Steve Marroni
pennlive.com
WWR Article Summary (tl;dr) Steve Marroni speaks with several Black business owners in Pennsylvania over the struggles they have faced and continue to face during the pandemic.
Harrisburg
Amma Johnson has always been an artist. Being an entrepreneur was something she picked up along the way.
“It’s my little girl’s dream to be a fashion designer,” she said from her Amma Jo brand Strawberry Square showroom recently. “I started in 2014 with just one handbag and $100.”
Things were going well and her business was growing as she sold her designer handbags, decorated with her original, digital artwork, in 17 states.
Then, 2020 happened.
“That was obviously very, very tough for us,” she said. “We had to close our retail showroom.”
The lockdown of the coronavirus meant few stores were open and most shoppers stayed home.
But Johnson, like so many other business owners, learned how to “pivot.” That became more than a keyword for business owners. It meant survival.
The coronavirus pandemic was a challenge for all small businesses, but particularly minority-owned businesses, which in general were hardest hit and already at a disadvantage for a variety of reasons, such as lack of access to capital, lack of established mentorship relationships, and fewer overall business opportunities.
“It’s really about relationships,” said David Dix, owner of Luminous Strategies and co-founder of the new PA Chamber for Black Owned Business. “If you don’t know your banker, he’s less likely to call you back.”
A year ago, PennLive spoke to Johnson, Dix and a number of other Black business owners about their struggles and triumphs during the pandemic.
With vaccinations in people’s arms and the country making a return to normalcy, things appear to be getting better, but the pandemic did lead to changes. And many of the same inequities remain.
New and old challenges
The coronavirus pandemic disproportionally hurt Black-owned businesses and brought to light inequities that have existed for a long time.
In 2020, Black business ownership rates dropped 41 percent between February and April 2020, the largest rate of any racial group, according to the US House Committee on Small Businesses. An April 2020 study by the University of California, Santa Cruz, produced similar findings that more than 40 percent of Black business owners said they weren’t working, compared with 17 percent of white-owned businesses.
The coronavirus had proven to be more than twice as deadly for people of color under the age of 65, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 30 percent of people of color who contracted COVID-19 died, compared to 13 percent of white Americans, the CDC found.
A disproportionate number of Black-owned businesses are located in industries and geographic areas hardest hit by the pandemic.
And Black-owned businesses found it difficult to get help from federal Paycheck Protection Program, designed to throw a lifeline to small businesses, the Center for Responsible Lending found. The program required business owners to apply for aid through banks or credit unions, but during the five years preceding the pandemic, only 31 percent of Black-owned businesses obtained loans from banks or credit unions. Without existing banking relationships, many struck out when they sought help.
“When we look at the end of the year of 2020, a lot of businesses didn’t survive,” Dix said. “A lot of businesses didn’t have access to PPP. A lot of businesses didn’t gain those very critical small-business grants that they needed.”
That’s when he realized that Black-owned businesses needed to do something different. The pandemic showed that many of those who worked together thrived.
So Dix and his wife and fellow entrepreneur, Marcia Perry Dix, decided to form the new PA Chamber for Black Owned Business, or PACBOB.
“We were talking about the Black-business infrastructure and the pandemic of COVID and, as the year is rounding out, it’s clear that we didn’t do that well,” Dix said. “There are many businesses that were lost, and it was going to take a real group and collaborative effort to build an infrastructure necessary to support these businesses in the future in the event of a pandemic or in the event of there being opportunities available.”
While there are regional organizations, such as the African-American Chamber of Commerce for Central PA, Dix saw the need for a statewide group to bring everyone together, advocate at the state level and to fill in the gaps where opportunities and programs may be missing.
One of the biggest issues facing Black entrepreneurs is lack of access to capital, he said. That’s why the new chamber is bringing in partners who have experience working with Black-owned businesses and directing them to resources and where they can get funds. They also have partners in the PA Chamber of Business and Industry, further expanding their reach with access to 12,000 other businesses.
