From her SUV to Portsmouth boutique: Jewelry artist adapts to survive pandemic

PORTSMOUTH — Marianne Janik knows better than most people the need to adapt to a changing environment.

In a previous professional life as a National Institutes of Health scientist, she worked to save endangered species from extinction. In her current professional life, it was adaptation that pulled her through the throes of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I studied adaptation and what animals do to survive. Only the strong succeed and the strong are the ones that adapt,” said Janik, a jewelry artist who recently opened her Calli b. brick and mortar store at 21 Daniel St. in downtown Portsmouth after years of traveling with what she calls her “boutique on the road” to arts and craft shows and fairs throughout the Northeast.

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“I don’t know if this is going to work, but if you haven’t tried it, then you haven’t attempted to adapt,” she added.

The store’s grand opening May 21 was a whirlwind of preparation, according to Janik, aided by friends and neighbors from her North Mill Pond neighborhood in Portsmouth. But the process of transitioning from traveling craftswoman to craft jewelry store proprietor took more than a year of planning once the pandemic and its lockdowns forced shows to cease and forced Janik off the road.

It wasn’t her first adaptation. Going from scientific research to handmade jewelry was a whole transition to survive in and of itself.

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A 1995 University of New Hampshire graduate originally from Milton, Massachusetts, Janik's NIH work involved reproductive and cryopreservation techniques and research to stave off the extinction threat to such species as certain leopards, black-footed ferrets, and golden lion tamarins (a type of monkey).

How she went from science to jewelry

But a change in presidential administrations in 2001 portended a reduction in NIH funding — “The writing was on the wall,” she said — and Janik was left to decide a next step.

She did a lot of self-examination of her professional interests, took some assessment tests and attended career outreach sessions.

“I listened to this lecture and the guy says: 'When we talk to our kids about what they want to do or where they want to go or where they want to be, we often say, Do you want to be an elephant climbing a tree or a squirrel climbing a tree?'" she said. “In the end, obviously, you want to be the squirrel, you want it to be easy, right? So if you find something you love and if we can match your personality traits and your interests and your things that you naturally gravitate to, then you're going to love what you do, and you're going to enjoy it as opposed to possibly struggling.”

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Her assessments rated her high in sales, science and medicine. That put her on a path to returning to New England to work in pharmaceutical sales.

She wore a suit every day and had to accessorize it with jewelry, but she didn’t really like the retail jewelry she was seeing. That realization actually set her more on the squirrel’s path toward the creation of her Calli b. jewelry line, a name she derived from a nickname she had for her sister.

She’d been crafty as a child, dextrous with her fingers. She did a lot of sewing and blinging herself. A friend introduced her to DIY jewelry by taking her to a craft jewelry supply store in Enfield, New Hampshire.

“I thought I had died and gone to heaven,” she recalled, noting the “colors, textures, beautiful sparkles, non-sparkles, everything.”

“And I started making my own jewelry,” she said, concentrating on necklaces, earrings and bracelets.

Her co-workers took notice. She started selling some of her goods at house parties.

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They gave me the confidence to actually do stuff for others; just because I liked something I wasn't convinced that the world was going to embrace it,” she said.

The first show she attended to sell her jewelry was a Greek Festival in Ipswich, Massachusetts, in the mid-2000s. By 2008, she left the road as a pharmaceutical salesperson and hit the road full-time to sell her jewelry, gaining the knowledge about what shows and fairs on the circuit were profitable and amassing a contact list of some 8,000 customers.

“We do it by zip code, I just let people know when I’m in their area,” she said.

With her meticulously packed SUV and her mother as an indispensable help, she said, “I bring a boutique on the road.”

Since the shows and fairs were mostly weekends, Janik spent 50 weekends a year on the road, making inventory during the weekdays. Natural gemstones and precious metals are crafted by hand to make each piece unique.

With news out of China of a pandemic virus beginning to generate a lot of headlines in early 2020, Janik’s scientific sense tingled with foreboding.

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“I pretty much called my friends in February and said: 'Guys, there aren't going to be any shows.' So I was mentally and physically prepared to manage myself through the following I had.”

'A scary leap' to new store

Even as the prevalence of vaccines began to turn the pandemic tide to more in-person gatherings, the art and craft show season still looked thin to Janik. Some of her favorite festivals - such as the Yarmouth, Maine, Clam Festival - still weren’t going to happen in 2021. The idea of a brick and mortar store was borne of necessity.

“To me, it was a scary leap,” she said. “But I have always been dreaming about it - if I ever had a store, this is basically it.”

She found display tables at a Lord & Taylor department store that was going out of business (and basically selling off everything) in Salem. She got a lot of carpentry help from a Mill Pond neighbor John Wycoff and is getting help with her social media marketing from another neighbor, Lori Tiernan. “This new venture gives credence to ‘It takes a village.’“ she said.

Her 500-square-foot store on Daniel Street is located right next to what will be the new Brick Market, a four-story, 50,000-square-foot mixed-use building that Parnik believes will generate a lot of foot traffic for her business.

Her community involvement includes Arts In Reach, formed in 1997 to empower teenage girls and gender expansive youth from the Seacoast region through innovative mentoring and arts programs. She is planning special sales where 20 percent of the proceeds go to the organization.

She’ll still do the occasional road trip to sell her jewelry. “It’s a balancing act,” she said.

For more information, check out callib.com.