 Well, hello, everyone. My name is Joshua. I am the marketplace manager over at in the black. We are so excited today to be doing this presentation for SF public libraries. Again, thank you, Casey, for this opportunity to share what we're up to at in the black with everyone. I want to just go over what our agenda for the day is going to be. And just to set some expectations so we know how we're going to spend this next hour together. We're going to kick it off with some introductions kind of just introducing who on the phone today is from in black or from SF HTC. And then we'll talk a little bit of just about what our mission is at the store. We will speak on the history of the film or because with our store, especially we cannot ignore what we represent and where we're coming from, and also the impact that we're seeing in the neighborhood. We have some future entrepreneurs we would like to showcase such brands like Coco centric and quantities, two of our stars from our program, and then also talking about how we're planning to grow and how to support new businesses as we increase our vendor count. And then lastly, we'll talk about how to support us directly and then leave time at the end for some questions and answers so let's go ahead and jump into introductions. Awesome. So again, my name is Joshua far. I am the marketplace manager over at. The marketplace manager over at in the black, I've been there for about a month and a half now, and it's been truly an incredible opportunity getting to meet not only the neighborhood but work with all of these incredible black businesses here in the I'm going to pass it over to Ed. Good afternoon everyone my name is Edward Moore. I am the grants and technical assistance manager for our small economic club. My primary responsibilities is coordinating all the technical assistance for the businesses that come through our program, as well as overseeing the consultants that provide those services. And I'm extremely excited about being here presenting for you all today. There we go. Hi everybody. I just want to say thank you so much for coming today to our presentation. We're really excited to share a little bit more about what we do it in the black, and I am Gabby or Gabriella I am the program assistant for SFH GC's development team. So I work really closely with all of our entrepreneurs participating in our business development programs, as well as entrepreneurs in the black, creating business development content and all kinds of informational and resources for our businesses. Awesome. Thanks Gabby. All right, let's hop into just a little information about in the black. We see here we have our mission statement as well as a little bit about our mission. We are a creative and entrepreneurial marketplace for black community empowerment, wealth building and prosperity. And what that means is that our focus is on not just being another store, but being a stepping stone for people to be able to go from, you know, having that dream and vision into something larger. In the case of many of our vendors, you know, the going from selling from home to now actually having inventory and talking about all those things teaching these different skill sets so that they can move on and grow into different spaces. I'm going to be looking at another screen while I talk just to make sure I say it correctly but and the black is a creative and entrepreneurial marketplace providing black owned businesses with access to affordable retail space and the historic Fillmore district. I'm a former check classing outlet at the bustling corner of Fillmore and Gary, and the black is carving out a new path focused on black community empowerment, wealth building and prosperity. Black entrepreneurs can engage with black in the black by suddenly using space on a long term basis and via pop ups event activations and selling products on our website or marketplace e-commerce website. What does this all mean right. What this means is that we are a space where before you will come in there and lose money and a check cash in place you would you know it was something that most people looked at as being unsightful. While we know some people do need that you know tool, but we've looked at how to reimagine that space to be something different which has become in the black so let's move on into some of the history of the Fillmore like we said and that's there's supposed to be talked about in that so Eddie if you don't mind taking it away. Okay. Cool. So now I want to talk a little bit about the history of the Fillmore being someone that was born and raised and then Fillmore this piece is particularly near and dear to my heart. So in the 1940s, thousands of black residents migrated from Jim Crow south to San Francisco a search for economic opportunities and freedom. And that's particularly true, like even my own grandmother for example, migrated from Arkansas and the current theme amongst a lot of my peers is all of their grandparents and parents came from somewhere in the south, looking for better opportunities in San Francisco. So due to the discriminatory rail line and practices the Fillmore at the time was the home to the Japanese community. And what ended up happening was the Japanese community ended up getting forced out of San Francisco where a lot of African African Americans started to steal with those lost homes guarding and businesses. In upcoming years