I've never worn much jewelry. In fact, most accessories I simply saw as things that bogged me down. And so when I traveled to the tiny Republic of Moldova for the Peace Corps, I didn't bring many accessories. (Who needs earrings for milking cows and saving orphans?)

Little did I know that my work in Moldova would not involve starving children or agriculturally world-saving endeavors, but would be instead include working with pretty dangly earrings that would lead me to an “aha moment” (yes we can all thank Oprah for that one).

When signing up for the Peace Corps, all the provided materials tell you to "manage your expectations" since you don't know what you're getting into when you board that plane to a foreign land. I knew as much about Moldova as one could read on Wikipedia: a former Soviet country that’s cold in the winter, has many rural areas, people speaking mostly Romanian, and an agricultural (and wine!)industry that makes up a large part of their GDP. I had been invited to serve as an Agribusiness and Rural Business Development (ARBD) volunteer, and thoughts of homesteading and farmer's markets and pickling danced in my head. I was going to go makeup free and be a badass farm girl for two years!

But like all great expectations, I managed mine when I was placed in a medium-sized city…where I would be speaking Russian! I arrived in my urban community of 400,000 to find myself in the land of the gorgeous young women with lots of make-up and high heels and pretty much decked to the nines in all forms of pretty dangly things. My mucks, old jeans, and countless worn-out cardigans were quickly losing their appeal if I was ever going to find a way to fit in to my new surroundings.

I did slowly begin to open up to a more girly side of myself in my time there. After a year with my gorgeous sitemate, Laela, who had inspired me with a newfound appreciation of getting glam, I was tricking people left and right; they were thinking I was Russian or Baltic, those fools. I could get on for a few minutes before they would start to ask me where I was from and what the heck I was doing in Moldova. (I had the Russian accent thing down, but that terribly difficult grammar gave me away).

It was around this time that I met Costea. He was a cool, young and handsome Moldovan. On our first date (I suppose you could call it that, though it included me and about five other volunteers who tagged along to check out the situation and help with any translating needs) he told me he had a "supriz" for me. When he handed me a pair of earrings so unique and artsy and something I would never normally buy, I smiled and put them on. "Spasiba bolshoi", I said, batting my eyelashes. I thanked him as he went on to tell me he had handmade them, with his sister, who makes all kinds of fun jewelry as a hobby.

It turned out there were a lot of Moldovans making all kinds of jewelry and accessories that were in the categories of cute, unique, artsy and sometimes flashy. “But where do they sell them?”, I wanted to know. There was an event called Yardsale where artisans would all get together and sell to each other and paying attendees. But other than setting up a Facebook page or by word of mouth there weren't any quick or easy ways to get their products in front of more eyes. And more importantly in front of eyes that could pay far more for the products than people in Moldova, which after all is the poorest country in Europe.

As I got to know Costea, I got to know Alina, his sister, and to see all of her handmade jewelry. I bought over a dozen pairs of earrings to send home as gifts and to take with me on a trip to Sweden for Christmas. Everyone wants something cool and unique from another country, right? She was so happy to have made a sale! I wanted to help her make more sales. My next idea was to introduce Alina to other Peace Corps Volunteers who might want to buy stuff for themselves, their friends and their family back home. It was a success! Alina made more sales in that month selling through me than she ever had. Next I introduced her to the idea of online sales. If my friends and family back home could see all of her items, then they could buy them themselves. Easy. Well, not easy.

First we set up a Facebook page of her products, called Alina G. My mom and my sister could see all of the options and they each "bought" a pair of earrings. This meant that I bought them and my mom put money in my account. You can see the limitations to this model. Short of selling to other people in Moldova who could meet Alina in person to pay her, there was no possibilities in her being able to sell to people that didn't know me and have access to my bank account. So now Alina had views and likes, but she had no way to take people's money. We thought about Western Union but that made no sense for $10 earrings.

Next, we looked into Etsy, DaWanda (the German version of Etsy for Europe), and even eBay. But those sites all required Alina to have a bank account somewhere other than Moldova and a credit card tied to a bank somewhere other than Moldova. This was a problem. Sure, I could have let her set up an account with my bank information but then I would always have to be the middleman. And I couldn't do this for people other than Alina. It didn't seem like a very sustainable or safe model.

The A-ha

It wasn't long after this that I received a forwarded email from Vince Hartman, a former Peace Corps Volunteer, who was looking for collaborators on a project he was working on called ArtZoco. Vince was starting the project in response to his own experience in Peru working with artisans who also hadn't found a way to sell their products to more affluent customers in other parts of the world. We connected since he had hit a real pain point for me and Alina. After talking about his idea for a business model which offered a platform where artisans could sell their goods directly to American customers, I was ready to help!

Vince had used a platform called oDesk in the past to work with contract programmers from overseas. oDesk uses the service Payoneer for getting payments to contractors. And so for now, although costlyservice fees are involved, Payoneer provides a solution for ArtZoco getting the money from the customer in America into the hands of the artisan without a US bank account or credit card. Payoneer's services would transfer the money onto a pre-paid debit card that artisans would need to apply for, their only qualifying factors being a physical address, a passport or national ID number, and a working cell phone. These debit cards could be used at any ATM in the world that accepted MasterCard.

The Challenge

There are a few companies doing similar work as ours - TOM’s Marketplace or Chiapas Bazaar for example. Both of these companies empower artisans by purchasing their products from them and then sell their products online to US consumers. This model does a great job of finding beautiful handmade goods and getting them into our homes and lives. The difference with the ArtZoco model is that the main focus is to allow the artisan to fully manage their own shops. This means they won’t have specialists telling them what will be the most popular items or guaranteeing them a sale. So far we are finding that artisans are motivated to put up items even if they don’t make money in the beginning. And we are betting that they can be taught through tutorials how to take more attractive product photos among other marketing techniques such as attractive pricing and product descriptions and an ideal product assortment. We are working hard to listen to customers on both ends of our model: the global artisan and the US buyer. This is no easy feat when also working to build a platform that performs currently in four languages (English, Spanish, Russian, Romanian) and is easy to use for artisans and attractive for buyers.

We have officially established the business as a for-profit entity, with aims to make it a B Corp. The idea though was very much started to place economic power in the hands of talented people across the world. Americans generally don't realize how lucky we are to have exchange sites like Etsy. If we can bridge the global gap on giving everyone in the world a fair chance at selling what they make, we can give people in the far reaches the opportunity to make a difference in their own communities and to be able to thrive in life, not just survive. (And should I even go into the preservation of traditional arts!? Nah that’ll be another post…)

The website, platform and model are in constant development and tweaking, but one thing is for sure, I am certainly now much happier to throw on a pair of handmade Alina G earrings to freshen-up my look!

Julie Frieswyk (@juliewyn) is a returned Peace Corps Volunteer (Moldova 2011-2013) and co-founder of ArtZoco (@ArtZoco). She is passionate about the connection between entrepreneurship and economic empowerment.