With holiday shopping in full swing, two Black women from the East Bay are teaming up again, hoping to get a percentage of what shoppers will spend at small businesses.
Xenia St. Charles, who owns a small business specializing in natural whipped shea butter, worked separately from Janay Masters of Hella Plants market until three years ago.
The Oakland-born and-raised pair combined their entrepreneurial spirits to draw consumers to the annual Blackout Market.
"We just started to think about how we wanted to create something for us, something by us," Masters said.
The vendors at Blackout Market are mostly Black, and it's a point Masters and St. Charles want to focus on.
"We’re out here, but a lot of the time, we don’t get the same recognition as other people, and so sometimes we have to take the initiative to make sure that we are seen," Masters said.
According to a 2020 report from Bloomberg, eight in ten Black-owned businesses close within the first 18 months. A CNBC report from 2023 also showed that Black-owned businesses receive less than 2% of venture capital funding overall every year.
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"When we’re talking about being able to infuse capital into your business, and you know, we make up 13% of the U.S. population, but we’re getting less than two percent of venture capital funding for our businesses," St. Charles said. "We're thinking about: How do we change these numbers?"
According to the National Retail Federation, spending will reach a new record. However, only 23% of consumers plan to shop at small businesses compared to the 46% who will spend at department stores and 57% who will shop online.
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The pair hopes consumers will join what they're building by spending. Over 40 vendors will be at the Blackout Market at Oakstop Downtown on Black Friday and Small Business Saturday.
This year, Masters and St. Charles said the event will be bigger and feature more booths and activities.
"I want people to look at the Blackout Market and be like, I want to be there, like let’s go to Oakland and do that," said Masters.
St. Charles said it's a way for the community to give back.
"We think about it like this is home and how do we make it an even more bustling and thriving place," she said.