what ended up happening is African Americans settled in Fillmore and drawn by the well paying wartime maritime industry in San Francisco. They started to open several retail shops, restaurants, jazz clubs and other businesses in the neighborhood. Like many other communities of color, they were cut off from resources from the city. And so what ended up becoming what ended up becoming the Fillmore, it ended up becoming a self sustaining neighborhood. Next slide please. All right, so there was several hundreds of black owned jazz retail shops, restaurants you name it were open in the neighborhood, and like many communities of color cut off from oh there that's the same blurb. So what happened in the 1950s is the destructive forces of federally funded urban renewal efforts, salted demolish and transform slum neighborhoods into modern developments, displacing thousands of blacks and working class families of color from Fillmore. James Baldwin aptly called urban renewal, what it really was removal of Negroes. This is a startling startling number that I've been ready to read but during this period the Fillmore lost 833 businesses and 4,729 households to redevelopment and we are still filling the effects of that right now. Later on, we experienced additional gentrification, which pushed more black owned businesses out of the Fillmore, which is why what we're doing within the black is so important right now. I'm gonna be next slide please. So, the good thing was several the black residents fall back and assisted that their versus voices be heard before further displacement happened. They organize as a Western edition community organization and found a loss so against the redevelopment agency. One the right to have a voice in a renewal their community. I think what was it particularly powerful is their lawsuit eventually resulted in the 1975 federal uniform relocation act, which says, if you are to use a dollar or federal money to displace a person, you have to use federal money to rehouse them. And so still thousands had already been displaced from the neighborhood and by the time new housing and storefronts were completed in the 1980s, many of the black families couldn't afford to return and subsequent in subsequent years, the continual effects of displacement and gentrification of the surrounding neighborhood has stalled the efforts to restore the vibrancy of the Fillmore once again, once enjoyed. And I just want to say, as a Fillmore resident all of my life I was in Fillmore since 1976. And I remember as a child seeing several black owned businesses up and down Fillmore. It was around the late 90s, or the early 2000s that we were into the 2000s that we started to see some gentrification happen. We had the local staples that were part of the community. We started seeing those businesses get moved out because they could no longer afford the rent to sustain those businesses in the Fillmore. That's why the, us reclaiming the physical space for black businesses in the Fillmore community is extremely important. Just by virtue of us opening in the black we have double the amount of businesses that are black owned businesses that operate in the Fillmore corridor. So I'm going to pass it to, I believe you Gabby. Thank you so much Eddie for placing our mission and everything we do into historical context. I think that's really powerful. And I love hearing that statistic, you know that we, we double the amount of black businesses on the corridor. So I'm going to go a little bit more into the impact of our mission and what we've been able to see and experience so far. So starting with our external impact, offering cultural and artisanal goods in our store that are really representative of Fillmore businesses is something really special about in the black it is really a hyper local project. And what has been really really exciting to see is not only Fillmore locals and longtime residents coming into the store and feeling at home and seeing people's businesses that they grew up around and they've been familiar with actually in a brick and but also seeing people from all over the world come into our store and interact with products and businesses that they would have never had the same opportunity to if our store wasn't in one place and if we didn't have such a wonderful group of entrepreneurs with us. And something that we are hoping to create and spread along with our mission is a model for equitable development. We hope that we offer an example of a community driven economic development program that creates healing unity and resiliency and really strengthens the community in every way that is possible for us. So moving on to the internal side of our impact. So a large part of what we do is business development and we always want our approach to business development to be a well rounded holistic approach. So all of our businesses are immediately eligible to participate in our 12 week business development program, which is called minding my block on business. That is develop a 12 week business development curriculum that includes all the basics on structural formations of business, as well as marketing plans and financial plans and projections. And they come out of the 12 week class with a fully fledged business plan that we work really closely with them to create through giving feedback on their homework assignments and really sitting with the businesses one on one. We