SACRED EAGLE IMPORTS - OUR STORY
Hi there, thank you for visiting our Sacred Eagle Imports website …
it's lovely to see you here. We hope you enjoy browsing!
We are husband and wife team Jon and Rachel Sleightholm
and we started our import business in 1997
Jon handles the sourcing of products, buying & pricing
of stock, everything else financial and he posts the orders at
our local Royal Mail Post Office.
He does enjoy his daily chat with our Post Master - Tony.
But Jon doesn't 'do' photos....
Rachel looks after the website; posts on social media, handles the stock control
and the preparing & packaging of orders.
That's me just loving the camera!
As a company we offer great customer service and high quality
Native American products.
Primarily we source the items we sell from companies
owned by (or who buy from) members of the Native American
community and individual artists so that we are supporting
the people to whom the crafts and smudging ceremony traditionally belong.
Some of them we have traded with since
the very beginning, over 20 years now.
When we began trading in 1997 we travelled several times to New Mexico
to source products made locally by Navajo and Zuni artists.
Whilst there we visited Native American trade fairs and
established contacts in West Virginia, California and Canada.
Some of whom we still trade with today.
At that time we focused mainly on wonderful Native American artifacts
such as dream catchers, medicine wheels and shields, pipes,
rattles, medicine bags etc. and Jon travelled the whole of the
UK in a car filled with bags of stock - calling on shops
and therapy centres from Cornwall to Scotland!
We had an amazing range of wonderful customers buying regularly from us.
After several years we moved the focus of the business into selling beautiful Native American jewellery....wristbands, rings, chokers, necklaces.
Especially the world renowned Navajo silver & turquoise jewellery
and exquisite Zuni inlay work.
We have since changed direction again, moved with the times,
and now carry a wide range of Native American
smudge sticks, smudging herbs, smudging resins and smudging feathers
along with a selection of our original products.
With the retail trade taking such a big hit in the last 12 years so many of the
lovely small businesses we originally supplied had to close their doors.
So now Jon doesn't travel anymore, our business is
now much smaller and concentrates on retailing online.
We purchase our Navajo products from a long established company
who were among the original founding members of the
'Indian Arts & Crafts Association'
An organisation which ensured all their members had genuine tribal connections.
(the Association was dis-banded in 2018.)
We also offer individually hand crafted smudging feathers by UK artist
'Standing Bear'.
He isn't a Native American but he is influenced and inspired by their culture.
To learn more about us please also visit our 'Being Green' page.