How time gets brought back to life inside a downtown Milwaukee bead store

MILWAUKEE (CBS 58) -- Walk into this downtown retail shop, and you'll see every kind of bead for as far as the eye can see. As the name indicates, Planet Bead, has its primary product, but most of the magic happens at a workbench behind the counter.

Keith Seib has run Planet Bead for more than 30 years. The business first opened in a small office space in the Third Ward before relocating to its current home on N. Milwaukee St., just north of E. Wisconsin Ave.

For most of the business' existence, it was all beads all the time. Seib said both he and his wife have long been fascinated by the history and variety of beads.

"Beads have been used for millennia," Seib said. "Since the dawn of man, beads have been used."

While bead sales still account for 70% of the business' sales, another service has slowly gained more popularity. Seib repairs classic clocks and watches.

Seib said he's always had a knack for fixing things, starting with bicycles. Then, while grieving a personal loss, Seib developed a new passion with those handy skills.

"My mom passed away, and in my mom's things, there were some clocks and some watches," Seib said. "And I started fixing them."

Feeling proud of his ability to repair those heirlooms and make them tick once again, Seib would show off the functioning time-telling devices at the store.

"I was excited about it," he said. "So I was showing some of the customers, 'Look at how beautiful this is inside, and look at how intricate this is. Can you believe they even made this?' And people started asking if I would look at what they had."

Seib said he was at first reluctant to take people treasured family belongings and get inside them.

After agreeing to fix those trusted artifacts, Seib said he couldn't help but to feel immense satisfaction once he saw the reactions from people who saw century-old watches and clocks working once again.

Through work of mouth, people have come to drop off their heirlooms with Seib, only to be confused when they walk in and see rack after rack of beads.

"We have many, many people that come in and think, 'Am I in the right place?'" Seib said. "Because we're not really a watch and clock store."

Over time, that aspect of the business has become a source of pride. Seib said one of his proudest moments was restoring the watch a woman brought in for her 90-year-old grandmother.

The woman had gotten the watch from her family as gift when she was a young girl, but it hadn't worked in decades. Seib said seeing it tick again was an emotional experience for everyone involved.

In a sense, Seib is a surgeon for souvenirs.

"They do come to life," he said. "And after 100 years of things being broken, and have it come to life? It is like a heartbeat. It really is. It's really fantastic."