Neighborhood Goods debuts initiative to support Black-owned brands

Dive Brief:

Joining other retailers backing Black entrepreneurs, Neighborhood Goods launched a "Buy Good. Buy Black." initiative on Thursday to support Black entrepreneurs, according to an announcement emailed to Retail Dive.
Shoppers can browse various Black-owned brands selected by Roslyn Karamoko, the vice president of strategic business development and creator of Detroit is the New Black. As part of the effort, the company said it will provide the featured brands with space, exposure, marketing support and networking opportunities with other entrepreneurs.
All brands will be featured in stores and online, with Neighborhood Goods launching a stand-alone e-commerce page to tell the story of each brand. Additional brands will launch throughout the month of February, and the company plans to make the effort part of its overall retail strategy.

Dive Insight:

The "Buy Good. Buy Black." initiative follows Neighborhood Good's brick-and-mortar debut in late 2018. The company calls itself an evolution of the department store, with an assortment that rotates to offer a variety of products from small businesses, DTC brands and other companies. Since expanding offline, Neighborhood Goods also introduced The Marketplace in Austin last spring, which highlights consumer packaged goods brands.

For this new effort, Neighborhood Goods will display its featured Black-owned brands as a collective and also by category. Some of them have already worked with Neighborhood Goods, while others are new. Among the brands highlighted in the initiative are Wrap Life, a fashion and accessories brand; Redoux, a beauty brand; and Aya Paper, a lifestyle brand.

"This effort will look to identify and support some of the most dynamic brands in the space and will evolve to become a mainstay focus of Neighborhood Goods' retail approach and strategy," Neighborhood Goods wrote in the release. "Over time, the curation will broaden and localize, as a key long-term component of the retailer's current and future stores."

Supporting Black-owned brands over the past year or two has gained momentum following the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020. Last year, Sephora unveiled its first campaign highlighting Black-owned brands, a move the retailer made after signing the Fifteen Percent Pledge in 2020. Target in April pledged to spend more than $2 billion with Black-owned businesses by 2025, including adding products from over 500 Black-owned businesses across multiple categories. And in February 2021, Ulta committed to spending more than $25 million on its diversity and inclusion efforts, including investments in marketing, merchandising, store experience and employee training.

So far in 2022, some retailers are continuing to highlight Black entrepreneurs and expand their diversity and inclusion initiatives. Earlier this month, Target added 40 new beauty brands, 20 of them Black-owned or founded. In early February, Ulta announced another round of spending on diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. This year, the retailer plans on doubling its spending to $50 million, according to a company press release.