David Michael Miller
Stephanie Sarr waits on a customer at her shop, Savana Beauty Supply, on Eagan Road. She is one of more than 300 black business owners in Madison.
Stephanie Sarr and her husband Beran always wanted to open their own business. They just couldn’t settle on a concept.
“What did we want to open together that we would be passionate about?” Stephanie Sarr remembers wondering. “I love everything hair-related, so when he came home one day and said let’s open a beauty supply store I was kind of shocked because I wouldn’t have expected that from him. So I had him start doing a little more research about the beauty supply industry. Once I found that he was as passionate as I was, I said let’s just go with it.”
The couple opened Savanna Beauty Supply at 1712 Eagan Road in July 2015. Since then, their business has grown and they’re now looking to hire employees. Sarr credits their success to a focus on customers. But she says local resources helped give them sustained support.
One boost came from the Wisconsin Women’s Business Initiative Corporation, which helped finance their store. The business also got ongoing support from the Madison Black Chamber of Commerce.
“The chamber has supported us from day one,” Sarr says. “All of the members of the board have come in here…. Having those conversations and being able to network with other business owners who look like me and can understand some of the things I may face on a day-to-day basis is refreshing.”
Although the number of black-owned businesses is growing both locally and around the country, they still lag behind their white and Asian counterparts, reports the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. The challenges can be daunting — black-owned businesses have higher failure rates and lack access to capital.
A number of groups — including the Madison Black Chamber of Commerce, the Madison Alliance for Black Economic Empowerment, and Sabrina Madison’s Black Business Expos — are trying to reverse those odds. Camille Carter, the chamber’s president, says her organization has a mission of helping these businesses not just survive, but thrive.
“We build community around our existing businesses such that we empower and sustain them,” Carter says.
Now, the chamber is preparing to highlight local black businesses with its first award ceremony on Feb. 22 at the Best Western Park Hotel at 5:30 p.m. Tickets can be purchased at madisonblackchamber.com.
“This is a new initiative for us to highlight the wealth of black businesses that we have in our community and bring an awareness to them,” Carter says.
The Black Chamber of Commerce evolved from a long history of black business professionals working together in Madison, says Carter. The chamber was founded in 2004 as the African American Business Association and was formally renamed in 2012.
“The chamber provides resources through collaborative partners, such as Madison College or Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation for development and training,” Carter explains. “We partner with the city of Madison to assist with some of the financial resources that the chamber needs in order to provide the services that we offer.”
Carter, who became a board member in 2013 and the president in 2016, has been working on a second edition of the Black Business Directory, which identifies black businesses and black business owners in Madison. The first directory was released in early 2016. An updated directory is currently being distributed and will be updated online in coming months.
“Our last publication we had just slightly over 200 black-owned businesses that the chamber had identified and in the new edition we have identified more than 300 entrepreneurs and black businesses within Madison,” Carter says. “That number is very positive. It’s growing and it makes for a very healthy entrepreneurial landscape within Madison.”
Carter says she’s seeing more entrepreneurs take advantage of technology, starting convenience and service businesses and promoting and advertising through social media.
Black entrepreneurs in Madison could benefit from more start-up capital, she says, because “businesses will ultimately fail if they are not able to fund the idea and keep it growing.”
The chamber’s first awards dinner will highlight successful businesses, some of which have been around for 20 or 30 years. Businesses will be given awards for innovation and milestones. Guest speakers include state Rep. Jason Fields (D-Milwaukee), local entrepreneurs Andrew Bentley of Father Figure and Aaron Perry of Rebalanced-Life Wellness Association.
The chamber is limited in how much it can help black entrepreneurs, Carter says, because the group is “a 100 percent volunteer agency, so a great deal of our services depend on our partners to provide the strength of our programs.”
But former chamber president Eric Upchurch II is working to fill that gap. Part of the reason he stepped down from the chamber’s board is because it didn’t have the capacity to focus on resource development. “I realized this was something that was really needed,” Upchurch says.
While working at the chamber, Upchurch helped create the Business Resource Workshop, an event to get entrepreneurs connected to people and organizations that could help them. “It was a success,” he says. “We helped a lot of businesses get connected to resources and each other.”
The experience inspired Upchurch to found Opportunity Inc., a company that does strategic development work for organizations and businesses. “Basically we figure out what an organization is trying to accomplish and then help them create and execute a plan to get there that often includes working with someone else in our network,” he says.
Madison Alliance for Black Economic Empowerment (MABEE) is an in-house expression of Opportunity Inc., he says, specifically geared toward black businesses. MABEE helps them determine their needs and connect them to mentors, resources and funding. “We know who we need to talk to to get it real and stable,” Upchurch says.
Upchurch wants MABEE to address something he’s discovered working with businesses of color. “In the black community and other communities of color we recognize a crab mentality, where everyone is trying their best to climb up and get to a better standing in life and have more impact,” Upchurch says. “On their way they end up climbing over and trampling over each other as opposed to helping each other climb up.
“MABEE is serving as a way for us to practice doing something different, practice winning together, building our income streams together, supporting each other in a way that supports ourselves as well,” he adds.
Others are working to help black entrepreneurs network and get attention, most notably Sabrina “Heymiss Progress” Madison, who has organized several Black Business Expos and recently founded The Progress Center for Black Women, which, among other things, plans to host a collaborative space for black entrepreneurs. Madison declined to comment for this article.
MABEE is focusing on holding two events a year for black entrepreneurs to make connections and raise money. “People have been really thankful, really appreciative of the opportunity,” Upchurch says. “Somebody got off the bus and strolled in there and left with a grant for $500. It is beautiful; we want to be that miracle for people that are trying to figure out who to connect with, how to get their clients and how to get over that initial hurdle and they are finding it here.”
The group has a leadership team of black business leaders who recruit members, find sponsors and build the network of black business people. Although its goal is to benefit the community, the leadership team is rewarded with a small percentage of the revenue it generates, Upchurch says.
“I’d love to invite black entrepreneurs and black professionals to come join the MABEE leadership team to help make this something that impacts more of our people,” Upchurch says. “It’s not volunteer — we’re paying folks and it feels good.”