Stacia R.

I am astounded by some of the negative reviews on this site. I have placed 5-6 orders with FMG over the past 3 years, and I have never had a problem with them that they didn't fix, quickly and cheerfully.

I have been beading, mostly bead weaving, for 4 years, and I recently launched a small, custom-made jewelry business. It is important to me to have trustworthy sources of high quality beads and findings, so that I can keep my prices up, but I also need good pricing, to actually make a little money. FMG hits my sweet spot. I probably buy 65-75% of my materials from them.

I have had to return items twice: once, I sent back acrylic beads. They looked good on the site, but I found them very cheap looking when I got them. Sending the return was easy, although I did have to pay for shipping. The second time, I had ordered toggle clasps. I though I was ordering single clasps, but the item was actually 5, so I ended up with 30 instead of 6. No problem, they said, just send them back. I asked if there would be a problem with pricing, since I had just qualified for the highest discount (100+items). They said they would still honour the discount, as long as I didn't make a habit of ordering 100 items, then returning several, just to get the discount. (This exchange was polite and cheerful - it is hard to convey nuance in writing, and I don't want anyone to think she was snarky. She just meant that they are happy to accommodate customers who make an honest mistake, but they do monitor for customers who try to game the system.)

At the highest discount level, their prices are generally much better then I can find elsewhere, particularly in North America. I always worry about ordering from China. If I only have 70 items, I just find $1 items and buy enough to get the 100+discount. I have saved over $200 on my total order by spending that extra $30. They also have frequent, excellent sales.

Overall, I have been very happy with their quality. I bought a large number of 9mm white freshwater pearls on sale, and they were stunning! I regularly buy seed beads, pearls, semi-precious stones, sterling silver, clasps and findings from them, as well as Fireline. They have a nice assortment of Cloisonné beads as well, although their selection of silver-trimmed ones (as opposed to gold-trimmed) is very limited.

I generally stay away from their bead mixes, as they tend to combine genuine stones with imitation, which would be "off-brand" for my business. I avoid their mystery bags for the same reason.

The website isn't perfect, but it has the best sort and filter functionality I have seen on a bead site. You can search with key words or select categories. Once you have search results, you can filter by (depending on the item) stringing length, brand, material, bead shape, finish, etc.

My only "complaint" is that they change their product mix frequently, and on several occasions, I have not been able to reorder beads that I really loved.