This established home biz story features Hudson Oddities, a New Brunswick based company that makes jewelry from ocean polished glass found on the beach. They create and sell the jewelry in their lighthouse, a specially built tourist attraction that serves as a store, workshop, and office. In addition to on-site sales, Hudson Oddities also sells several thousand pieces of jewelry a year through a distributor for individual stores.

Audrey Hudson got the idea for beach glass jewelry while painting little pictures on her bitten nails to hide the damage .

She spotted a bowl of beach glass, and well, the rest is history.

In high-end crafts, Canadian producers are competing with goods from several countries, especially France and Italy.

Many Canadians collect Hudson Oddities product, which is recognized by the small lighthouse and fishing buoy logo attached to each package. The lighthouse logo is in fact the most popular and most difficult to make design feature of all the jewelry.

Raw materials and supplies in the jewellry and silverware manufacturing industry comprise 70% of total costs.

Collectors look for rare colours such as cobalt blue, scarce because the original medicine and Noxzema bottles were not as frequently consumed as other glass container items. Green, brown and clear are the more common beach glass colours.

A typical trade show for Hudson Oddities brings in orders of 5,000 to 8,000 pieces and they have had orders of 10,000. Virtually all initial orders are followed with re-orders.

Stores like to receive the product in packages. With initial orders, Audrey also sends along a free lighthouse in-store product display to showcase the products.