also offer technical assistance hours and getting down to what their mission is and how they want to grow their business and what that looks like for them. We also offer many grants as a part of the minding my block on business program, which are $7500 per business that participates in our program as part of an incentive to kind of take those plans that they create and turn them into action, actionable Another huge impact that was very pertinent in our mission was to be able to provide affordable rent for our businesses. And with the help of funding from the city of San Francisco, we offer a very low and subsidized rent for our business owners to kind of reduce their overhead costs as much as possible and to really bring them as close to 100% receiving 100% sales revenue as possible, which we do for all of our businesses in store. They receive 100% of the sales revenue and 90% for e-commerce sales just because of transaction fees and shipping and packaging and things like that. So additionally, we hope to continue providing access to market opportunities. We have space within the store for about 20 businesses to stay on a semi permanent basis in our retail space. We also have enough square footage to host pop ups and other events and our e-commerce site has a lot of space and hoping we're hoping to grow that platform in this year as well. So I'm going to give you a few statistics on what that impact really looks like numerically. Oh, I'm sorry I went back. So just to go into the figures a little bit. Currently we have 18 businesses in store and on our e-commerce shop. And 83% of those businesses are graduates from our Mindy My Black Own Business program. So that means we worked really closely with them on their business plans and we're really in tune with their messaging and what they want to achieve with their business. And another really important statistic is that 78% of the businesses in our store are current or displaced residents of the Fillmore or Western Edition. And going back to what Eddie said, this is why in the black is so important is because we are not only bringing a vibrancy to the corridor with an active storefront space, but the money is actually going directly back to community members. So that's something we're very proud of on this program and project. And I mentioned that we offer grant funding with the help of the City of San Francisco in our Mindy My Black Own Business program. And all businesses through that program and through the help of additional grant applications with our team of business coaches and consultants. Each business will be eligible for $22,500 in grant funding that will help them cover any overhead costs, inventory costs, or any strategies for growth that we've worked on together in our business coaching sessions. And again going back to the affordability of our retail space, which is another huge point that we're very proud of. The average rent on the Fillmore corridor for a business can range from $6,000 to nearly $10,000 for one business, which is an extremely high rent price given the time. And we're very proud to say that over half of our businesses pay less than $650 monthly to rent the space that they're in, which is it's less than $100 per square foot for all of our businesses. So it's a really affordable retail space and depending on the size of their display in the store fees range from 325 up to 1500. We have some vendors who just provide food and beverages. So we have a section for food and beverages in the store and then we also have vendors who kind of have their own corner so that would be a larger space that we offer. So we have some statistics on the market opportunities that we've provided. So so far, in about a month of operations, we have achieved over 26,000 in sales which is very exciting. We also provide marketing through our Instagram, we've reached almost 4000 accounts on there, and we have just over 3000 visitors to our online shop. So we're really constantly trying to push out our message and to really bring people onto our platform and interact with our businesses. So it's often as possible, and we're hoping to provide more pop up opportunities in the future which we'll we'll get into in the remainder of this presentation. But right now, I would love to introduce one of our entrepreneurs we have joining us today for this presentation. This is the founder and owner of Coco centric. And if you're here Latoya I'd love to, you know just give us a little bit about yourself and how you came to in the black and how it's impacted your business. I can't hear you might be on mute. There you go. Hi everyone, happy New Year. My name is Latoya McInnis and I am a jewelry designer. And I have the pleasure of having my brand in the black shop, which is super exciting. I've also had the opportunity to be a cohort. I just finished my cohort for minding my black owned business, which has been incredibly amazing for my business, and myself as an entrepreneur. I've learned so much just being a part of the cohort about just the infrastructure and the blueprint of running a business. So it's been so much that that I've learned it's just, you know, it's exciting and I'm ready to apply it for 2023. But back to in the black shop in the black shop has curated a collection, a small collection of jewelry from my collection from Coco centric and it's been doing very well in the store. I grew up in Fillmore. It's