Imagine you’re a fashion designer in Peru. You’ve started to gain real recognition in your home country for your unique and bold designs, and now you’re ready to expand your reach to a bigger audience – namely, the United States. But how do you get traction in a country where you have few contacts and zero name recognition?

Enter the Council of International Fashion Designers (CIFD), a nonprofit association conceived by the founder of Miami Fashion Week, Beth Sobol, that’s designed to help provide emerging fashion designers in foreign markets with access, visibility and opportunity in the United States. CIFD includes members from the Caribbean and Peru, as well as fashion ambassadors from the U.S. and Trinidad. All of these parties are finding inspiration, collaboration and opportunity for co-creation in a single platform: Bamboo Rose House of Fashion.

The first of many houses of its kind, Bamboo Rose House of Fashion is powered by Bamboo Rose Marketplace, B2B digital platform that uses virtual showrooms to allow these designers, who have limited international exposure and footprints, to share their designs with more than 1,000 retailers in the U.S.

Beyond the exposure factor, the partnership provides another important asset to the designer members: speed to market. When you’re an emerging designer from South America, it can be difficult to capture the attention of a retailer in the States. The traditional linear design method simply doesn’t work – you need to showcase your designs far earlier in the process if you want to capture their attention. And linear design doesn’t work for the consumer anymore, either; they see a Fashion Week outfit they love, and they want to buy it – now. Having months between the runway and retail rack can seriously hinder a designer’s ability to sell clothing.

Bamboo Rose House of Fashion empowers designers to connect to the industry in an international fashion marketplace in real time. That means satisfied customers, happy retailers and successful designers. At the end of the day, that’s what Bamboo Rose is all about – building communities that make the retail industry stronger.

House of Fashion is the first of many of its kind. Don’t miss the next announcement from Bamboo Rose – stay connected through Twitter.