But the chamber is still forming, and through the summer, Dix and the initial members of the chamber will be figuring out exactly what role they need to play, what gaps need to be filled in and how they can best level the playing field.
One thing is for sure, though. Collaboration is key, Dix said. So is the entrepreneurial spirit.
And key to survival seems to be the ability to pivot.
“It’s vitally important,” Dix said.
Just look at Stefan Hawkins.
The pivot
Hawkins is the owner of House of Vegans, central Pennsylvania’s first Black-owned vegan restaurant.
The brand-new Harrisburg restaurant was gaining popularity and growing a base of happy diners, but when the pandemic struck, he lost 60 to 75 percent of his business because no one was dining out. Hawkins was forced to close temporarily.
But he pivoted and applied his skills, ingenuity and talents in another direction.
In the middle of the pandemic, Hawkins launched not just one, but two new businesses.
He opened Good Brotha’s Book Café in January, and he also launched Fifth Acres Coffee, the first Black-owned coffee brand in Pennsylvania, which he said will be on the shelves of Giant and Karn’s grocery stores soon.
“I did all this during the pandemic,” he said. “It was networking, talking, meeting good people who want to help you when they believe in you, your brand and what you can do.”
He did it on his own, but he said an organization like PACBOB would be a big help to find grants and funding, had it existed when he was struggling.
He said he’s glad it’s here now.
“Something like PACBOB is crucial for businesses like me because I wasn’t able to find any type of funding to keep my establishment open,” he said.
Hawkins noted he was not eligible for some of the loans that were available during the pandemic because House of Vegans opened after the cutoff date for those programs, and so was unable to show the required tax documents from the previous year.
The resource that seemed to be missing most during his ups and downs during the pandemic was extra funding. But he pushed on.
“It was just straight networking and people believing in the brand and believing in what I’m trying to build,” he said.
Business is picking up now, and with more and more people dining out, he hopes to reopen his vegan restaurant soon.
With two new businesses, it’s still too soon to say if Hawkins has been successful, but he said he is optimistic.
“I wouldn’t call it a success story just yet because I had to close a business,” he said. “I opened up in a pandemic and I closed in a pandemic. I would say I took the opportunity and I took the risks all at the same time. But I can say I’m a success in the sense that I wasn’t scared and I didn’t allow the pandemic to stop me or hinder me from going full entrepreneur.”
The future is bright for 2022 he said, with Good Brotha’s, his coffee brand and the possibility of House of Vegans reopening, as well as a possible second location for Good Brotha’s.
Making good out of a bad situation
While many have struggled during the pandemic, Shariah Brown was one of the many success stories.
She owns the Personal Touch Professional Cleaning Service and is chair of the African American Chamber of Commerce of Central Pennsylvania.
She’s also an advisor to the new PACBOB group, and said the two groups, and others across the state, will work well together to offer more services and help business owners find the capital they need.
“It’s something that is much needed in this area so that we can collaborate and have a larger reach,” she said. “We’re stronger together.”
In the case of her own business, which offers construction-cleaning services, Brown said the first two weeks of the pandemic completely shut down the construction industry.
“A lot of individuals in our industry were talking about what they were going to do,” she said.
Again, the answer was to pivot. Her own company switched its focus from construction cleaning to sterilization, and took on the job of sterilizing the state Capitol.
“I’m eternally grateful because we stayed afloat during those months, providing those services to businesses that needed sterilization services, which was also in our wheelhouse,” she said.
She saw a lot of other business owners pivoting. The chamber held courses on subjects like e-commerce to help them along the way.
“Some people were challenged with access to capital, but one of the lessons I learned was that we, as a people, have grit, we can survive,” she said. “I saw many businesses pivot and saw them surviving and thriving.”
