Like a ‘Black Etsy’: Holiday market moving online
At Just Be’s For the Culture holiday market last year, tables were stocked with handmade soaps and wide silver bracelets. Vendors sold denim jackets and original art, ceramic dishes and Tshirts emblazoned with the words: “Dope Black women, may we know them, may we be them, may we raise them.”
“We know as Black businesses we struggle to have access to space,” said Hope Lehman, one of the cofounders of the market and Just Be, a networking group for Black women business owners in the Bay Area. “Last year was our biggest year yet.”
Over two days in 2019, the event took over the Impact Hub workspace (now called Evolve) in Uptown Oakland, filling the brickwalled room with booths from Black women entrepreneurs, who made $45,000 in collective sales. This year, the fifth edition, the market that’s all about connection and community was expected to be even bigger. But gathering dozens of makers and designers into a single space — let alone shoppers — during a pandemic is off the table. So Lehman and her partners, Kamilah Richardson and Marisol Catchings, moved the market online.
Friday and Saturday, For the Culture market, cohosted with Runway, will take place virtually with a range of events complementing the digital commerce. The schedule includes Meet the Maker talks, business workshops and a Saturday night dance party livestreamed over Zoom, all accessible to ticket holders ($20$50); browsing the marketplace is free with RSVP. Shoppers can buy Natty Belle coats handmade in San Francisco with mud cloth dyed and painted in Mali, sterling silver earrings from Oakland artist Karen Smith, fresh pies from Pietisserie and items from
more than 40 other Black women vendors all on the same website and with a single cart.
“Our reference point these days is Black Etsy,” Lehman said.
And it’s not just the holiday market that Just Be’s founders are reconsidering due to the coronavirus.
“Now we’re thinking deeply about, how do we continue to grow our community and support our community that we’ve been connected to online?” Lehman said.
While the death of George Floyd this summer ignited one of the largest protest movements in U.S. history, Just Be was born out of another summer marked by the killing of Black men by police. It was 2016, and on July 5 of that year, two police officers shot Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, La. The next day, Philando Castile was shot and killed during a traffic stop in Minnesota.
“The catalyst was just that it was a really tough summer and year,” Lehman said.
An elder gathered a group of Black women business owners to reflect on what they could do to support each other and the community.
“The first thing we did was found the market,” Lehman said.
At the time, she added, Black makers weren’t being admitted as widely to some of the larger craft fairs, where there is a jury process for vendor admission and sellers can make as much as $10,000 or $20,000 in a single weekend.
At many of those fairs, there “will be a pastel, lightcolor aesthetic,” Lehman says. “I’ll shop it myself but, dang, can we have a different vibe for Black women and Black businesses?”
For the Culture offered an alternative.
“We tried to create our own space,” Lehman says. “We can have our own community and aesthetic.”
Over the past four years, For the Culture has grown, and the bigname markets have grown more inclusive. Just Be has teamed up with West Coast Craft, and the eBay Foundation and Square have signed on as sponsors of this year’s market. Along with aiming for $100,000 in collective sales over two days, Just Be is also in the process of fundraising $120,000 for the organization.
With the pandemic hurting so many small businesses, the group’s mission to support Black women entrepreneurs is more vital than ever. According to a study by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, roughly 41% of Blackowned enterprises shuttered during the early months of the pandemic.
“We talk a lot about building a solidarity economy that really uplifts Black folks,” Lehman said.
The goal of the market is to increase Black entrepreneurs’ access to capital and to help people shift their holiday shopping away from the bigbox retail outfits and Amazon.
“Could you just move a small piece of that to us?” Lehman said. “We’re just asking for some access.”