the neighborhood that I call home. As Edward mentioned, my family came from Mississippi to Fillmore in the 40s 1940s, and my, my family brought us to San Francisco in the late 80s. So I grew up in San Francisco in the Fillmore is my first home. So I remember a lot of the businesses in the Fillmore as well. So a lot of the black owned businesses in the Fillmore. I think me a goes was like one of my favorite ones the candy shop in the ice cream shop. So me getting to see my business on Fillmore are my products in a store with other black businesses and Fillmore is just, I mean, it's really full circle. And it makes me so proud as a business owner to get to have that experience that I can share and pass on to my children and my family as well. So far, my brand has been doing very well in the store. It's easy to wear jewelry that's high quality and affordable. So I'm just excited to have my products in the store. Yeah, it's just been a really amazing experience. So I'm very grateful for everyone in the black shop and the whole program for for having me. Thank you so much Latoya. We're very happy to have you in the black and have your gorgeous jewelry on display can definitely second that it's going very, very well. We're super happy and proud to have your jewelry on display at all times. As you can see there's some gorgeous pieces that are on display at our store so stop by anytime. You can't miss it. And then we had time for one more entrepreneur but I'm not sure is Kwani here. All right, I don't think she's here but I'll just give a quick rundown of quantities. So Kwani sells African apparel at in the black shop and she has been another one of our top sellers. The shop has gorgeous patterns all over from very traditional prints, can take cloth and the she keys to modern spins on African clothing like this crop top and skirt set. Kwani's has been one of our one of the businesses that we've worked with for the longest she has been a part of our business development program since before in the black, even had a name. We're super proud to work with Kwani and to see her success grow on the Fillmore, where she's been selling these clothes for years and years. And we're happy to see her in a brick and mortar and able to come into the shop and interact with customers on a daily basis. All right, and with that I will pass it over to Josh to talk about what's upcoming for in the black. I also just wanted to shout out LaToya I have on my Cocoa centric bracelets today as well so it's everyone in the shop is all we've all just been like looking and picking out which ones we wanted and so we'll be hitting you up soon for some new styles for sure. Awesome. All right, well, as you've heard, one of the biggest focuses that we have had is creating new opportunities and empowerment in our community. So with our shop, while we have our current cohort, if you will, these 18 different businesses and vendors. We're always looking at ways to expand and create additional opportunities and additional foot, you know, footsteps for people to be able to ladders I should say for people to be able to grow within their business and their business plans. So all, even if you're unable to get in right now, as we're figuring out like you know the next group of people will start in about six months where we'll start to allow additional opportunities to expand or let people's move on to their next steps if you will. Currently, we are entertaining spaces where we do pop ups where these are, think of it as a more of a short term lease in the sense that like you can sign up to do a weekend or sign up to do, you know, maybe a weekend or something on that nature as well. So we really are excited to work with some of the brands that not only may have been a part of, excuse me, the mind of my black owned business original cohort, and getting them some opportunities to go ahead and get the process started in store, but also some of the brands that have come up to us just by us being open and the excitement around that. We've had so many different really incredible local hyper local businesses reach out, trying to be in store figure out a way for them to kind of you know get involved. So we're really excited to start offering some of these pop up in the shop opportunities. In terms of e commerce, we're a brand new website or a brand new store of course so the growth opportunity is incredible with their e commerce platform. Not only are we like as you heard from Gabby we have a really competitive price point for people. In terms of them getting paid from their items online. And what this also will allow us to do later on as possibly have maybe digital only brands where their product is only available on our website, because that's where their audience might be as well so again opportunities can be flexible, you know we want to make sure that we are not standing in the way of someone's opportunity to kind of grow. And then lastly we have the permanent shop which is just most of our vendors now where we generally have about a six month lease where their products are in the store and we're handling everything else internally. We sell their items we you know merchandise them we talk with them about their replenishment levels and making sure they have the right sizes in store so it becomes a really great opportunity for them to kind of get into that rhythm of being able to, you know, keep a store