Dorje Designs jewelry.

• Author: Peterson, Eric
• Position: [small biz] COLORADO COOL STUFF - Brief article

After working with everything from hair to real estate, Anna Holland came out of retirement in 2005 to turn her passion--collecting ancient and antique beads and artifacts--into a business. "I decided I wanted to make necklaces for me," she says of Dorje's beginnings. "I started wearing them and people wanted to buy them."

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So she launched a website with the help of her husband, Mark, and business boomed. "Almost immediately I started selling internationally," Anna says.

She sources her beads from all over the world--some are 2,000 years old--and takes cues from African, Indian and...