POP-UP SHOP FEATURES BLACK WOMEN’S FIRMS

Small businesses get chance to shine at weekend event

Last year, as Tierra Smith got to work at her new media company, Wins for Black Girls, a pattern quickly emerged: more and more Black women in Houston had started businesses during the pandemic, and they needed a platform.

To serve them, she created Black Women Marketplace, a pop-up market for Black women with retail businesses. This weekend Smith will host a holiday market featuring 20 Black woman-owned vendors at a Black woman-owned event space near downtown Houston.

The market runs from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday at Elevate Experiences, at 1919 North Main. Shops will be selling items including clothing, candles, beauty products and art.

More shoppers have looked to buy from

Black-owned businesses as a way to contribute to the Black community after George Floyd’s death, Smith said.

“This gives them an opportunity,” she said.

Smith, a former journalist, started Wins for Black Girls in 2019 as a way to tell positive stories about Black women. She started a newsletter that gained traction during the early months of the pandemic as she learned about more and more Black women opening their own businesses.

The sudden unpredictability of the job market during the pandemic accelerated the wave of Black-owned small businesses, she said. Opening businesses gave the entrepreneurs something they could fall back on if they lost a job — a kind of financial stability for themselves and their families.

“A lot of them are trying to change generational wealth in their families by doing this,” she said.

More of these women were also working from home during the pandemic, affording them more time to focus on their new businesses, Smith said. They took steps such as creating and sourcing new products, building marketing plans and taking entrepreneurship courses, she said.

Smith hopes the market helps connect the new businesses with customers looking for last-minute gifts as well as those who have set aside money to buy from Blackowned businesses during the holidays.

“It’s feeding this new generation of Black-owned business,” she said. “It really starts here.”

Mark Mulligan / Staff photographer Tierra Smith, who started a new media company called Wins for Black Girls, is hosting a pop-up market called Black Women Marketplace that will be holding a holiday market this weekend.