About Us

How it started

Green Tree Jewelry started in 2010 with an idea and a family willing to run with it.

Lance Nybye Jr. had cut a few pairs of wooden earrings and figured he'd try selling them at the farmers market in Ocean Beach. They sold out. That wasn't a plan — it was a Saturday. But it said something: nobody was making this, and people wanted it.

So Lance, his mom and his dad went the way the family knew — wholesale, through trade shows. Their first was the Las Vegas Gift and Souvenir Show that same year. Day one was slow. Day two, worse. So Lance started handing earrings to people walking by, just to hear what they thought. By the end of the show the booth had paid for itself and the feedback had filled a notebook. The next six months went to turning that notebook into the earrings you see today.

What they're made of

Wood — thin layers of it, built up until a pair is strong enough to last and light enough that people forget they're wearing it. The findings are hypoallergenic silver-plated stainless steel, kind to sensitive ears.

The wood comes from a mill that's been running for over a hundred years. They own their land and replant every tree they take down. All of it is FSC-certified, and our earring cards are 90% recycled. And nothing we make ever rides a shipping container across an ocean — it's cut, finished and packed here, and it ships from here. Being made in the USA is one of the most underrated eco-friendly things a product can be.

Where the designs come from

From the people selling them. We spend a lot of time at trade shows listening — what's moving for a shop, what their customers keep asking for. A store tells us their town wants a local wildflower, and a few weeks later it's a pair of earrings. The rest comes from our people, and the nature we're surrounded by.

Fragile X

In the last few years, every product we make has carried one more thing: Fragile X awareness. Fragile X is the leading inherited cause of autism and intellectual disability worldwide, and 1 in 151 women are carriers — most without knowing it. Our son Shawn is the reason we started paying attention.

We're an awareness brand, not a charity. What we do is put the name where people will see it. Somebody asks, "Fragile what?" — and that question is the whole point. Learn about Fragile X →

Sixteen years on, it's still a family company, still one shop in San Diego, still a pair of earrings that started as an idea on a Saturday. If you've ever worn a pair, or sold one, or asked somebody what "Fragile what?" meant — thank you. That's the whole business, right there.

Want to talk to a person? Call us: (760) 749-7833.