Black Businesses Need More Than Retail Activism to Survive
Buoyed by the “Buy Black” movement, entrepreneurs say they need capital and financial advising to keep the momentum going.
Product Junkie founder Amaya Smith at Brown Beauty Co-Op in Washington, D.C., on June 22.
Photographer: Cheriss May/Bloomberg
The Brown Beauty Co-Op in Washington, D.C., is seeing a spike in demand from the Buy Black movement, but its owners, Kimberly Smith and Amaya Smith, no relation, are hesitant to hire new employees.
Interest in the racial justice that got customers buying Black in the first place could die down and the business is still recovering from previous slow months. As the co-owners plot the weeks and months ahead, they’re confronted with a tricky calculus: how to make a business kept afloat, in part, by social activism sustainable in the long-term — during a pandemic and a recession, no less.