Buy Local touted to lift minority firms

$1.7B infusion is projected

The city’s leading minority business group wants Memphis companies to buy more locally, expand the economy and boost firms owned by African-Americans, women and other minorities.

Buy Local B2B (Business to Business) is a strategy that could inject an estimated $17.4 billion a year into the Memphis economy and at least $1.7 billion into minority businesses, said Luke Yancy III, president and chief executive of the Mid-South Minority Business Council Continuum.

Yancy described the program Thursday during the CEO/Presidents Roundtable at the organization’s 2016 Economic Development Forum. He called on executives on the panel, in the audience and at the Greater Memphis Chamber to embrace Buy Local.

Citing a recent survey of business executives, Yancy said MMBC conservatively estimates that Memphis companies are doing 52 percent of their purchasing, or nearly $35 billion a year, outside Memphis. The group’s goal is to get half of that outside spending diverted to Memphis and for minority businesses to pick up nearly 10 percent of the new spending.