Denver-based jewelry industry friends Nan Lung Palmer and Kelle Phoundoulakis had just returned from the Tucson gem shows in 2020, when the pandemic upended their respective business plans.

Palmer is a merchandising, product development, and inventory management expert who’d worked at Macy’s and David Yurman before founding her own jewelry consulting firm, Facets. And Phoundoulakis is a real estate agent-turned-designer who, together with her husband Manos Phoundoulakis (now the director of business development for the high-end gem dealer Gems of Note), founded an edgy line of jewelry called Gold and Smoke. But during the pandemic, the women found themselves at loose ends.