The title speaks for itself. Only 4.3% of America’s 22.2 million business owners are Black, according to a February 2020 report by the Brookings Institute. Black-owned businesses launch with about a third less capital than their White peers and have difficulty raising private investments from mainstream investment systems. While 7% of White business owners get a loan in their first year of business, only 1% of Black business owners do so. Saddled with the Covid-19 pandemic, Black-owned businesses have been hit the hardest. Black firms have been almost twice as likely to shutter as firms overall. Nearly 50% of Black owned small businesses have fallen. Only twenty percent of the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans under the federally legislated CARES ACT established in March 2020 went to areas that had the highest concentration of Black-owned businesses. No surprise here–it was administrated by the SBA and banks who immediately went to their bigger, more profitable business customers and they are not located in underserved communities!
Shop Black Enterpris® will premiere on the SORC® Radio Network and will be the first and only shopping network broadcast on radio with live streaming and recorded video with celebrity guest hosts and member merchants of Shop Black Enterprise® in a daily two-hour format. The show will feature shopping specials, music, interviews with small Black business members, special guest appearances, contests, free merchandise and more.
The Black Businesses Matter LIVE AID Concert™ will be produced by Shop Black Enterprise™ (SBE™), the premier shopping network for small/medium Black/Minority owned businesses. SBE’s™ mission is to advocate for small/medium Black/Minority businesses and start-ups making SBE™ a cooperative not just a competitive place for merchants to succeed. SBE™ wants to help to level the playing field for Black/Minority small/medium businesses to favorably compete with non-minority businesses though access to unimaginable customer markets and integrated Artificial Intelligence platforms to drive business efficiency, customer loyalty, sales, sustainability and long term growth, increasing access to Black/Minority owned banks and financial institutions. Substantial money is needed to bring back, sustain, grow and fund new Back/Minority entrepreneurial ventures.
It all starts here: Commerce meets Civil Rights. What is needed is substantial capital from the proposed Black Businesses Matter LIVE AID Concert™ to support and encourage Black/Minority entrepreneurship through Shop Black Enterprise® a Merchant Cooperative Association bringing Black/Minority entrepreneurs into a more protective nurturing environment as a cooperative member of Shop Black Enterprise.™ To be able to provide immediate critical management tools, needed access to capital for expansion or to fend off unanticipated financial headwinds, the availability of zero interest loans is critical. To this end, Shop Black Enterprise® will create a trust fund for the benefit of all merchant members.
Proceeds from the concert will go to a qualified 501(c)(3) charitable foundation within Shop Black Enterprise™ to offer zero interest financial assistance to new Black and Minority startups and entrepreneurial ventures (in the early stages of their business) within underserved communities and to provide shelter for your enterprise from unanticipated financial adversity or for expansion.