According to Forbes Magazine, the United States has about 2.5 million Black-owned businesses. While the vast majority are sole owners or small enterprises, regional achievements and national objectives are becoming increasingly prevalent.
These Black-owned businesses and owners are selling cosmetics, clothes, books, cars, and financial products, to part because they lack access to venture funding, fewer sell health care or consumer technology goods.
There are many online applications and directories to help you learn more about the Black market, like The Black Woman Directory, Etsy’s Black Owned Stores, Black Enterprise Top 100 List, Bank Black List, and Black Restaurants Bon Appetit.
Here are our selections celebrating National Black Business Month for Black-owned businesses:
GOODEE
Established by the designers (and brothers) Byron and Dexter Peart, the B-Corp company is the curator of handmade goods from artisans and brands whose social or environmental missions are high. The brothers themselves also design other products. They divide their time between New York and Montreal showrooms.
Expedition Subsahara
With headquarters outside of St. Louis, this home products and accessories company covers unique, hand-crafted pieces that suit every aesthetic. It is particularly renowned for the colorful and functional wicker baskets.
Black Pepper Paperie
This design studio, founded by Hadiya Williams in Washington, DC and inspires the African diaspora to create wearable ceramics, paper products, and home decor.
Nubian Hueman
Anika Hobbs launched this company to guard artists against around the world for their fashion, design, and home products. It has also recently begun making face masks with traditional kente cloths with retail stores in Washington, D.C., and Baltimore.
The Fuzzy Pineapple
This Boutique, located in Tallahassee, Florida, sells a range of peculiar, colorful clothes and accessories. By contacting the brands, you can also create custom pieces.
Gregory Sylvia
Established by husband and wife Gregory and Terri Sylvia Pope and based in Charlotte, North Carolina, this fashion brand creates luxury leather goods and accessories.
Advent Capital Management
Founder: Tracy Maitland
Headquarters: New York City
Website: adventcap.com
Twitter: @AdventCapital_
Maitland founded the $9 billion investment firm in 1995. It is a specialist in defensive convertible-bond investment strategies designed to help defend against downside while taking most stock market profits.
Advent Convertible & Income (Ticker: AVK) – the publicly listed, closed-end fund of the company is the most natural exposure for institutional investors with no investment minimum. However, its leverage structure carries the most risk. Maitland, the surgeon’s father once worked for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., is primarily owned by 55% of Advent employees.
Brown Capital Management
Founder: Eddie Brown
Headquarters: Baltimore
Website: browncapital.com
One of the most profitable investment companies worldwide has created an average annual return of 12 percent – plus by about twice the Russell 2000 Growth Index since 1992, the flagship Brown Capital’s Small Company Fund. While this fund is closed to investors, Brown Capital has successfully expanded to include international small-cap and mid-cap stocks, which are funds that anyone can buy.
An ex-T. Rowe Price’s portfolio manager, founder Eddie Brown, started the business in 1983. Seventy percent of the fast-growing firm’s workforce is now fully staffed by minorities.
Beauty Bakeries
Founder: Cashmere Nicole Carillo
Headquarters: San Diego
Website: beautybakerie.com
Instagram: @beautybakeriemakeup
Cashmere Nicole founded the Beauty bakery as a new brand of vegan, non-toxic and cruel lipsticks in 2012, a single mother and breast cancer survivor. In 2011. Nicole, who goes to Cashmere Nicole for business, started marketing her long-term lipsticks on Instagram, where she has 1.2 million followers. Beyonce had the nascent brand on its website.
Today, BAKERY has raised 10 million USD, which made Nicole the first black woman to lift this risk through Unilever’s investment arm, The New Voices Fund, and the best black exercise companies like Kenneth Chenault (former CEO of AmEx).
Briogeo
Founder: Nancy Twine
Headquarters: New York City
Website: briogeohair.com
Instagram: @briogeo
Three years after, Twine’s mother died of a car accident at the commodities desk at Goldman Sachs. The tragedy led her to rethink her career trajectory. She spent weekends and nights researching the beauty industry, inspired by her mother, a physician who developed a natural facial crème, and her grandmother.
They taught her how to make products with natural ingredients. In 2014, she started the brand Briogeo for hair care, a brand that intends at customers through hair texture (wavy, oily, dry, thin) and not ethnicity.
It was internationally launched in 2018 and has now been sold worldwide on Sephora shelves and online via the U.K. CultBeauty retailer. Last year, for an undisclosed sum, she sold a minority interest to Drunk Elephant investor VMG.
Esusu
Founders: Abbey Wemimo, Samir Goel
Headquarters: New York City
Website: esusurent.com
Instagram: @myesusu
In 2019, Wemimo and his business partner Goel co-founded Esusu with 30 Nigerian-born social entrepreneurs. The mobile platform saves money, accesses capital, and builds credit for the most part individuals in marginalized communities. Renters usually do not receive credit for making their monthly payments on time, and the Esusu platform has modified this.
In January, it partnered with Equifax to use its rental reporting platform to generate renter credit scores. In May, Esusu launched a fund for those most affected by Covid-19 to rent.
Since then, the fund has raised almost $200,000. The startup expects revenues of $1.2 million this year, with more than 200,000 users.
This list is an excerpt from the vast number of Black-owned businesses in the United States. Look for more forthcoming articles highlighting more deserved brands and enterprises.
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