Babs Noelle: Prospera’s 2013 Woman Entrepreneur | Alara Jewelry

the Alara jewelry concept actually sprang from my response to an industry-wide survey that came out in 1995 and it was a six-month long survey where they interviewed numerous people and consumers who had purchased jewelry in the previous six months and it was determined that shopping for jewelry was considered about as pleasurable as getting a root canal that was what made me say that's gotta stop because people tended to have a universally bad experience going jewelry shopping and so I said well then obviously we got to get rid of all this stuff that's universal we need to just do things in a different way and that is where the whole alara concept came from having different jewelry presented in a different way in a different type of store with a sense of humor but not to say without with a lack of knowledge and individuality is something that is very much celebrated in my store it's celebrated through obviously through jewelry design I'm very outside-of-the-box thinker in terms of jewelry design but that extends to pretty much everything else I do how the how we you know set up the store without physical barriers that are very typical in a jewelry store where the customers on one side of the cases you are on the other side of the cases and oh this is all ours and none of it's yours and people feel unworthy and so there's a psychological barrier there and I like we have an all female staff that is not mandated that just happens to be what it is but we're all very different from one another so I really try to find strength in our differences which allows us to extend out to the public saying your differences are your strengths and here let us help you find an unusual piece of jewelry something you've never seen before something you might not necessarily be immediately comfortable with because it's unusual but let's help celebrate you and let's help you celebrate the person you might be getting this for we have an exceptionally strong downtown area here and I think a lot of people who are from this area or who have been here for a long time don't realize how special our downtown is maybe until they start traveling and I got involved with the DBA early on I've been the president I think for seven years and so that is a two-way street I get to learn a lot from my fellow entrepreneurs downtown but I also it really is a give-and-take I really try to give back to downtown and serve downtown but I also get to learn a lot from people who have been here a lot longer than me one of the things I like to do is to use my abilities with jewelry design to benefit local area nonprofits and so I will specifically design a piece of jewelry or a little series collection of jewelry that is an ongoing fundraiser for a specific nonprofit so for instance there are thrive charms that benefit thrive and we got together and we we did that to coincide with their renaming of their organization and it's been an ongoing fundraiser for them these little charms that say thrive on them the impetus for forming women who whine was really twofold one was to provide a social networking opportunity for women in Bozeman who might not otherwise meet each other and adding this spin of raising funds for nonprofits to a rather fun environment and on the flip side it was that I knew that I was experiencing ways to go to fundraising events here in town but they were kind of pricey and I knew that there were a lot of women who were younger than me or maybe in a different station or place in life where that might not be possible for them donating a lot of time might not also not be possible for them but maybe donating a little bit of money each month and getting out of the house in you know in the process would be a good way to go about things so I looked at it as a multiple win situation. My team is my work family they are my family so I i try to thank them all the time but now's a good time to do that as well and again the people of Bozeman thanks for letting me in