There are jewelry stores that sell rings, and there are jewelry stores where you can buy a 400-year-old silver coin salvaged from a Spanish treasure ship. Frank & Company Jewelers in Orange Beach is the second kind — and that difference explains a lot about the place.
Two Careers, One Store
The shop was born when Jack and Bevelyn Wallace teamed up with Frank Trainor to open the first Frank & Company in Orange Beach, followed by a second location at The Wharf. Jack’s route to the counter was long: after college in Natchitoches, Louisiana — the oldest town in the state — he took a job with a watch company in Houston, became a watch and jewelry repair subcontractor, and fell hard for estate jewelry. He spent 40 years as an independent jewelry salesman, crisscrossing the South buying inventory from antique and jewelry stores, before he and Bevelyn, tired of the road, put down roots in Fairhope.
Frank, a Birmingham native who has lived in Orange Beach for more than two decades, operated a small jewelry business of his own. When Jack floated the idea of partnering on a store in Orange Beach, Frank was ready, and Frank & Company was born — later expanding to The Wharf as tourism boomed in Orange Beach and Gulf Shores.
The Atocha Connection
The store’s most unusual inventory is also its most storied. Team member CC Crowson, who specializes in custom design and redesign, is an expert on the Atocha, the Spanish galleon that sank in a hurricane on September 6, 1622, while serving as rear guard of a 28-ship treasure fleet bound from Havana to Spain. Eight ships were lost on the reefs between the Dry Tortugas and Key West, taking down emeralds, gold and silver meant to pay the king’s debts.
Mel Fisher famously searched 16 years for the wreck before finding it — one of the richest galleons ever to sail — then fought the State of Florida for eight years to keep the treasure. The large silver coins the Atocha carried were pieces of eight: 8 reales, each worth roughly a month’s wages in Spain’s colonial economy. Frank & Company is the only jewelry store in the area that carries Atocha 8 reales silver coins for sale, and will set one into a custom necklace or ring.
The Watch Room
At The Wharf, the store employs something rarer than treasure: a trained horologist. Nathan Smilie repairs and, when called for, makes watches — a craft he pursued after being inspired by his grandfather’s collection of pocket watches. He studied at Bishop State Community College in Mobile, which at the time ran one of the few watchmaking programs outside Switzerland and Germany, and belongs to the American Watch and Clock Institute. “There are only about 25 people in the world that can make a watch start to finish,” he says.
He is joined at The Wharf by sales associates Nina Davis, a London native, and Megan Barnes. Davis’s favorite work involves heirlooms: “When someone brings in a family heirloom and wants to make something updated that you want to wear and show it off,” she says.
Full Service, Personal Service
Frank & Company is a full-service jeweler in the old sense: watch batteries, custom design, estate appraisals, watch and jewelry repair, stone replacement, recutting and reconstruction. The store also buys and sells gold and silver bullion in sleeves from one ounce to a thousand ounces. “Jewelry came in yesterday from Arkansas,” Jack says — a reminder of how far customers travel to sell.
Bevelyn keeps order over it all as controller of an inventory approaching 3,000 SKUs. Jack’s philosophy is part appraisal, part counseling: “A lot of people don’t really know what they have. We pride ourselves on personal service, and I try to access the meaning behind each piece for the customer.”
Why the Beach Works
The Wallaces considered the coastal area home long before the store existed. “On this island, it is the most peaceful area I’ve ever lived,” Jack says of Orange Beach and Gulf Shores. “The business climate is positive with lots of opportunities. We’ve picked up a lot of loyal customers that have moved to the area, and we are now their jeweler of choice.”
For a town built on tourism, Frank & Company has built something more durable: a customer base that comes back — sometimes with a coin from a 400-year-old shipwreck in hand.