We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Emari Jennings . We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Emari below.

Emari, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. So let’s jump to your mission – what’s the backstory behind how you developed the mission that drives your brand?

BLACKIS mission is to have everyone understand that BLACKIS is whatever you want it to be. I want everyone to know our brand is Equal, meaning, we are all ONE. I came up with my business back in 2020 where I first hand sketched my first design that I put on some tshirts and it expanded from there. BLACKIS: natural, talented, pride, beautiful, strong, daring, bold, fierce, one, unity, powerful and elegant. My mission for BLACKIS is to inspire All and let everyone know to love the skin that you’re in. When wearing our brand, the goal is for you to wear it with all of the confidence that you have. I love to label everyone as Queens and Kings.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

My name is Emari and I have a love/passion for cooking. I’ve been cooking for as long as I can remember and always loved being in the kitchen with my parents and grandparents. I’m a 27 year old Pisces and I absolutely love being inspired by others while being able to inspire others younger and older. While cooking, I have a gift of being creative and being able to bring people out of their comfort zones on things they didn’t like. I do catering services, couple catering, personal orders while being able to feed family, friend, coworkers and more right from home. I’ve always had a love for cooking and always worked in the food industry where my last job at a fast food was back in 2018.

Outside of my passion for cooking, I wanted more. I came up with my BLACKIS brand back in 2020 where it started off with just a tshirt and now offer scrunchies, durags,wave caps, hats, silk scarves, large scarves, hair clips, wooden hair beads, wristbands, earrings, shot glasses and sunglasses.
April 2022 I’ve became a licensed bartender and I love making affirmation videos, inspiring videos and just love making/ posting content all around.

When it comes to my cooking, a lot of people recommend me to others because of my presentation, my flavorful food and just all around great customer service. Rather it’s a family, friend or someone I’m just meeting, I treat everyone equally when it comes to business and that’s what they love most about me. To a lot, I’m known as “EJ”.

Have you ever had to pivot?

Covid was a hard hit for a lot of us business owners and just personal life. During Covid, it was hard trying to build my customers when it came to cooking. Of course a lot of people really didn’t want any contact with restaurants, let alone someone serving food right from home. When Covid seemed to die down, I was able to do contactless pickup/ curb side pickup where it made it a bit easier but, the business was super slow. Even with selling my BLACKIS merchandise, I made sure to sanitize my hands when packaging items and still, I had to do contactless pickup.
Not being able to be social face to face with my customers put me in a crappy mood because I’m such a people’s person but I guess it did help being able to talk on the phone to confirm everything with everyone.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

Being social is a big part of expanding. I have Facebook, Instagram and TikTok and for the most part, promoting yourself has a lot to do with how much you post, what you post and how consistent you are with your followers. When posting, I try to hashtag #share and even say “follow me on my business page.” Having the right support team on your social medias will help you out a lot when it comes to wanting to network, one like or share can go a long way. Be as consistent as you can and never give up. Keep going!      

Contact Info:

• Website: https://linktr.ee/emarij
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/ejsgreateats_blackis?igshid=OGQ5ZDc2ODk2ZA==
• Other: https://voyageohio.com/interview/inspiring-conversations-with-emari-jennings-of-ejsgreateatsmore-blackis-llc/

Image Credits
Emari J.