Company Spotlight: African American Connection
by Christina Lee on February 20th, 2009
Though he focused his career in sales and marketing, Charles Bowlds, of Noblesville, Ind., could not help but to notice a different aspect of the business world: “Everybody is profiting but the African American community.”
Bowlds, once territorial manager at Eaton Corp., could not ignore the economic disparities – how blacks only retail 3 percent of their gross net income, while owning less than 4 percent of U.S. small businesses. Then, after ten years of research and coaching others, he decided to create a solution.
“I felt that responsibility for changing the economic status. It’s not going to come from anyone else, because no one else has an invested interest,” he said.
Bowlds realized that through the Internet, the ambitious could pool together their own resources for entrepreneurship, then a profit. He then remembered this basic principle: “The best place to start is within your own community.”
The end result of his brainstorming is African American Connection, an online marketplace that Bowlds hopes will inspire as well as facilitate financial independence.
“When it comes to meeting their financial needs and aspirations, they think of it in context of getting a job, getting a sports contract, or getting a deal with the government – something outside of our own communal wealth,” he said.
That he strives to change, as the Web site hosts two marketplaces. One provides general merchandise through major retailers like Wal-Mart and Macy’s, and the other sources products offered through African American Connection merchants.
Entrepreneurs who register may also utilize a personal shopping cart, payment processing center, and a biweekly webinar, in addition to partnerships with four major wholesale sources – in sum, “a mechanism that would create more retail merchants.”
“We fashion ourselves like a real mall,” Bowlds said. “It is really a system where we can all work together to pull our aggregate resources to one center.”
For more information, call 1-888-ACC-8842 or visit African American Connection.