stock to keep up, you know, a business in the know with what products are coming out and what new releases can look like also. And then also with this permanent shop option. One of the things that's in my heart is just making sure that the people that are coming into in the black of this vendors are learning enough skills so that later on they can just run their own store I think the key to growth in any way is that you know there has to be that plan and some type of longevity behind it so my goal always is anyone that's coming in you know they should be ready and prepared to go on to their next venture start their own business or start their own store from so so the sign up is coming soon on our website will probably also you know be posting on Instagram and all the other spaces but we really cannot wait to start to expand our numbers and have some more product in the store. Well, to wrap up today, we can't go any further without thinking the people who have supported us the most which, excuse me, again a little bit of a burp there. We want to thank the San Francisco Housing Development Corporation, the Dreamkeeper Initiative, Human Rights Commission, and the Office of Economic and Workforce Development. With your support we would not in the black would not be here and it's been an honor to keep this mission going. Let's talk real quick about how to support us. Obviously, come on down. We're there seven days a week, as long as there's not, you know, unprecedented storming and floods. And we will have our doors open so feel free to come down 1567 Fillmore. You can also go to our website which is constantly being updated with new styles, and that's at in the black shop calm. And then lastly, we are on social media at in the black shop on Instagram, as well as Facebook. We're also going to include our PV link, which is just to support us in our fundraising, fundraising mission to in order to be able to continue these types of programs and these opportunities and be able to have the subsidized rent costs and things that we do it to help us take support from not only, you know, the businesses but the community as well so if you have the ability to support we would love you to not only, you know, use the link yourself or share it with your teams and friends as well. Alrighty. Well, first, lastly, thank you all for joining us today. Thank you for listening. Thank you, LaToya for joining in and sharing about your experience at the store, and then also thank you to my team Gabby and Edward for joining us to some really great information about and sharing that with what we're doing here at in the black. We're going to go ahead and open it up to questions. And I know that we've been putting them into the chat so give us a second just to review and we'll try to get some answers. So what is our website we got that out there. I'm curious about short term vending opportunities. Our email address which we'll also add into the chat is info at in the black shop.com. That will get you into our kind of like list and that way we can make sure that once we have that application process and all of those things available. So I'm going to go ahead and check it out and also, especially for short term, send that email, and I'll also send my email so that we can just get that conversation going. In terms of where the vendors can be from. Yes, the answer is yes to that we are trying to focus on making sure that, especially with business first cohort that we were really reinvesting into the community that is invested so much in us in the community. So you'll notice that like, you know, we do talk proudly about the number of, you know, current and displaced residents that are actually in the shop as well. But we recognize that, you know, our community goes beyond just the corridor of the film or in that we do want to expand out so feel free as a vendor in the Bay Area, you know, potentially later on in California even, you know, as potential vendors in the store. So the next question I'm looking at here that says what's the timeframe for virtual shops. That is a great question I would say, probably within the next two to three months or so we'll probably have a better, more solid answer for businesses that might be curious and that I don't want to promise that quite yet because it's still something we're figuring out but I'm definitely reach out, and we can keep you updated on what's coming up. Ellen, great question. I would say that we finished furniture as well as. Yeah, that's an interesting question we haven't really expanded into home furnishings quite yet we're been mostly focusing on some of the smaller wares if you will but that's not to say that the grand plan may not include that so again shoot us an email and we can kind of just start these communications. See, did I miss anything. Linda that's an excellent question. At the moment, there is not a list but that would definitely be something that we can entertain and try to figure out what the best way to do that could be. Great question. Just to speak to that a little bit that is something where we're working on building out right now. And we will try to figure out a way that makes sense to connect that directory to in the black shop as well so someday you will see through our website. Some sort of link to a directory, whether that's on in the black shop calm or on another hosted on another site it will be in existence