Danielle Miller at Luprocks.com

Rand at Luprocks.com

Sim­mons Jew­elry Co. at Luprocks.com

If the reces­sion has done one thing, it has piled enough “manure” on the old “it’s-about-me” busi­ness model to bury it. In its place, though, is now fer­tile soil for a new par­a­digm to grow and get a healthy start. Coop­er­a­tion across and between related indus­tries sim­ply makes entre­pre­neur­ial sense; there is power in num­bers that makes play­ing to your strengths a whole lot eas­ier, and far more effec­tive. The part­ner­ship between jew­elry resource Lüp Rocks and fash­ion busi­ness edu­ca­tors Nolcha has recently been made pub­lic, and is def­i­nitely one to watch, if not emulate.

Lüp Rocks, founded by two hard­work­ing net­work­ers, Michelle Orman and Jes­sica Cohen, is an online cos­tume designers/stylist/editor resource for jew­elry (they have also recently added acces­sories, apparel, beauty, and fur­nish­ing to their ros­ter); their mem­bers’ prod­ucts are often seen in pro­duc­tions like Ugly Betty, Cash­mere Mafia, and Gos­sip Girls. Nolcha founded by Kerry Ban­ni­gan is a membership-based site where new fash­ion design­ers can net­work, find sup­port, and seek infor­ma­tion to strengthen their busi­ness posi­tion. There is no fee to become a mem­ber of Nolcha, but each appli­cant is vet­ted for their pro­fes­sional standing.

By work­ing together, each firm hopes to accom­plish more than they might if they con­tin­ued to work inde­pen­dently. “We can drive more traf­fic to both sites and pro­vide a wider range of place­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties for our mem­bers,” explains Orman. “Nolcha can teach our jew­el­ers to become bet­ter busi­ness peo­ple, how to nav­i­gate the fash­ion field, and even get their designs into Fash­ion Week.” This kind of expo­sure for jew­elry design­ers can be highly suc­cess­ful and enables a busi­ness to go from obscu­rity to famous and thriving.