YOU’RE ABOUT TO WALK through one of America’s Coolest Stores with the couple who built it. Derrick and Kayla Pyke gutted a vacant pool supply store in Tampa Palms — a thousand nail holes, two coats of paint, zero interior designers — and turned it into Everglow Jewelry. In five minutes, Derrick walks you through everything: the hydraulic cases that put him on the same side as the customer, the magnetic ring builder where couples play with stones and settings for up to an hour, and the pink fridge that somehow became everybody’s favorite design element. It’s a genuinely fun tour of a store that’s doing things differently — and closing 80% of the customers who walk through the door. Hit play and then, when you’re done, read Everglow Jewelry’s full America’s Coolest Stores profile for judge’s comments, more photos, and the 13-year love story behind the name.
Video Transcript
IMPORTANT NOTE: This transcript was produced with the help of AI and lightly edited for clarity. While we’ve done our best to make it accurate, automated transcription isn’t perfect — you may spot the occasional error, especially with names, industry terms, or moments where people talk over each other. When in doubt, the audio is your friend.
Derrick Pyke: My name is Derek and this is Everglow jewelry in Tampa Palms, Florida. Now before this was Everglow, this was actually a pool supply store that we watched for about a year and a half, seeing different tenants trying to move in, nobody ended up actually sealing the deal. So we were able to come in here and completely renovate the place. This had shelving all over it, about a thousand nail holes. We had to take all of that down, move it all to the back, throw it in a dumpster and put up all of our decorations. We repainted and painted again, and finally have what you’ll see here in just a moment when we show you the inside. But we also chose this space because of the other tenants that are in the building. So we’re right next to a nail salon, a couple of really trendy popular restaurants that bring people in here. And then we have lots of natural sunlight in the area. We have gorgeous palm trees. It’s a little bit off the beaten path. We’re a little bit away from the main road, but people do not mind coming back here. It feels safe, secure, a great spot for a new jewelry store.
[INSTORE STORE TOURS STINGER]
Derrick Pyke: Okay, enough with the outside, I want to show you the inside. As we start, have a customer sitting area here. Sometimes when I get really busy, people will just sit down here and start dreaming of the jewelry that they want to design. We have this pink fridge that’s almost everybody’s favorite design piece of the store. They just love the way it looks and that it matches with everything. I actually found that one. My wife designed pretty much everything else that you see and like in here though. So this is our plant wall. People will take selfies in this area. We have our work bench. This is for watch batteries, appraisals, cleaning jewelry, all that fun stuff. A custom design table. This is where customers, lot of times couples will come in, I’ll show them their 3D printed wax. We’ll sit down, draw it up, create the wax, show them the final product. All of that kind of happens right in here. And then our showcases. Now we pick showcases that open up towards you so that I can actually be on the same side as the customer and we can really just react, be very comfortable with each other rather than me being a salesperson and being on one side and them on the other.
[INSTORE STORE TOURS STINGER]
Derrick Pyke: Bit of the lay of the land here I guess. Finally one of my favorite walls is the geometric gold shapes. This was a lot of fun to put together along with our logo that was actually hand drawn, hand designed by one of our friends that’s an artist. We wanted to break the mold from the traditional jewelry store in a few different ways. One of those ways was our sitting area here. We wanted to create a really comfortable environment that felt like home. So when you’re sitting talking with me about your jewelry designs, you just feel like you’re talking to a friend and not to a jeweler. The second thing that we wanted to do was create, not create, but purchase jewelry cases that actually open upward so I can be on the same side as the customer and we can just bring out jewelry and talk about it rather than feeling like a salesperson and somebody that’s being sold to.
[INSTORE STORE TOURS STINGER]
Derrick Pyke: Alright, now I want to show you my favorite square foot of the entire store. This is our custom ring designer. And the great thing about this is they’re magnetic pieces where people can choose different size and shapes of stones and put it onto different rings. I allow the customer to just sit here and play with this sometimes for half an hour to an hour so they can really build and see exactly what they want. From there, we custom design it. So maybe they like this look, but they want six prongs or maybe they want claw prongs. Maybe they want to put a birthstone in there somewhere. We can do all of that here in store with our custom design process. But this really allows them to get their hands on with an initial piece to see is that close to the look that I want.
[INSTORE STORE TOURS STINGER]
Derrick Pyke: Thank you for coming to our virtual tour of Everglow Jewelry. Before we go, I did just want to introduce you to my wife, Kayla, who not only helped design the store, but also does a lot of the behind the scenes work as well.
Kayla Pyke: I want to say thank you again so much for choosing us to be one of America’s Coolest Stores for 2025. As you can see, our store is definitely a labor of love. We did it together. Everglow has been a key word kind of of our marriage throughout the last 13 years that we’ve been together. It was actually engraved on my first Christmas gift, which was a jewelry box of all things. It was engraved in our engagement ring box and is used throughout our home as well. So just made sense that this would become our brand name as well. So thank you for joining us and celebrating the next chapter of our Everglow. Thanks and take care.
