About Us

About Eight Five One

851 was Nia's childhood home address.

It's where she first sat down at a kitchen table and made jewelry—not because anyone taught her, but because she couldn't stop. She was 15. She made pieces for herself, for friends, for anyone who'd wear them. Jewelry was the thing that made her feel beautiful, and she wanted every woman around her to feel that way too.

She never stopped making it.

Fast forward to 2016. Nick and Nia were ready to start a family and made a decision together—Nia would quit her job and do the thing she'd always done anyway. No grand business plan. No investors. Just a husband and wife betting on each other. If she could be home with their kids, do work she loved, and make any money at all doing it—that was enough.

That was the whole plan.

Nick & Nia, 851 pop-up market 2016. The beginning.

Then COVID hit.

In-person pop-ups were gone overnight. So we pivoted. Nick set up a Shopify store. Nia kept designing—at the kitchen table, at coffee shops, at home after the kids went to bed. From March through December 2020 we made our first online sales. Modest, real, ours. Then the new year came and everything went quiet.

January 2021. We were on the beach with our son Jude. No new sales had come in. We looked at each other thinking—was that it? Was last year just a fluke?

Then the Shopify notification went off.

We looked at each other and just lost it. A real person, somewhere out there, had found Nia's jewelry and decided they needed it. That was the moment everything changed. Not because of the sale—because of what it confirmed.

We could actually do this.

We still talk about that moment on the beach with Jude. We probably always will.

Today Eight Five One has two stores in Idaho, thousands of customers across the country, and a third market on the way. Nia still designs every piece. Nick still runs the business. We're still heads down, still in the trenches, still texting each other about the wins like it's that day on the beach.

We're just two people who bet on each other and never looked back.

Nick & Nia with their kids 2024