From Inglewood to Eagle Rock: How Crazy Crystal Shop Was Born

I didn’t start this business with a plan. There was no pitch deck, no savings account set aside, no grand vision board on my wall. There was just me—a teenager in Inglewood who needed to make money and wasn’t old enough for anyone to hire.

When I was sixteen, going on seventeen, I did what most people my age would do, I applied to jobs. A lot of them. But the reality was that most places wanted you to be eighteen. Application after application, the answer was the same: come back when you’re older. So, I stopped waiting for permission and started figuring it out on my own. If nobody was going to give me a shot, I’d create one myself.

WHERE THE LOVE FOR CRYSTALS STARTED

People ask me all the time why crystals, and the real answer goes back further than me. My sister has always had a deep love and fondness for crystals—and she got that from her late grandmother. It’s an interest that’s been passed down and shared in my family for a long time, even before I was born. Growing up around that energy, seeing the way these stones carried meaning across generations—it wasn’t something I had to force myself to care about. It was already part of my world.

So, when I needed a way to earn income, handcrafted crystal jewelry made sense. It connected to something real; something rooted in family. The first pieces I ever sold were necklaces—simple ones, made by hand, sold to people around the neighborhood. No website, no branding, no LLC. Just word of mouth and a kid who was hungry to build something that was his.

THE RABBIT HOLE: LEARNING THE INDUSTRY

Once I committed to this, I went all in on the research. Learning the market, learning the product, understanding the spiritual and metaphysical industry from the inside out. And what I found was eye-opening.

There’s a lot about this industry that people don’t talk about. Not a lot of information is publicly shared or explored. Resources are taken advantage of. A huge portion of the crystals and stones on the market come from places of complete unknown—unidentifiable regions, uncertain origins, no transparency whatsoever. Sellers mark things up three, four hundred percent on product they bought wholesale from sources they can’t even verify. And with the heavy influence of social media, misinformation spreads fast. Crystals get hyped up with claims that have no grounding, prices get inflated because of aesthetics over substance, and the average buyer has no way of knowing what’s real and what’s marketing.

That bothered me. I can’t sell a product I don’t understand. And I didn’t want to be another shop pushing overpriced stones with no story behind them. So, I set out to unravel the narrative—to actually dig into where these crystals come from, how the supply chain works, what’s being said versus what’s true, and how I could do this differently.

BUILDING IT FROM THE GROUND UP

Let me be clear: nobody handed me this. I’ve been financially and emotionally self-sufficient since my sophomore year of high school. I’m the youngest in my family and the first to go to college. Everything I’ve built—Crazy Crystal Shop, the LLC, the website, the brand—came from late nights, trial and error, and a stubborn refusal to settle for a life someone else designed for me.

Since those early days, I’ve worked grocery store management, boba shops, food service, retail, pest control, office admin—you name it. Every single one of those jobs taught me something. How to manage people. How to move fast. How to deal with customers who aren’t always right but still deserve respect. All of that feeds into how I run this business today.

WHAT CRAZY CRYSTAL SHOP ACTUALLY STANDS FOR

We became determined to understand and educate. To be affordable. To have a place in the market that actually helps people rather than just selling to them. This brand is built on four things: affordable pricing, ethical sourcing, transparency, and community education. That’s not a tagline—it’s a promise. I want you to know where your crystals come from. I want you to understand what you’re buying and why it matters. And I want you to be able to afford it without choosing between a piece of amethyst and your groceries.

I wanted to provide a space free from bias—free for the community to know, to learn, and to make informed decisions. That’s what Crazy Crystal Shop is. That’s what it’s always been, even when it was just necklaces on a folding table.

Crazy Crystal Shop is now legally registered as Crazy Crusades LLC, based out of Eagle Rock, California. We’ve got a website, a growing product line of handcrafted crystal jewelry, and a sister venture called Stones & Sips that brings crystal culture and craft beverages together at pop-up events. It’s bigger than where it started—but that energy? That hustle? The same kid who couldn’t get hired at sixteen? That’s still the foundation.

WHAT’S NEXT

I’m still a student at Cal State LA, still working, still grinding. But the vision keeps expanding. More products, more community events, more ways to bring people into this world and show them that crystals aren’t just pretty rocks—they’re history, they’re culture, and they deserve to be understood.

If you’re reading this and you’ve been here since the Inglewood days—thank you. And if you’re just finding us now—welcome. You’re right on time.

— AJ, Founder of Crazy Crystal Shop