Built Oregon, a group dedicated to helping the state’s consumer product founders, is launching a weekly event to highlight Black-owned businesses between Sept. 24 and Nov. 26, Black Friday.
The event is called Black Fridays and features Built Oregon Board Chair and small business advocate Stephen Green interviewing a local Black founder. On Nov. 26, Green will interview 10 Black founders over the course of that day.
The interviews will be on Green’s Instagram stories, IG: pdxstepheng, and then be available as posts, he said. The idea is to highlight businesses, talk to founders about what they do and the state of the world for Black businesses in the region.
“We want to help the city find tangible ways to support these businesses," Green said. “This moment we are still in, where people had good intentions, but when it comes to supporting these businesses, emotionally supporting them, there are still promises left unkept. We want to show people ways they can show up. In an ideal world people would copy us and figure out their own version of supporting these businesses.”
First up is an interview with Art Williams from Influential Grooming Lounge.
As part of this endeavor, Built Oregon will give $2,000 grants to these businesses. For each grant there will be a call to action to get more customers into each business between now and Black Friday, Green said.
Funding for this project is coming from Nike and Wells Fargo. Green is hoping other businesses or organizations will get involved and help match this financial effort and these calls to action. Anyone interested can contact Built Oregon at hello@builtoregon.org.
This interview project started last year as an informal pop-up by Green. He went to Deadstock Coffee in Old Town/Chinatown and sat with a camera and interviewed eight Black founders about their businesses. Built Oregon was able to give each one a $500 grant.
In an effort to revitalize the momentum seen last year, when Portland and the nation rallied behind Black-owned businesses, Green and Built Oregon sought to make this a more formal event.
This video effort is just one of the projects Built Oregon has put together to support founders through the Covid-19 pandemic. Green noted the group did different sessions on the online platform Crowdcast to help founders navigate challenges associated with the pandemic. Topics included how-to advice for talking to landlords or bankers as well as the mental health toll of the pandemic.
