry findings. They honestly have the basics of jewelry making covered in their inventory. They even carry some pre-made jewelry, organizers, books and display items. What they do not carry are unique vintage or hand blown glass beads. Their selection of the truly out-of-the-ordinary is slim to none.
On top of their impressive selection, Fire Mountain Gems and Beads also offers discounts for bulk purchases and something called “assortable pricing”. Assortable items are marked as such and can be added together to achieve enough quantity to qualify for bulk discounts. For example, if I want sixteen different Swarovski crystal colors, I can get a lower price per crystal through assortability because I’ve gone over the fifteen item threshold for a new pricing level. It’s a pretty sweet deal. As you add all your items to your cart, the site automatically calculates your assortability savings.
Site design is fairly simple, even bland in its overall color palette, yet they have a tendency to clutter the homepage with too many specials and other assorted copy. The product categories are easily accessible down the left side of every page, though, making the site itself relatively easy to navigate. Unfortunately, it does have more technical issues, more often, than I would like. Maybe 10% of the time, I’ve been unable to check out due to technical difficulties. When returning later, the problems have always been resolved and checkout is smooth. Sometimes the site is unable to locate my account. Again, when I go back later all is fine – I suggest logging in to your account before starting to fill your shopping cart, to avoid having to repeat the entire process if the site is not functioning properly. Often, the site runs very slowly, with page loads taking two to three times longer than they should. You also tend to have to do a lot of backing up or starting over during searches. If I’m looking at cube crystal, it’s difficult to get into the bicone crystal area without going back to the crystal main page. Not a big deal, but rather a small annoyance.
You do, at the moment, need to create an account to check out, but are not required to leave your credit card information on file. Shipping options are available, and I’ve found the U.S. Postal Service offers by far the least expensive shipping rates. My merchandise has always arrived promptly, well within the stated time estimated, in good shape and packaged more than adequately to protect my purchases. Fire Mountain Gems and Beads also always sends a free gift with your order, but it has, without exception, always been crap. I always give whatever ugly piece of cheap jewelry it might be to the kindergarten teachers at the elementary school to put in their incentive prize boxes. Because five-year-olds tend not to notice craptacularity – how else have Happy Meals survived all these years?
Now, a word or ten of warning. I’ve been buying beading and jewelry supplies from various sources for years. I have my preferences for all sorts of things and don’t rely on any single vendor to have either the best selection or the best prices. So here are some caveats about Fire Mountain:
Be very, very careful when buying gem strands. They look fantastic online and sometimes the prices are excellent, so the temptation is great. But what you see is not always what you get and I have been disappointed enough times by the quality of the actual product in comparison to the picture of the product that at this point, the only thing I trust from them as far as gems are concerned is simple round black onyx. One of my most disappointing experiences was ordering a 16 inch strand of amethyst only to have each and every bead be indented or flattened on the end. Yes, I could have returned it, but since that incident I insist on seeing, in person, nearly 100% of the gem strands I purchase. Same goes for seed beads or Japanese delica beads – the colors will not be true on the computer screen. Unless you have a lot number, I wouldn’t suggest buying those through catalogue or online.
Be careful when something looks like a great deal. Sometimes, the deals really are terrific – their Swarovski crystal prices are very good. Other times, even not taking into account my vendor discount at local brick and mortar stores, things are a much better deal retail. For example, check all your local stores for their sterling headpin prices before ordering them from Fire Mountain Gems and Beads . One of my local shops has them for about half the price. Never assume that because Fire Mountain Gems and Beads is a “wholesale” site with assortable pricing that they will automatically have the best value on staple items.
Finally, I suggest you wait until you have a significant order (if you tend to need supplies regularly) before purchasing. While shipping is not terribly expensive (my last order of $93.70 incurred shipping and handling charges of $6.70), it isn’t free, either. A lot of small orders will end up costing you more in shipping than in actual product costs.
Fire Mountain Gems and Beads, despite its sometimes glitchy site navigation, is the bead and jewelry making site I routinely turn to for sterling silver earwires, 14k gold filled earwires and headpins, Swarovski crystal and sterling silver and 14k gold filled spacers. You may find other things in their impressively large inventory that are both the quality you want and at the price point you need. If you keep in mind that researching prices is always a good idea and that gem strands are better seen before purchasing, Fire Mountain can be an extremely valuable resource in keeping your bead addiction going strong. For a quick fix of beautiful semi-precious gems, I would suggest researching your local brick and mortar stores, but for the sweet satisfaction of digging into a bulk order of sparkly crystal and shining sterling silver, you can’t beat Fire Mountain Gems and Beads.
Recommended:
Yes
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About the Author
Location: Wisconsin
Reviews written: 579
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About Me: Tony the Tiger... you don't hear that much anymore.
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