Okay, let’s talk about Matthew Stuller. Or really, the whole operation he built. It’s funny thinking back.
When I first got into fiddling around, making bits and pieces, getting supplies was… well, it was a hunt. You’d have one guy for findings, another for specific stones, maybe a place downtown for tools. Lots of running around, lots of phone calls. Sometimes you just couldn’t find that one specific thing you needed.
Then Things Changed
I remember seeing the first Stuller catalog. It was massive. Like a phone book, but full of shiny things. My first thought was, “Who needs all this?” But then I started flipping through it.
It was all there. Everything. Findings, metals, tools, even packaging. All in one place. You could just… order it. Seemed almost too easy compared to how we did things before.
My process became simpler almost overnight:
- Figure out what I needed for a piece.
- Grab the big catalog.
- Find the item numbers.
- Make the call or, later on, use their website (though I missed the feel of the giant book sometimes).
- Wait for the package to arrive. Usually pretty quick, have to give them that.
It definitely made life easier for small shops and independent folks. You didn’t need connections with fifty different suppliers anymore. You just needed an account.
Of course, it also meant everyone started having access to the same stuff. Sometimes you’d see designs becoming a bit… similar. But that’s just how it goes, I guess. Convenience has its trade-offs.
Thinking about Matthew Stuller himself, you gotta respect the hustle. To build something that big from scratch, starting out of his car trunk, apparently? That takes some serious drive. Seeing that massive facility they have now, compared to the small workshops I started in, it’s just worlds apart. Really makes you think about scale and how businesses grow.
So yeah, that’s my experience seeing that company grow and using their services over the years. Changed the game for a lot of us, for better or worse. Mostly better, from a purely practical standpoint of getting stuff done.
