A hundred years, four generations, one bench.
Before there was a store there was a motorcycle. Arnold Melby rode it around Klamath Falls, Oregon, selling pocket watches to Norwegian lumberjacks years before he ever had a shopfront of his own. What follows is how that turned into the shop on Clark Avenue, told the way the family has always told it.
From the store’s own wall, alongside the gold-leaf sign from 109 West Main.
From Bergen to Broadway to Clark Avenue.
The clock outside the shop is the same clock in our logo. Mark Melby moved it, and the store, out to Orcutt in 2000. Everything before that happened first in Minnesota, then Oregon, then Lompoc, then Santa Maria.
1870s
Stefanus Melby sails from Bergen, Norway aboard the ship America and settles in St. Paul, Minnesota, where he works as a tailor.
1894
His firstborn, Arnold M. Melby, is born on 18 March.
1906
Stefanus dies in a flu epidemic. Arnold, the oldest survivor, helps his mother support the family. In Crookston, Minnesota he becomes an apprentice watchmaker while still at school.
1916
Arnold leaves for Klamath Falls, Oregon, repairing watches for a jeweler and selling pocket watches to Norwegian lumberjacks from a motorcycle.
1922
Arnold opens his own store in Lompoc, trading as Arnold M. Melby Jeweler. His son Donald is born the same year.
1936
After the Depression takes its toll, Arnold moves to Santa Maria and buys a defunct jewelry store for ten dollars at 116 North Broadway. It has showcases but no inventory, so he starts with nothing.
1943
He buys H.C. Corey's store at 109 West Main. The gold-leaf sign from that shopfront still hangs on our wall.
1945
Donald joins the business after two and a half years in the Air Corps flying C-47s. He marries Joyce Jensen the following year.
1950
The store expands next door into a former paint store, doubling the floor to two thousand square feet. The new room becomes the Sterling Silver Room.
1960
A second expansion, into a former fabric store, becomes The Gift Shop.
1975
Mark Melby begins his career with Melby's. He later becomes president.
2000
Mark moves the store, and the clock, out to Clark Avenue in Orcutt, where both stand today.
Four generations, still at the bench.
Nobody here started last year. The people who run the shop today started in 1975, 1978, 1988 and 2012, which means the person who looks at your ring or your watch has usually been doing it for decades.
Mark Melby
President · since 1975
Tony Guzman
Master goldsmith · since 1978
Aaron Sturges-Melby
Manager · since 1988
Alex Melby
Melby's · since 2012
None of the photographs on this page are labeled with a name. Four people work the floor and the bench on any given day, and we would rather leave a face unnamed than put the wrong name next to it.