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

Nikki, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. One of the most important things small businesses can do, in our view, is to serve underserved communities that are ignored by giant corporations who often are just creating mass-market, one-size-fits-all solutions. Talk to us about how you serve an underserved community.

Black Women Business Owners are excluded, unsupported and underserved. So even though we have brilliant ideas and we’re starting businesses at the fastest rate, our businesses don’t always make it to maturity because we don’t have the same access to resources, tools and especially funding. And then because of systematic racism coupled with the bias we face as women, systems and processes in place for other entrepreneurs don’t necessarily work for us because they aren’t designed to. Historically they were designed to keep us out. So founders with brilliant ideas might end up failing and feeling as if they’re the failure, when really it’s the system that failed them. Which is why I specifically created something that serves Black Women Business Owners the way they deserve to be served. I understand the realities of being a Black Woman in America, I understand that advocating for myself is a full-time job, and I recognize that I need to be able to do things in a way that makes sense for me because the way someone who’s fully supported would do it is probably unrealistic to me.
With Buy From A Black Woman we make sure they have the tools and resources they need to succeed, and we’re there to guide them throughout their entrepreneurship. We’ve seen how well they do when they’re actually fully supported because we’ve helped some Black Women Business Owners go from startups to six-figure businesses, so supporting them as they grow and develop sustainable businesses is how we serve our community. Because when you support a Black Woman you support a whole community.

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

I am a Black Woman Advocate. I advocate for Black Women Business Owners full time, at both the retail and consumer level. At the retail level I do everything from helping them get shelf space with major retailers, to working with retailers to make their partnership models more equitable. And at the consumer level, I do a lot of education and awareness around why buying from Black Women is important, how to sustainably shop with Black Women Business Owners, and even where to find Black Women-Owned Brands – which we have a directory of over 600 verified businesses, so you don’t even have to dig for them. I’m also a mother, a veteran, a golfer, yogi and a marathon runner. I run half marathons and I’m on track to running a race in all 50 states. Running is actually how I ended up founding Buy From A Black Woman. I was on my way to run a race, missed my flight and ended up doing some retail therapy to make myself feel better. So I was at this market with all women-owned businesses and there weren’t any Black Women Business Owners. In fact, I was the only Black Woman in the room, which prompted me to look deeper into how to buy from Black Women.
I started blogging about it and using my blog to highlight Black Women-Owned Brands, and then that turned into a directory. It eventually grew into a nonprofit that now provides education, resources, accelerator programs, certifications, funding, community and more.
And it’s a movement too! Buying from Black Women and supporting Black Women Business Owners is becoming a more common place. It’s exciting to watch because we get to see the impact in real time. For example, last year we helped Black Women Business Owners generate over $2.7 million in revenue. And that’s in a recession and despite the pandemic. Our work is working.
But I will say that I’m most proud of the fact that we’re able to support 600+ businesses and help them not only keep their doors open, but thrive. So I want Black Women Business Owners out there to know that they deserve to dream big and follow their dreams, and that it really is possible to do well at business if they have the right support.

Any fun sales or marketing stories?

The thing that actually makes marketing work is committing to the process. It’s creating a strategy and then implementing it every day, come rain or shine. That’s how you get results and you’re able to learn the best way to market yourself based on how consumers react to your marketing over time. It takes work and you have to be consistent. You can’t hack having to do the work, you just have to do it. And you have to be strategic. You have to look at your metrics and you have to adjust what you’re doing based on your metrics.
We’ve been doing the work since 2016, which is why potential partners and collaborators find us very easily, and why Black Women Business Owners want to be in our directory. They see that we’re highly visible and they want to be highly visible too. And they see we’ve worked to build our social community, so they want to tap into our 200,000+ audience.
So my answer to this question isn’t sexy, but neither is the majority of what it takes to run a business. It’s work.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

Word of mouth. The women we were helping were talking about us and posting about us online, sharing how our business grants had transformed their businesses and joining the directory was helping them make sales for the first time ever. Sharing how seeing their products on the shelf in stores like H&M, which they had never imagined, had changed their goals and expectations for business. There was just an overwhelming outpouring of gratitude, and there still is, which helps people see that our work is really working. It’s social proof on another level. That and the fact that we’re verified, certified, and partnered with some of the biggest commerce and retail brands in the world also helps.
And major platforms like Black Enterprise, Forbes and The New York Times talk about our work. We’ve earned over 50 media mentions, which we appreciate because the world needs to know of the impact that they can have when you Buy From A Black Woman.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.buyfromablackwoman.org/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/a.black.woman/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BuyfromaBlackWoman/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikki-porcher-584503168/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/bfabwinfo
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@BFABWtv
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@buyfromablackwoman

Image Credits
Buy From A Black Woman