Lil' Iodine: Entrepreneurial Alums Combine Talents With Their Own Business

In Long Beach’s Pine Avenue shopping district stands an oasis of calm called Lil’ Iodine Beads, which co-owner Leann Kellough (Class of ’79, B.S., Psychobiology/Biology) describes as “a mental spa.” On a winter afternoon, her partner, Alidda Moore (’78-’80, Economics), is helping a young girl assemble a bracelet in a corner of the store. Moore’s patience and reassuring tone of voice are a sharp contrast to the bustling roar of commerce just outside.

“She actually did a lot of the work,” Moore says with a smile when asked about the girl’s project weeks later. “She was thrilled that she made something that looked the way it did, and her mother was thrilled because she wanted her to have an experience doing something to entertain herself that wasn’t playing games on the computer. That’s what her daughter walked away with.  The little girl has come in again since, and sent other kids in.”

After retiring respectively from the Marines and the Navy, Kellough and Moore turned their talents to business ventures that were equally stressful. Moore’s counseling experience in the military was to serve her in good stead in running her bead shop that focuses on teaching customers how to create their own jewelry. After working for a Fortune 500 corporation, Kellough ran her own public adjusting and insurance firms. Today, wearing a necklace that Moore created with a pendant that belonged to her mother, Kellough recalls how the pastime she chose to provide stress relief proved to have business potential.

“I had been beading for three years,” she says. “I would make gifts for friends, and  sometimes, people would see what I was wearing and want me to design for them. So I’d design it and sell it. When I found out I could get $175 for a necklace, I tried to get other people interested in learning to bead because they needed jobs. I asked, ‘Does anyone want to do this for work because I don’t want to,’” she says laughing, “and Alidda did.”

Moore took Kellough’s casual interest in making jewelry and ran with it. Along with her responsibilities as a designer and instructor, she buys for the shop from vendors across the globe.
“Beading became a passion, an addiction of mine,” she admits. “I saw a piece that Leeann was wearing and found out that she had made it. Up to that point, I had never considered the process involved; I just looked at jewelry and liked it.

“It’s satisfying on many levels,” she continues. “I enjoy sharing the knowledge, and the work is really relaxing. I love the international business aspect, the research, and the human interaction.”

The therapeutic qualities for the customers of a shop like Lil’ Iodine are important to the proprietors, whose customers are often accountants, police officers, and other women in high-stress careers. Kellough describes their work as “consultant sales.”

“When a person comes in, we try to find a [design] problem to solve,” she notes. “Some people can’t even fathom what they want, so you have to dig in to find out. But more importantly, they get a chance to go back, kind of like into their childhood, where they can come and hang out, like when you had a girlfriend next door and you knew you could go over to her house. That’s what we’re like.”

Moore considers the client base of working women in a busy downtown area and echoes the sentiment, saying, “We have people who come in to relax during their lunch hour, and out of curiosity. After I get them to try making a piece, the next thing you know, they’re saying, ‘I feel so relaxed and so calm.’”

Moore does not consider their store a “hobby” shop, and strives to create work and an environment that educates their clientele as well as adorning them.

“When you come in here, I’m going to teach you to give a professional look to your jewelry,” she says. “I try to get you to understand the stones, where they’re coming from, why that look is the way it is, and how to achieve a nice finish. I’m always trying to increase my knowledge also, and I bring that to the table. For me, it’s very satisfying to watch someone go from having absolutely no knowledge about this, to ‘You know what? Someone wants to buy my stuff!’”

Although they did not know each other while attending CSUDH, the two entrepreneurs agree that their education prepared them for any undertaking.

“The one thing that Dominguez Hills taught me was paying attention to details,” says Kellough. “At Dominguez, you don’t play.”

Moore, whose son is preparing to enter a university as a transfer student, has imparted to him the importance of a well-rounded academic “diet.”

“I am teaching my son that although he won’t see it now, you have to take other kinds of studies besides your major,” she says. “They all come together; they’re necessary to make you whole. And when you least expect it, you will be paraphrasing or using something from what you learned and then it will click: ‘Oh, that’s why I had to take that.’”

The name of the shop came from Kellough, who watched a cartoon called, “Lil’ Iodine” as a child. She bestowed the nickname on her friend and business partner, who reminded her of the mischievous character.

“Alidda is sitting here trying to be ‘all that,’ this professional image that you’re seeing,” she says with a laugh. “But she is a little brat. She will turn on you in a minute and be the brattiest person you’d ever want to see. I used to call her, ‘Lil’ Iodine.’ Then, when we were searching for a name, I said, ‘Let’s call it Lil’ Iodine so that women can come in here and throw all that professional whatever-it-is that the world demands of them away. We want them to come in here, toss it aside, and be little girls and just enjoy themselves.”

Lil' Iodine is located at 245 Pine Street, Suite 210 in downtown Long Beach. For more information, call (562) 435-9882.

- Joanie Harmon