- Just ahead on "Black Issues Forum," controversy surrounding the safety of a Black bookstore owner in Downtown Raleigh, sparks conversation causing us to ask the questions, are safe spaces being created for our Black businesses?

What happens when they don't feel safe?

And how do we create equitable, fair spaces that foster room for acceptance?

Coming up next, stay with us.

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[upbeat rhythmic music] ♪ - Welcome, to "Black Issues Forum," I'm Kenia Thompson.

We've seen a large uptick in Black business in recent years, in fact, it has been reported that Black-owned businesses have increased by 37% between 2018 and 2020, with Raleigh and Cary having the highest startup survival rate of 82%.

While those numbers are promising, specific stories of Black businesses being racially targeted, has prompted this conversation.

Are our Black business owners playing on an uneven field?

We'll speak with our guest in just a bit to get that answer, but first I had the opportunity to sit down with Derrick Grant, owner of Needle & Thread in Downtown Raleigh, and I asked him about his experience as a Minority business owner in the capital city, and if he felt like he was seen and heard and accepted, here's what he had to say.

Derrick Grant is the owner of Needle & Thread in Downtown Raleigh.

He's always loved fashion since being a young boy, growing up in Bronx, New York, - Just growing up in New York City, I was embedded in it, arts, and those type of things, so I've always created, through high school, all the things, but as I got older, it didn't leave, I just wanted to kind of like perfect my skills.

In 2019, I started my brand.

I started just pulling things out of the closet at first, like just messing with sweaters I had, cutting them up, I just wanted to do something different.

So upcycling was the big thing for me, like taking old T-shirts, cutting them up, or bringing them back to life by dyeing them, distressing them, and I just kind of grew, you know, my niche and it's been working ever since.

- [Kenia] Over the years, family and friends kept luring him to North Carolina and he found that the southern hospitality was hard to resist.

- I started to do pop-ups, like I said in North Carolina.

First, I was in Charlotte, I had a lot of family in Charlotte.

That's when I kind of like found my community, and in '20, this was the end of 2022, it's about November, December, I just took the chance and said, we just gonna move.

Within the first year, I was able to get this space.

I was able to like grow my brand.

I was able to do a bunch of networking.

I got the style and create pieces for celebrities like Dave Chappelle, Rod Wave, Travis Scott.

- [Kenia] Quickly landing on his feet, Derrick connected with Downtown Raleigh Alliance and found himself and his business at the epicenter of opportunity.

- The DRA, this is their program.

It's set up for women and Minority-owned businesses.

They pay half, the Novo sponsors, so they pay half and then we pay the rest.

It is definitely an opportunity, especially when rent is sky high, you know, especially downtown in any city.

- [Kenia] Although he's found much success, Derrick admits that there are still gaps to be filled - In our community, it's very hard to find resources, especially downtown, across the street is a Black-owned business from me.

As soon as I moved in here, we were able to connect to them, you know?

And you just see like-minded people and our people in these spaces, man, it's a relief sometimes, coming into this program and coming downtown, seeing like my people, you know, just thrive, man, it was amazing.

So we built this community, we refer customers to each other.

If I can't do it, I send 'em around the corner.

If you looking for certain things, we can point you in the right direction now, and they do the same for me.

Just sharing resources, whether it is even promoting on social media events, grant programs, like we kind of share all of these things with each other the knowledge of running a small business, - [Kenia] While many downtown businesses are thriving, one in particular, is shutting down its doors due to threats.

- This is a children's store, it's not a bar, it's not a pub, it's not any of those.

To hear that is very disheartening.

No business owner should have to fear that, especially when you have your children in the space.

She got shortchanged because she's in a great space downtown, and wasn't fully able to like grow her brand down here.

I know they're relocating, but even then, it still can follow you anywhere, you know what I'm saying?

The problem has to be solved.

- [Kenia] Raleigh has certainly seen lots of growth, but there's always room for more.

- I hope that we can get the funding that we need.

I hope we can get the resources that we need.

I talk to a lot of my Black businesses here, I talk to a lot of my women-owned businesses as well, and it just seems like sometimes the ball is dropped sometimes.

I've been grinding for a long time to grow my brand.

Where I'm headed, I really want like a mobile boutique, that's what I'm working on right now.

I would love to travel to places, especially where I'm accepted, and grow my community that way.

But for downtown, this is a lovely part of town.

Fayetteville, of course, gets all the traffic, you know, it's the Capital Street, but it's a lot of businesses outside of Fayetteville, that Fayetteville Street, that need that attention.

A lot of businesses are closing downtown, not just Black-owned businesses, but it's a lot of businesses closing downtown and that's alarming, you know?

