For too long Back small businesses have had to go it alone–facing the unparalleled threats of institutional racism that have barred Black entrepreneurs from access to capital and AI required to compete on a level playing field. Shop Black Enterprise® is a new exciting merchant cooperative merging the best of the risk reduction of a cooperative association with the benefit of an Association to grow your sales.
How will Shop Black Enterprise dramatically help build and support your business?
Part of our merchant driven model that differentiates us from Amazon, for example, is the complete recognition of the merchant/shopper relationship and transparency of SBE. When you purchase a product on Amazon do you ever remember the merchant that you purchased it from? Amazon owns the shopper and not the merchant. At SBE the merchant always owns the shopper. Amazon also charges the merchant far more than the $59 monthly SBE membership fee. SBE never takes one penny of your sale, 100% belongs to you. You, the merchant owns the customer and not SBE.
Another SBE advantage is our recognition of the importance of scale. What is scale? To get on the radar of banks and the Small Business Association, to become eligible for government contracts and grants to small merchants, there is an unstated annual revenue requirement, a minimum of $250,000. The data confirming this is sobering and paints a daunting picture of African-American entrepreneurship and small business. According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Survey of Business Owners (SBO), which is conducted every five years, over 90 percent of Latino and black firms do not have even one employee other than the owners. One new trend is the proportion of owner-only firms reaching a high of close to 98 percent for the sub-group of African American female-led businesses. When blacks do own a business the return to that business is lower than that of whites and falls well short of closing the racial wealth gap. Businesses with paid employees have a much greater economic impact than those without employees.
The annual sales of businesses without employees are on average only a fraction of the sales of businesses with employees. While there are some firms without employees that are very successful financially, the majority are not. 67.3 percent of firms without employees had annual sales of less than $25,000. This is the issue of scale. Among several ways to achieve scale is through partnership with other merchants in a similar industry. This now means that annual receipts can eclipse the $250,000 and owners can now hire necessary employees bringing new wealth and prosperity to their communities and enlisting community support for their businesses. SBE will provide and a room on our website for each merchant to meet chat and consider partnering with another SBE merchant. We will provide professional business management expertise for consultations and appropriate legal documents to help secure merchant partnerships. Partnering can substantially reduce costs increase profits, build capital for growth and sustainability.
Two hindrances to the success of Black entrepreneurs have been barriers to access for capital and Artificial Intelligence. Artificial Intelligence drives business efficiency and growth. Heretofore, small Black businesses have not had sufficient capital to pay for let alone have access to necessary tools and techniques that fat wallet white small business owners have had creating an unfair competitive advantage for white owned businesses and an uneven playing field for Black entrepreneurs. Through our strategic partner we will provide integrated AI platforms for accounting, sales management, and necessary office tools so when one area of your business plan is populated with data all platforms are simultaneously updated so you can manage high and low product sales and adjust inventory efficiently to control costs, maintain ongoing tax records, and so much more, all at no cost. Business simplification drives sustainability and growth.
Shop Black Enterprise® (SBE) is a combination member cooperative and strategic alliance shopping platform, with 15% of membership fees going to a trust account to serve members of the merchant community for expansion and in times of need by offering zero interest loans. A rotating board of 10 member merchants will adjudicate loan applications from member merchants. The merchant cooperative offers financial stability mitigating risk to banks that are limited to offering traditional financial assistance making our merchant members requiring bank relationships far less risk to the bank and a greater likelihood they will provide SBE merchants with access to capital. In addition members will be offered the very best customer loyalty program featuring SBE Coins (our own cryptocurrency) for future discounts and to apply to future shopper purchases.
Our goal is to have 2,500 merchants and over 100,000 registered shoppers within a year and by the end of year two, 250,000 registered shoppers and 5,000 businesses on SBE.
How will Shop Black Enterprise promote your business to dramatically increase your sales?
Now that we have described how Shop Black Enterprise® will support, build and help protect your business, how will we promote your brand and dramatically increase your sales? First, each merchant member fills out a membership request form. The data drives the creation of your own elegant web-page on our site so shoppers can instantly see your products and/or services at a glance and click on the page to be taken to your own website to shop and to purchase.
Each shopper registers and completes a shopper profile indicating their product preferences, special dates and upcoming events etc. We examine the consumer database regularly and send shoppers to your site for holiday and seasonal shopping events throughout the year. In addition, when you have a sale, and you provide the specific sale and dates two weeks in advance, we send shoppers in your product category an announcement of your sale.
On our home page we feature a different merchant each week in one of our 16 product categories. If you want to have your business to be represented more frequently, we can place your business on the home page for a nominal fee.
In addition, through an alliance with the SORC Radio Network, SBE will have a daily 2-hour radio show streamed live and recorded for shoppers to view anytime of the day. The show will feature 8-10 merchants each day presenting some of their products/services and upcoming sales. The SORC Radio Network will be broadcast throughout North America (Canada and the US) and Mexico to a potential listening/viewing audience of over 30 million shoppers.