sometime soon we're working on it. My eyes are you offering drop shipping. I would say at the moment we're not our spaces somewhat limited in terms of how much we can store per vendor. Most of what we're doing is the agreement is that we're doing online sales but also in store. Anna, I just want to address your question, which to read to the group it says are there any plans slash current ideas around using the space or events to promote non retail SF black business owners. For example, architects plumbers tutors, etc. So, to answer this, I would say pop ups are definitely open to anyone, we've found that the shop is a really wonderful place to kind of host events and the energy of our pop up events has been really wonderful and a lot of the work that we did contracting to build out of the space was actually done using as many black entrepreneurs as we could in terms of architects and other people assisting. I'm not architect I don't know all the people that go into building out the building but we do try as much as we can to contract from people from the community as much as possible across the greater Bay Area. Definitely, if you have an idea for a pop up event at this phase we'd love to hear it, shoot us an email. We're open to any kind of ideas we haven't really had the chance to have too many of those events quite yet. So we don't have a set outline but we're definitely willing to take any input. Absolutely. Awesome. Maybe one or two more questions if there are any. Justine I'm not sure how if I said your name right but illusine banks asked are you looking for specific products. Um, great question. I would say we are definitely looking to curate the process or excuse me what we have in store to kind of expand into being a little bit more well rounded. But not only do we have, you know, clothing and items like that but also delving more into self care with my body oils or, you know, natural products for like care care and these different spaces like that so there are a few different gaps that we have that we are looking to fill out. Thank you. All right, I noticed Linda that you have your hand raised go ahead. Thank you. Love the presentation and what you're doing really exciting so I got to get over to the space but I wanted to ask I'm on the board of the San Francisco African American Chamber of Commerce. And I'm wondering if you all have had any conversations with anyone on our staff there about collaborating between the two organizations ours being the old school folks and you guys being the new guys but I think there's a lot of power in the synergies we could create. You know what Linda, I think it's great that you brought that up, we would love to just connect myself personally I'd love to connect with you and talk more about it. I think there's, even if we have started that conversation we should start it again, just to make sure that there's you know continuity there so I would love to grab your email address maybe if you can send it to me directly, and we can set up a time to meet. Okay, super. I already sent you a LinkedIn connection to delightful. You're fast. I love it. And then this meeting to my knowledge is not reoccurring, but we are always available online at our store or in person at the store. And you can always email us at info at and the black shop.com. Well I think that's all we have. Thank you so much everyone again for joining and for your questions and just your ongoing support of what we're trying to do it in the black. Thank you on behalf of my team Gabriella and Edward. And we hope you all have a great day. I sure I wanted to say that we could meet again, and you can give us an update on the shop. I think that would be really cool. Yeah, let's get that scheduled I think that would really fun. Yes, you know thank you so much for the presentation Joshua Gabby and Edward. It was fabulous I learned so much I really appreciate talking about the history of the film or providing context for the shop and talking about just what you're doing and and it's important and I really appreciate it and what an excellent presentation thank you so much. It's not a problem for having us. Thank you so much to see for sharing your platform with us we're really happy to make this connection and to, you know send people over to the fourth floor of the library anytime they need any resources. Yes, definitely and I'll tell everyone about the shop. I'm a big, I'm a big shopper and I just, I love going to that to the store and wearing cocoa centric earrings right now I don't know if you can see. Yeah, it's great to have everything under that one roof and I can. That's amazing. That's our goal and we want you to be your, you know department store shop. We're glad to hear that. Can I just ask before you go. You, I noticed you recorded is it possible to get the recording and share it with our colleagues. Absolutely so I'll be sending everyone who is in attendance a zoom link and I believe you're able to download the the recording to your computer. We'll also be publishing this on this library's YouTube channel and also the team at in the black will also have a copy of the video so yeah there will be plenty of, of access to the video, the recording. Thank you. Well again thank you so much for joining us today this was excellent I'm really glad that we did this and go to the store and come to the library and visit us. Alright, thank you everyone. Bye bye.