There are other businesses that are going to need support, though, and she said PACBOB is an amazing opportunity to collaborate, realize the needs of small businesses in Pennsylvania and get them the support, education and resources they need.
From artist to entrepreneur to community supporter
Amma Johnson’s showroom in Strawberry Square is a bright, friendly, colorful shop that draws people in for her designs.
“This is what our brand is all about,” she said. “Fun and funky, color and culture, all mixed into one.”
She’s open for business, but, during the pandemic, she had to change on the fly to stay that way, particularly when no one was going to retail stores.
In the initial days of the pandemic, she saw there was a need for face masks, so Johnson began manufacturing masks with her fun designs.
But seeing the mask shortage early on and realizing people were in need of them, she made masks that were more affordable, and she even gave away about 2,000 of them, paying for them from the proceeds of her designer masks.
“We wanted to survive but also give back to the community, as well,” she said. “There was just such a need for it.”
And though no one was buying her handbags at stores, the online wholesale part of her business picked up like never before, she said. With stores closed everywhere, wholesalers bought up many of her handbags, face masks and accessories to keep their online stores going, she said.
Selling wholesale and online really saved her business, she said.
For many businesses, right now may be the most difficult time, she said. Last year, there were many assistance programs one could plug into. Many of those have gone away. And the landscape of retail has changed.
“Now, you’re trying to figure out how to stay open in a world that is completely different,” she said. “Things are not going back to the way they used to be.”
That’s where she had to pivot again. She found things have been slow in her downtown Harrisburg location due to a lack of foot traffic while many state employees were working from home, so she opened a second showroom in the Colonial Park Mall.
“People are starting to come out again, and they want to walk around and look around,” she said. “As a small brand, to be honest with you, there’s just no way in the past I would have been able to afford being in the mall. But now, because things are changing, a lot of the bigger retailers have gone out, it’s the perfect timing for me.”
It’s been a struggle, but to make a living doing what you love and pursuing your art is never easy.
“You have to operate with the mindset that absolutely nobody owes you anything,” Johnson said. “I don’t wake up in the morning to not win. I wake up in the morning to find ways to work.”
Creativity can only last so long
Hardship is nothing new to the owners of Queen’s BBQ and Southern Cuisine.
A decade ago, the couple endured homelessness following Tropical Storm Lee. Now they are laser-focused on keeping their business at 912 N. 3rd St. in Harrisburg open. They said they grind away every day because they love to serve their customers.
COVID-19 mitigation efforts remain in place at their business, as they are concerned about the rapid pace of the new delta variant spreading. They long for the day when customers can enter their small business as though walking into their mom’s kitchen. But until the virus runs its course, they are not allowing anyone into their space.
“People aren’t thinking all the way to the end,” said Titus Queen. “They are mask-wearing fatigued and fatigued being at home and with social distancing. We are only doing car-side delivery and giving our customers premium products. We are trying to keep people safe.”
Anya Queen agreed.
“We can’t afford to shut down another week, another two weeks, or another day,” she said.
The Queens have been crowdfunding through a Go Fund Me campaign, which has been a slow go.
Food quality is of the utmost importance to them, so they’ve become creative in how they shop for inventory. They’ve been asking customers what they want in order to alleviate waste.
However, things like utility costs and rising prices are even greater concerns.
“The only thing we haven’t seen go up is the price of bottled water at Sam’s Club,” Anya said. “Everything else has doubled in price. After opening in January, we still haven’t qualified for any loans or support.”
A bright future?
It’s been a rough year, and for many, it still is.
But others have found ways to succeed and to keep going.
Dix is hopeful that the new chamber will be a connection to give everyone a better chance of succeeding.
And after a difficult year, and despite the continuing struggles and the inequity that remains, the future looks tremendously bright, said Dix, as the new chamber gets underway to take on these challenges.
“The collaboration, the spirit, the energy is there to make this a success,” he said.
PennLive reporter Jana Benscoter contributed to this report.
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
