Brynne Chalmers: Omaha’s maven of curiosities and oddities

Brynne Chalmers has been operating online businesses for years in Northeast Texas. With her knowledge of marketing and general business practices, she has turned her love of design, photography, and history into a career.

She began with items she already had around the house and took appealing photographs of them. Before she knew it, she was selling and ordering supplies constantly. This business stayed up for years until finally, she fell out of love with it.

Today, she operates a curiosity shop called Bone & Bloom on Etsy.com and various other sites. From bones of exotic animals, to dried herbs and flowers, to stones, Chalmers sells what she calls, “conversation pieces.”

She says she has always been drawn to the curious items that spark interest. “I started Bone & Bloom as a way for me to grow my own collection. I have trouble spending money that doesn’t make me money, so I started to think to myself, ‘How do I turn my collection into a business?’ I had no idea then that I would fall in love with being a curator of natural history.”

Chalmers says that her customer base is much more of a niche market than it was before. To find customers, she focuses on marketing her products and making them more appealing. She creates settings for her photos that she finds attractive for staging and takes high-quality photos.

Because most of her items come in glass vials, Chalmers uses natural backdrops made of wood and pure white fabric to draw attention to her items.

“People who are browsing sites that my shop is on see items similar to mine, but the real difference is how attractive the photos are. You’re less likely to click on a set of butterfly wings that are just sitting on someone’s brown carpet. It doesn’t register visually. I present my pieces as works of art, and as a result, I draw in a great amount of business.”

Chalmers does not plan to own a brick-and-mortar shop in the future. She prefers the fluidity of her online business, and she saves a substantial amount of money. Few small online retailers are as successful as she has been. She attributes her success to her knowledge of people and her work ethic. In the future, she plans to continue to focus on Bone & Bloom’s growth and provide interesting artistic products.