A couple of weeks ago, Ginger Gibbons opened up a new shop inside the Vape-4-Less store on Main Street called Native Beads and Medicine. I went to visit her new shop and got more of a story than I had expected.
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Native Beads and Medicine fills a need in the community for those who want to do their own native-american-style beadwork. Ginger loves to create things with a traditional Native American flair, but had a very hard time finding the beads and materials to work with. “I found I was having to drive to North Tulsa or Broken Arrow to get the beads, as the major chain stores had all but stopped carrying the prominent sizes and colors necessary for Native bead work,” she said.
The desire to have a resource closer to home, as well as one day teaching others to do Native bead work, prompted Gibbons open Native Bead and Medicine. Inside her store, located at 923 South Main St., now provides these supplies and custom jewelry and beadwork made by Gibbons herself and other local artists, as well as kits and supplies for creating your own beadwork. In the near future, they plan to hold classes when more clientele request it.
You can also see their range of hard-to-find nearby, ceremonial supplies like sage, cedar, and Sweetgrass and all types of incense.
But the story didn’t stop there. Or I should say, it didn’t really begin there. It didn’t even begin in 2013, when she opened Vape-4-Less. It began in 2011 when her Native beadwork caught the eye of another e-cig store owner.
In 2011 Gibbons made her first e-cig sling out of her ornamental native beads and crochet (the same kind she now sells). While shopping at another e-cig store, another customer saw it and immediately handed her money and her phone number, asking if she’d make one for her as well. Seeing an opportunity, Gibbons approached the store owner with six different styles of slings, and soon thereafter, they ordered sixty more slings.
In 2012, she began experimenting with her own e-liquids, after having a bad experience with China-made e-liquids and learning what was in them. In the extensive research she did, she uncovered how to make her own liquids from validated flavor vendors who had done the same. It took her one year to perfect the formula and she became the first in Oklahoma to make it customized flavors. She began giving them out to friends at first, and when they became popular, she decided to see if they really were as good as they said; She sent them off to a reputable reviewer and received 5 of 5 stars on my flavors. It was then that she decided to open my own store, selling the liquids and e-Cigarette devices from e-cigreviews.org.uk. Because she was selling at a lower price-point that everyone else, she chose the name Vape-4-Less.
The store opens in 2013 with 10 flavors of premium grade, 100% made-in-America e-liquid. By 2015, that number has grown to over 100.
Gibbons swears that vaping e-cigarettes is a healthier alternative to smoking. “My 74-year-old-mother, after 56 years of smoking cigarettes, switches to e-cigs at age 70,” she says. “Four years later, she visits a doctor, who is surprised to learn that she had been a smoker—her lungs completely healed after switching to the healthier e-cigs.”
She says her mother’s doctor now recommends e-cigs to his smoking patients.
In 2015, Vape-4-Less was voted “Best e-liquid in Oklahoma” by Vape Awards through the nomination of your customers. Gibbons says she was as shocked as anyone. “I had no idea they were nominating us at all. Didn’t even realize what had happened until we had won,” she said.
Vape-4-Less and Native Beads are located in the same building at 923 South Main Street in Sapulpa from 10:00am to 7:00pm. You can call them at (918) 512-8887 or purchase products online at http://vaporbling.com
Above: Ginger Gibbons sits behind some of the Native beadwork on display at Native Beads and Medicine.
