Ericka Benedicto, 41, said the coronavirus pandemic combined with social unrest this summer in the wake of George Floyd’s death to create a “perfect storm” to start Shop Black Live, a web show and online marketplace based in Little Rock that features Black-owned businesses and Black entrepreneurs in Arkansas.
The show, which recently moved from Facebook to YouTube, began in June and hopes to be a resource for Arkansans looking to shop Black-owned.
“There are a lot of people, Black, white, Hispanic, actually, that want to,” Benedicto said. “We want to make a creative platform where identifying those entrepreneurs and having confidence and having some vetting process — we want to make that easier.”
Interest in supporting Black-owned businesses took off this summer nationwide after several high-profile police killings led to social unrest and calls to support Black Americans. According to a report from Yelp, between May 25 to July 10, there were more than 2.5 million searches for Black-owned businesses on the platform, compared to about 35,000 over the same time period last year.
Benedicto, a producer for Shop Black Live, said her husband Benito Lubazibwa created the show to meet that interest, as well as to support Black-owned businesses that Benedicto said have especially suffered during the pandemic.
Each episode showcases a few business owners or entrepreneurs, and Shop Black Live’s website sells products from some businesses because not all have a website.
More than 50 Black entrepreneurs and businesses have been highlighted so far, Benedicto said, including Pyramid Art, Books & Custom Framing, 1001 Wright Ave., Little Rock, opened by Garbo Hearne in 1988.
Hearne said her store specializes in books on African American and Black culture and has cultivated a customer base over the decades by featuring books and art by local creators, not just national ones.
As interest in Black-owned businesses and independent book stores has grown in recent months, she said her store has benefited.
“People I think are taking a step back and deciding to do a little research and read a bit more, so there's been a lot of book clubs to read different books about race, society, especially among millennials,” Hearne said. “I think that's played a big role in the uptick of book sales.”
Benedicto said she usually doesn’t get involved in her husband’s work, which includes ReMix Ideas, an organization that supports Black businesses and entrepreneurs with education and grants, but Shop Black Live is different.
She was drawn in by a feeling that the show was not just good for people’s businesses but also that it was "doing something for the soul."
“This is more than them selling their products — this is storytelling,” Benedicto said. “This is the Black entrepreneur, talking about what inspired them to get started, how they overcame challenges, what milestones they've achieved and accomplished, and I know that this is really inspiring someone else.”
She said one of the entrepreneurs that particularly moved her was Tyrus Gillam, who founded ShortKut. The company sells a vest Gillam designed for barbers to hold all their tools, as well as other accessories.
Gillam’s story was especially meaningful, Benedicto said, because he was incarcerated for a time before starting his business.
“I was just really inspired by his product and then secondly, just by his story, needing to make a way for himself and reintegrate financially, and the challenge he had just as somebody coming out of incarceration,” Benedicto said. “I know entrepreneurship is an avenue that will have to be an avenue for a lot of people who are facing challenges with employment with criminal backgrounds.”
Although on its face Shop Black Live showcases businesses, Benedicto said she thinks the show does more than that.
“I think that's one of the often unspoken effects of Shop Black Live is not just visibility of the product but visibility of the people,” Benedicto said. “This is what is necessary is seeing and pushing out those positive images that are actually more realistic and more true to life than being flooded with these negative tropes and stereotypes time after time.”
As the country enters the holiday shopping season, Benedicto said it’s another opportunity for Americans to support Black-owned businesses.
“We want people to put their money where they say their hearts lie,” Benedicto said, “because we believe that social justice also requires economic empowerment.”