So it lets me know that's a bigger issue.

Big corporations, they gonna come, but the small businesses make the city.

- I had such a nice time visiting Derrick at his storefront, He's located at 17 East Martin Street in Downtown Raleigh, and he invites viewers to stop by.

While Derrick has had a great experience with his venture, he did highlight that there's still a lot of work to do.

To talk about that work and what his organization is doing to ensure that Minority businesses have equal footing, I welcome our guest, Kevin Dick, President and CEO of Carolina Small Business Development Fund, welcome.

I'm so glad to have you here.

- Morning, thank you so much for having us we appreciate it.

- That was such a great piece with Derrick.

I mean, I met with him and he was so inviting, welcoming, just ready to tell his story.

Just, I'd love to hear your thoughts on his journey and some of the things he expressed in that piece.

- It's a common journey.

It's a really admirable journey as well.

And really just happy to have him in the community.

Small businesses, one of the things he said that was really poignant was, you know, large businesses are going to come in, they're going to get attention, and they should get that.

I mean, they do help create opportunities in the community.

They help the local tax base and so forth.

But small businesses, by many statistics, employ most people in America, number one.

Number two, especially a business like Mr. Grant's, which is really creative, really fun.

It brings a character to a community, right?

So large businesses are not inclined to be recruited, nor stay in communities if their employees don't have fun places to go.

Because talent is the most significant asset that any company has, and if they can't keep their talent satisfied, they're not gonna wanna stay in the community.

So businesses like Derek Grant's, businesses like, you know, Mrs. Scott Taylor's at Liberation Bookstore, they really helped form the character of a community.

- [Host] Yeah.

Well, speaking of Liberation Bookstore, that was really what prompted this conversation.

Unfortunately, there have been recent events that have been unsettling for many people in the community.

They were the first black-owned children's bookstore in downtown Raleigh.

And unfortunately, they've decided that they are going to explore relocating and will not renew their lease of their downtown Raleigh location after they've received threats both online and by phone, as well as violence near the bookstore and incidents that have happened within the space.

It's so sad.

I mean, as you could tell from the pictures, there was so much joy in opening that space, right?

Not just with their family, but community surrounding them.

And now we're here.

- [Kevin] Right.

I don't know if there's any insight that you can share into that situation, and how did we get there?

- Yeah, you know, I don't have any intimate details about this specific situation.

I haven't spoken with Mrs. Scott Taylor, but what I will say is this.

You know, number one, this hits me personally.

I have a daughter, she's nine.

You know, she looks like a lot of the childrens that are probably depicted in the books that are in that store.

- Yeah.

- There are a lot of, we know that due to funding constraints, you know, other different sorts of bureaucratic instances, that schools don't necessarily have the time, maybe sometimes the resources, sometimes just the ability to enrich students in the way that going to a bookstore like that on a Saturday afternoon is gonna enrich young people.

And definitely, you know, not just young black kids.

I mean, if we really wanna broaden conversations in this community, it's going to be, you know, kids that, you know, white kids, brown kids, you know, Asian kids, for everyone.

And so, an opportunity that we had with a resource like that in a centralized place like downtown Raleigh, it just, it's very sad because now it's foregone and, you know, I really hope that she has the wherewithal to open somewhere else and Carolina's Small Business Development Fund can certainly be a resource to, you know, help her in that regard.

But like I said earlier, small businesses build character and communities.

- [Host] Yeah.

So let's talk about Carolina Small Business Fund and the work that you guys are doing specifically for diversity, equity, inclusion, DEI.

And what does that look like?

- Sure, so thank you for that question.

So, Carolina Small Business Development Fund is a 34-year-old organization.

We work statewide.

We have been doing lending, coaching, lending and coaching to small businesses for about the past 14 years.

And then we also have an element related to policy and research work.

So we want to study the impacts that small businesses are having on North Carolina's economy, but also the impacts that events like the pandemic or disasters, you know, like hurricanes can have on the ability of small businesses to survive and thrive.

We have been certified as a community development financial institution, which means that the US Department of Treasury is providing the access to certain programs that allow us to really emphasize our services on businesses owned by people of color, on women, and other populations that have historically lacked access to traditional bank capital.

And whether that was through governmental relation or regulations or bank regulations, there have been just, like you said, there's been a lack of access and equity.

And so what we try to do is offset those gaps and offset that by managing a revolving loan fund that provides loans between 5,000 and 350,000 generally, and sometimes we go higher based upon circumstance.

But generally loans in that range.

We have no predefined minimum credit score.

- [Host] Okay.

- That's one of the things that may differentiate us from most banks.

