Woman reclaims building to start business

Local businesswoman Theresa Bradshaw works three jobs to make do.
Bradshaw owns and operates Arlee Bead and Thrift, a combined bead supply and used clothing store.
“I’m trying to find a more catchy name,” she says of her new venture, open since February.
Before she unlocks the store in the mornings, she swamps at Stockman’s Bar. “In between I get a shower,” she says with wry reflection. “It’s just what you have to do in Montana to survive,” she says of her three-job shift. Before swamping, Bradshaw opens the transfer station in town. That job, while having very limited hours, requires her to be available seven days a week.
Bradshaw’s approach is not unique.
“You try to find something that’s close to home so you don’t waste gas,” she said. “And none of them pay worth a damn. I’m just trying to make it.”
Before relocating to Arlee four years ago, Bradshaw worked construction and demolition in California.
“I lived in an area of earthquakes,” she said of her former job, “so we had to earthquake retrofit everything.” Bradshaw worked on bridges — making sure they could withstand the rigorous movements of a temblor.
“I thought I would retire with the company I was with,” she said. But it didn’t happen. So she returned to Montana, a place she’d lived briefly in the early 1980’s. “But boy has it changed around here,” she remarked. “People discovered it.”
Still, she loved the landscape, and the independence.
Then Bradshaw learned of an opportunity.
“I was living out this way,” she said, “and I heard this building was available.” It had been empty ten years, Bradshaw said, “and was just falling apart.”
Over the span of her career, she’d built everything from cabinets to bridges, she said. “I’d been a carpenter in another life, and I knew I could fix it up.”
The front windowpane was plexiglass, and let in very little light, Bradshaw said, plus, “the floor was rotten.” There had been a bad leak from an old bathroom, she said; a water heater had burst.
She needed to jack the floor joists up, “and replaced all the flooring in back.”
“It took me six months because I have carpal tunnel,” she said. “I still haven’t finished.”
But she hasn’t given up.
Bradshaw has visions larger than the store. She would like to turn it into an outlet carrying craft supplies for local artisans.
Bead workers have asked her to carry certain supplies, but right now her ability to do so is limited, she said. She wants to stock beads, leather, feathers, findings — all the items the local artists need to create their goods and keep tourists stopping, and buying, in Arlee, she said.
But for now, she’s slowly working on the store. Selling used clothing to get by. Selling a few handcrafted items, and the beads.
Swamping bar. Doing what it takes.
Bradshaw is ready to settle in for the long haul. She’s willing to build her store slowly, because to her, the benefits of being one’s own boss far outweigh the struggle.
Arlee Bead and Thrift is located on Highway 93, and is open afternoons, Thursday through Sunday.