Prague Charm Bar: how Anna Benešová turned wire jewellery into a hit

Anna Benešová, founder of the Monsterance brand, turned a Prague wire-jewellery studio into a “Charm Bar” where around 1,200 customers a month now make their own jewellery. Her concept sells not just a piece of jewellery but the experience of the creative process itself.

It all began with pliers and wire: Anna has made things by hand since her youth, earned extra money from it from the age of eighteen and ran her first courses. While studying abroad she moved her classes online, and during the pandemic a community of tens of thousands of people from Czechia and other countries grew around them. Her “Weaving Club” is now in its sixth year — every month the members make a new piece of jewellery together.

In spring 2024 Anna opened a studio in Prague, on Myslíkova street, so that the online community could meet in person. But it soon became clear that wire weaving is too narrow a niche, and keeping a studio going on courses alone is not easy. After a search — from classes for children to themes for fantasy fans — she found a format that opens up creativity to a wide audience.

In summer 2025 the Charm Bar opened in central Prague: customers choose from more than 800 pendants and beads, pick up pliers and attach them with small rings to a chain or bracelet. The project was originally called “Charm Bar Tvůj šperk”; today it operates under the brand Charmance. “This is a first encounter with wire; I simply removed the barrier to entry that ordinary weaving creates for some people, because it takes time and precision,” Benešová explains.

From the very beginning she has financed the project from her own revenue: what she earned went back into buying materials and equipping the shop. Attendance grew slowly until last summer, when a video about how the bar works appeared on social media — it has been watched more than 350,000 times. “The video was an accelerator, but above all it showed that we had hit on a concept people intuitively understand and want to experience,” says Anna.

The team did not expect such an influx: they ran short of materials, capacity and staff. Anna had to hire and train people in a hurry, spending 12–14 hours a day in the shop. Today tourists make up the main clientele in summer, and the average bill exceeds one thousand crowns.

The beads for the project are supplied by glassmakers from Jablonec, some of the pendants bearing the brand’s logo are designed by Anna herself, and the rest are ready-made stainless-steel models from suppliers. She checks all the jewellery with a spectrometer to make sure it is genuine stainless steel without harmful metals and that the material meets European requirements. According to her, some samples bought outside her network of suppliers did not meet the standards. The most popular motifs are Prague symbols of her own design, as well as animals, hearts, good-luck charms and food.

Anna’s main goal is to build a company so stable that it can run without her daily involvement. “That is the transition from self-employed to entrepreneur,” she stresses. Along with the shop, the project has launched an online store with a jewellery configurator.