February is Black History Month and is the perfect opportunity to celebrate and support black owned businesses. Shuup has gathered several resources including how to find new black-owned e-commerce businesses, our top 5 Black-owned businesses to shop in 2022, and resources for black entrepreneurs to find funding and other support.
Finding and Supporting Black-owned Businesses
We’ve pulled together a few of our favorite lists of black owned businesses from across the web. Use these resources to find anything from health and beauty to art and food.
- Privy released a list of 50 black-owned e-commerce brands in June 2020. Some of the key brands to note are PUR Home, Nubian Skin, and The Lip Bar.
- ShipBob shared an article on How to Support Black-owned E-commerce Businesses and highlights several businesses. ShipBob even features Chane the Rapper’s e-commerce business. This article also offers a list of resources to help individuals find black-owned e-commerce brands (there are 500+ brands within all of the combined resources). Additionally, the article offers a list of reputable places to donate to that defend equal rights.
- NYmag published a list of 180 Black-owned Businesses to Support. What is helpful about this list, is that it is broken up by category. The categories include beauty, bookstores, clothing and accessories, food and drink, fitness, home décor, and gift shops. The article features HarperIman Dolls—a marketplace dedicated to increasing representation in the doll industry.
Finally, if you wanted to shop black-owned businesses, but don’t know what you are looking for, try shopping WeBuyBlack. This e-commerce website has an array of every day products such as toothbrushes, pet accessories, and cleaning supplies.
5 Black-owned Businesses to Shop in 2022
Shuup found these 5 amazing black-owned businesses were ones to look out for in 2022.
Nappstar & Fashion Dreads
Nappstar is the trailblazing brand focused exclusively on locs, with over 10 years of experience in the loc industry. NappStar has expanded its brand from only providing salon services to now also having a strong online e-commerce platform, Fashion Dreads, that sells loc extensions, loc products and styling tools. Nappstar’s mission is to provide everything someone will need for their loc journey. Nappstar love locs!
Checkout Nappstar’s website here and Fashion Dread’s website here. Follow Nappstar on Facebook, Instagram, and Tik Tok and Fashion Dreads on Facebook, Instagram, and Tik Tok.
Shuup is proud to partner with Nappstar on their upcoming launch of their new multi-stylist e-commerce site!
Black Girl Sunscreen
Shontay Lundy created Black Girl Sunscreen to fill the gap for women of color to have a sunscreen brand that caters exclusively to them.
Check out their website here, and follow Black Girl Sunscreen on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter.
Healthy Roots Dolls
Yelitsa Jean-Charles, the founder of Healthy Roots Dolls, never had a doll that looked like her growing up and wanted to make sure the next generation did. She decided to take this doll one-step further than her competitors and created an educational curl experience for young girls and boys. Her doll, Zoe, has real curls that allow the doll owner to practice and learn about curl care.
Check out their website here and read through some of their customer-raving reviews.
Bolé Road Textiles
Interior designer, Hana Getachew, started Bolé Road Textiles to merge her career with her love for Ethiopian handwoven fabrics. All of their products are handwoven in Ethiopia. The website features everything from home decór to curtains and pillows.
Kahmune
Jamela Acheampong ran into a problem in which she could not find a nude pump that matched her skin tone. That is when Jamela founded Kahmune—a luxury line of footware that comes in many different nude shades and styles. Kahmune offers leather and suede options and even offers a find your nude option to help you select the shoes closest to your skin color.
Check out their website here, and follow them on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and LinkedIn.
Resources for Black-owned Businesses
Here are just a few of the marketing, funding, and networking resources available in the U.S.
Marketing & Business: Apply Business, marketing and tech makeovers by Comcast Rize
Funding:
- Coalition to Back Black Businesses — spearheaded by American Express, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation, the National Black Chamber of Commerce, National Business League, U.S. Black Chambers and Walker’s Legacy — aims to provide $10 million in grants, training and resources to Black-owned businesses through 2023.
- Backstage Capitalis a venture capital fund that invests in women, people of color and the LGBTQ community. Its Entrepreneur Investment applications are viewed on a rolling basis.
- Lemon-AID Foundation—Marcus and Bobbi Lemonis created the Lemon-AID foundation to provide greater opportunities to women and minorities by investing in underserved communities and small businesses. Entrepreneurs will be required to know the ins and outs of their business and be prepared to share numbers and prove why they qualify for Lemon-AID when applying.
Mentorship and Networking:
- The organization Black Founders, established in 2011, aims to “empower entrepreneurs and provide founders with access to advice, mentorship, and funding.”
- National Urban League’s Entrepreneurship Centers are located in 12 cities, including Atlanta, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles and Philadelphia. The organization said these centers provided “13,600 hours of counseling and 25,617 hours of training” to entrepreneurs in 2018.
Find more great resources at CNBC & USA Chamber !
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