We partner with banks to receive capital from banks and re lend it in the community, again, with an emphasis on businesses owned by people of color and women, veterans, rural areas.

Historically, over 66& of our capital has gone to those population groups.

And our certification specifically correlates to us focusing on black owned businesses, women owned and low to moderate income owners.

- And how do business owners and those that qualify for this learn about it?

'Cause as a business owner, I find that there, and Derek mentioned this in the piece, there's just a lack of resource understanding.

- [Kevin] Sure.

- So how do you connect with community to say, "Hey, we're here and this is what we do"?

- We do it in so many different ways.

So sometimes in person and in group settings, you know, when convenings of small business owners are held, our social media platforms, we use pretty much all of the major ones.

And so we're very active there.

We have a very vibrant and active website in which we try to draw business owners to that and really just great opportunities like this.

So we really appreciate you having us to here today.

- You know, I find that a lot of times, people are intimidated to, even though these resources are out here, to say, "I don't know if this is right for me," and I think that that's the psychology behind these barriers, the systemic barriers that have been created in this space.

- Right.

- What are some of the on-the-ground work that you guys are doing to reeducate people?

- Sure, sure.

What's so important in that question, Kenia, is that we can't do it alone, and we rely upon, and we're very interdependent with it, an ecosystem of partners.

When you talk about business owners feeling intimidated because like we said, many of them have never been able to access capital and sometimes they can't access another important form of capital and that's knowledge capital.

- Yeah.

- Technical assistance.

- Yes.

- And so what we try to do is make the process very unintimidating.

One tool we use is a request for counseling form that takes five to 10 minutes to do.

And what that does is allow a business, a period of self discovery really, you know, figuring out, okay, I've started this business, am I ready to access capital, which has to be paid back.

- Right.

- And that helps the business understand that.

It helps us understand that.

And then we can sit down and have just a conversation, go through that form and then find out, okay, you are ready to perhaps access capital from a community development, a financial institution like ours, or you're not, but here's what you need to do.

- [Kenia] Right.

- And here are the specific places you can call, or specific places you can go.

And so we have a really robust set of partners in the community that help us with that.

- Yeah.

- And then there's a two-way referral system between us.

- Hmm hmm.

Now we know that policy and law is a huge part of some of these systemic issues.

How do you partner with lawmakers, right, to really start to dismantle the things that are causing the issue so that we don't find ourselves in a liberation station type of space again.

- Right, so there are a few ways that we work on that.

We have three pillars of our work.

You know, I wear this lapel pin proudly, and it represents a torch with three aspects, you know, three parts of a flame.

So one pillar is lending, another is coaching, and then another is policy and research work.

And so one of the most significant ways we partner with lawmakers is just by educating them, really helping them understand why small businesses warrant support.

- [Kenia] Yeah.

- Why programs related to businesses owned by people of color, Black-owned businesses and others, as well as women-owned, really merit significant special attention because historically, they have lacked access and this is really important.

And so we try to educate them.

We can't lobby as a #501[c][3], but we can inform.

- Yeah.

- And so we try to be really strident with that.

We also partner with state, county and municipal government on helping them to implement programs that they really want to get done to reach small businesses.

A few examples have been the Retool NC Project.

That was a project that we ran in concert with the State Department of Administration.

- [Kenia] I've heard of that.

- And they wanted to get grants out to historically underutilized businesses, ourselves and another institution, the Institute for Minority and Economic Development co-managed that program for the state.

And we were able to collectively disperse over $40 million to over 2000 businesses over the course of three years.

- And this was throughout the state?

- This was throughout the state.

And then Carolina Small Business Development Fund has itself administered programs for Mecklenburg County, the city of Charlotte, the city of Durham, and county of Durham, as well as the city of Raleigh, where we have either managed loan or grant programs that were geared towards small businesses, you know, one to 20 employees, less than five million in annual revenues.

And the vast majority of that capital went to businesses that were either Black-owned or brown or women-owned.

And so we have programs in place and we have the infrastructure in place to be a very consistent partner to local and state government.

And we've also deployed a lot of federally funded programs with our partnerships with the US Small Business Administration.

- Okay, so I'm hearing, there's a lot of allyship in that, right?

- [Kevin] Yes, ma'am.

- I mean, we obviously are advocating for ourselves, but we need others in different spaces to create that community.

I was thinking as you were speaking, rural areas, right.

We see a lot of minority businesses blooming in those areas, but it may be harder for them to reach access.

How are you working specifically in areas that may not have as much connectivity as a Raleigh or a Durham or Charlotte does?

- Great question.

So historically, about 15% of the capital we've deployed has gone to rural area businesses.

