New York City Jewelry Week (NYCJW) recently announced dates for its 2019 weeklong series of events—taking place this year Nov. 18-24 in venues all over the city, including museums, galleries, jewelry boutiques, and private studios.

Furthermore, organizers Bella Neyman and JB Jones have shared exclusively with JCK that the organization has debuted a new online platform, Rolodex, that’s designed to heighten exposure for emerging jewelry designers and brands. The platform lives on the nycjewelryweek.com, under its own tab. 

“We had a lot of either young, new, or emerging designers, artists, and makers reach out to us before and after [2018’s] NYCJW about how to participate in the week,” says Jones. “And while we are actively seeking partnerships…that will help include these artists and designers in projects during NYCJW, we saw a need for a more accessible platform. We really see NYCJW as a vehicle to tell the full story of jewelry and jewelers in NYC, from the humble beginnings of dreamers to luxury brands with historic legacies.”

The simple, well-designed platform debuted this morning with spotlights on designers and indie brands previously curated by NYCJW for its One for the Future program: Angely Martinez, Liz Leupold, Mando Bartlett, Taisha Carrington, Ada Chen, Maya Rose Weiss, Meiyi Yang, Michelle Yun, Sasha Nixon, Andrea Rosales-Balcarcel, and Jean Prounis.

For brands working with NYCJW, the platform introduces a low-stress public relations element to the partnership. Designers fill out an application and pay a small fee—starting at $175 for one year—to be included on Rolodex, which puts them on the site as well as in NYCJW’s Instagram feed and email blasts. (The organization is offering tiers “for exposure to our market,” says Jones, “because we want to be able to develop room to grow with these brands.”)

The site allows designers to update their own pages and include links and info about their work, wisely leaving each brand to story-tell in its own way. 

“We want NYCJW to be the hub of discovering new talent for businesses as well as consumers,” says Jones. “Rolodex…is very simple now, but we have big dreams for making it a very interactive place of discovery for all types of jewelry!”

Jones adds that throughout the first NYCJW last year, it became clear that “our audience’s number one interest in attending NYCJW was discovering new talent. The Rolodex allows us to offer a platform for that discovery all year. We hope that we can see young designers on Rolodex eventually become participants during NYCJW. And we hope this platform allows us to discover and create more opportunities for that to happen.”

Top: Earrings by Prounis Jewelry, one of the indie brands featured on Rolodex (image via: @prounisjewelry)

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