Pop-Up Partnerships

I recently co-conducted (with David Colby) a class on growing your business at the first Design Entrepreneurs NYC class – sponsored by FIT and NYCEDC (New York City Economic Development Corporation).  What a great class and full of positive energy.

One of the subjects we covered was partnerships and joint ventures and how it’s imperative to structure a good operating agreement or contract between the partners/parties.

After the class I got into a discussion with one of the entrepreneurs who described his situation – a case of serial partnerships.  It seems he is often asked to partner with a name fashion brand for one fashion show.  The agreement for that show is that no competitor of the name brand can be mentioned for the duration of the show.  So the partnership, or agreement, lasts for only the duration of the show – three maybe four hours.  I thought, how cool.  A pop-up partnership.  After the show each of the partners goes their separate way.

Of course the startup partner benefits enormously by participating with a famous brand – this increases their exposure, lends credibility to their brand and gives them documentation they can use for promotional purposes. And, perhaps, if you want to stretch it, bragging rights for having been a partner of that designer.  My assumption is that the established brand benefits by introducing a cutting edge new brand to the scene. That’s an amazing win-win.

Even in pop-up partnerships, an eye should be kept on the legal terms of the agreement to make sure everything is spelled out.

Sandra Holtzman teaches CEO 035: Licensing.
She is the author of Lies Startups Tell Themselves to Avoid Marketing.