So we're proud of that.

And that overall number is over $113 million over a 14-year period.

So, you know, 15 to 20 million have gone to rural area businesses.

- [Kenia] Okay.

- But what we do is we have a few tools at our disposal.

For example, in the western area of the state, we partner with the SBA, the Small Business Administration, to co-host the Western Women's Business Center.

- Okay.

- And it is based in Buncombe County in Asheville, but it covers a 22 county region in the west, many of which are rural counties.

We also have business solutions officers.

These are individuals who work for us, who are dispersed throughout the state.

And so our intent is to make sure that there's coverage of all 100 North Carolina counties.

And we work hard to do that.

I can't say that we have been able to provide robust services in every county.

- [Kenia] Right.

- But we have historically gotten to the majority of the state's counties.

And as we know there are about you know, there are probably about six or seven urban areas in North Carolina.

- Yeah.

- The rest are rural.

- Yeah.

- And so we, we work hard there.

- Well, you mentioned Asheville.

And there was another story.

And, and so I didn't want to just target Raleigh in that story of Liberation Station, but Good Hot fish owner, Ashley Shanty, she reported that a group of people had defaced the entrance of her restaurant with a racist sticker, and then cut the power while guests were still inside, not too soon after she opened.

You know, are there efforts to bridge gaps across the state?

I know, I know you talked about the allyships and the, the partnerships that you've created, but how do we keep these incidents from happening?

And I'm sure there are others that we just haven't heard about.

How do we protect our business owners?

- Sure.

You know, I think that is largely a criminal justice issue.

You know, I can't really see.

I like to say that the businesses and the services we provide are like moms hotdogs and apple pie.

I mean, they, helping small businesses should be non-controversial.

- [Kenia] Yeah.

- And therefore, small business success should be non-controversial.

I think, and hope that these are isolated incidents.

But I think that partnership with local law enforcement helping, like you said earlier, policy makers to understand the importance of small businesses, will hope them, will help, hopefully will help them understand the, the urgency of, you know, trying to put a safety net around our small businesses, and protecting the character of our communities, and the health of the small business owners - And I think too, the communities and the public have a responsibility to rally behind our small business owners too.

- Absolutely.

- Derek alluded to it that they've created community within themselves.

And so how important is that public support of peer-on-peer support?

- I think that it's, it's very important from the standpoint of government, like you said, to understand how important small businesses are to their community fabric and their character.

But in terms of the allyship amongst small business owners, and amongst people that can patronize small businesses.

That's important too.

Understanding that what Derek Grant does, there's a premium on the, the talent and the effort that he is putting into those products.

And so understanding that, you know, you walk into a small business sometimes and you say, "Why is this price so high?

I could get this here for a lot less."

Well there's also number one, a price placed on quality.

- Right.

- And there has to be, and, and one of the fundamental things or that to understand with owning a business, but also understanding how businesses run from the outside looking in is that the higher the cost of the goods that are sold, the higher the price of it needs to be.

- Yeah.

- And hopefully people can have that understanding.

- There's a couple minutes left.

I'd love to hear maybe of some things that you have on the horizon for North Carolina and small business and minority owners.

Are there any programs that they should be on the lookout for, or initiatives that are coming up?

- One of the things we'll be doing, is launching a micro loan product.

That means loans between 5,000 and 50,000.

And that's, that will be called, Ignite.

And that will be coming soon.

And what we hope to achieve there is a quicker review and approval process, but, you know, deployment of capital for businesses, like I said, those micro enterprises, one or two employees, or maybe those with, you know, fewer than 10, we'll say that need just that quick infusion of capital maybe to invest in some equipment, do some signage, do some interior improvements.

We hope to get that out very soon.

And we are also looking forward to being a partner in the Charlotte Small Business Growth Fund.

- Okay.

- Which will be a program that actually has loans up to $250,000.

- Wow.

- And that will be in tandem with some things that we do with, with Mecklenburg and with a lot of other communities around the state.

- Well that sounds great.

A lot of good things on the horizon, hopefully, we'll see less of the issues and more of the successes happening.

Evan Dick, thank you so much for being here.

- Thank you so much, Kenia.

Appreciate you.

- And I thank you for watching.

If you want more content like this, we invite you to engage with us on Instagram using the hashtag #BlackIssuesForum.

You can also find our full episodes on pbsnc.org/blackissuesforum, and on the PBS video app.

I'm Kenia Thompson.

I'll see you next time.

[lively music] ♪ ♪ - [Announcer] Quality public television is made possible through the financial contributions of viewers like you, who invite you to join them in supporting PBS NC.