‘Back in the day’, is a phrase that most people may be used to hearing from teenagers, but there are many people in the Bellevue and Seattle area of older generations who can say the same thing now, thanks to Scott Bender. In 1928, Scott’s grandparents started their jewelry business with a store in downtown Seattle, and then eventually opened locations in the University District and Ballard. When his grandfather and his great uncle opened their first store, they didn’t know anything about the jewelry business. According to Scott, “they began the whole thing with watches; taking used watches, fixing them up and selling them or fixing broken watches for their customers.” Eventually the family business grew due to the Bender’s making other connections, building funds and then branching out into jewelry and diamonds. For years, Scott handled the business and financial aspect of things for his family’s company, but it was not where his heart truly lied, “ I like repairing, creating, working with my hands—that’s the fun stuff.” Three generations of the Bender family have worked in this business, Scott got started at age twelve working with tools, “I would go in and mess around—you know break things and burn things like any normal twelve year old would do.” But after sixty years, Scott says the family just “got burned out on the retail business” and decided to gradually close their stores, beginning with the downtown location in the 70s, then the University location in the 90s and finally the Ballard location in 2000. Toward the end of the five-year hiatus, Scott began to wonder how he could get back into doing the repair work without getting burned out or becoming obligated to someone else. “I like using my hands, repairing jewelry, creating pieces by special request—it’s therapeutic.” Scott explains that he enjoys doing things that are pretty tough to do, “especially when other stores say ‘oh, we can’t do that’.” So, he decided to reopen Bender’s at a single, much smaller location, in Bellevue.

But why Bellevue if the majority of people who know of Bender’s are from the Seattle area? “I believe that once the word is out that we are here, the Seattle residents who remember us will make the trek to Bellevue, besides Bellevue is a growing area and a lot of people who used to live in Seattle have now moved across the lake anyway.” Bender also tells of his search for the right combination of location and space, “ I needed a smaller space that could be handled by just myself, and I didn’t want to be just another door in a long hallway.” His location in the Washington Mutual Plaza building may not have a lot of foot traffic, but it is a space that is easily handled by one person and has a lot of natural light; Scott had wanted to avoid a space that had a depressing feel to it.

Bender’s Jeweler’s built a reputation amongst its clientele and it’s business partners over the course of its sixty years in the business that is still remembered today—even my own mother confirms this while telling me about her birthstone ring that was purchased at the University Bender’s location in the 1960s. It is this reputation and these connections, according to Scott, that have helped him reopen Bender’s Jeweler’s after it’s five-year hiatus. “I didn’t necessarily start from scratch when I chose to reopen this store, I already had the knowledge and the experience as a road map up here,” he smiles and taps on the side of head. “Not to mention the contacts and the reputation that has been built on trust. If I was just a stranger to these diamond dealers and jewelry makers they’d never feel comfortable moving their inventory through me, or allowing me to fill my showcases with their merchandise.” But because of the Bender’s reputation in the jewelry world, jumping back in the saddle and reopening a single location just across the lake from it’s previous home, was much easier for Scott than it would be for the average person just starting out.

Scott says he has hopes to stay in the business for at least another ten years, “and who knows, maybe in ten years I will want to do it for another ten years—Seattle knows the name, now Bellevue will know the name.”

*Article was written for an originally published by The Bellevue Reporter in 2008.