Sean “Diddy” Combs is the latest celebrity to join the expanding list of prominent figures investing in black-owned businesses.
According to Forbes, the entertainment mogul recently debuted Empower Global, which is a one-stop shop for companies owned by Black people in the fashion, art, and beauty industries.
Combs Enterprises’ chief brand officer, Deon Graham, said the company got the concept after seeing a documentary on Black Wall Street, a thriving black area in Tulsa, Oklahoma’s Greenwood District, but was wiped down in 1921.
Graham remembered, “He called me up and was like, ‘We got to do something about this.'” “[W]e have to try to recreate a modern version of Black Wall Street,” Graham said. “[W]e have to try to recreate this thriving community, [how it] looked, felt, and was prosperous.”
Marketplacer’s industry-leading online technology backs Empower Worldwide and has a worldwide strategic collaboration with Salesforce.
The platform was designed and built by a development business owned by Black people called TechSparq, and it is driven by another Black-owned technology company called ChatDesk.
The curating capabilities of the platform make it possible to connect new brands with established companies with higher name recognition.
Graham said that the group would assist business owners in increasing their operations, acquiring access to funding via investors, collecting data and analytics about their e-commerce store, and all the practical aspects of operating a business and fulfilling orders. Graham claimed that the organization will be launching later this year.
The network provides proprietors of businesses with several benefits, including the opportunity to have Combs act as the platform’s official spokesperson and as the ultimate hype guy.
He often does interviews with various media outlets to promote the platform and drive more visitors to the website.
Graham said, “You can stand up [for] your e-commerce store, do marketing to your social media following, and try to get the word out there.”
Still, he added, “but it’s also helpful to have kind of like the megaphone that is Puff Daddy funneling people into the marketplace.”
Graham hopes Black customers would utilize Empower Global despite their devotion to competing platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, eBay, and Amazon.
He attributes this optimism to the fact that the technology that will be employed is straightforward.
In general, the fee structure for sellers is comparable to that of Amazon and eBay, but with a smaller fraction of the total amount.
Graham said that the marketplace price for the businesses currently being onboarded is 10%, which is relatively inexpensive compared to the other platforms.
There were originally seventy different brands and firms accessible to consumers. These included Scotch Porter, Coco & Breezy, Kultured Misfits, Gwen BelotiJewelry, Marie Hunter Beauty, Pound Cake, B.M. Franklin & Co., Beauty Stat Cosmetics, Cecilia’s House, Cise, Cool Creative Clothing, June 79, and Rebecca Allen.
Empower Global intends to increase the number of firms featured on the website to over 200 by the end of the year.
Graham is the first to admit that he has discovered new things on the market that have now established themselves as necessities in his household.
He got several accessories for his daughter, including a Buttah Skin pack, some handbags from Silver and Riley, and some sunglasses from Coco & Breezy.
Graham intends for the platform to be available to all members of the African diaspora to remove any arguments that members of his community may have for not economically empowering their people.
He is building various strategies to include other businesses from around the globe in his team.
“The fact that you can transact and put different things in your cart from various businesses at the same time and make one sale, kind of like an Amazon, has been what most of the sellers have been excited about,” he added.
“You can think of it as a combination of Amazon and eBay.” “The interest is overwhelming, and I hope that continues. Because, honestly, I didn’t realize there were so many Black-owned businesses out there in the world, so that feels good.”
