Pathways cohort member Bridgeway Capital developed the Creative Business Accelerator (CBA) to help grow Pittsburgh-based creative businesses (artists, makers, designers, and craftspeople) into micro- and small manufacturers who create jobs and ignite innovative, equitable growth in the region. The CBA provides emerging and established creative businesses with better access to elements of business success: space, capital, peers, markets, guidance, and workforce. To better align with Bridgeway’s mission, the CBA wanted to engage with more entrepreneurs with the racial diversity to ensure equitable economic growth. Only 16 percent of the 175 makers in CBA’s network were entrepreneurs of color. One-quarter of even that extremely small number—eight in total—were pursuing their creative businesses as their primary employment. African Americans, in particular, envision greater financial independence and opportunity arising out of entrepreneurship, but experience deep frustration with the barriers keeping them from pursuing their business plans.
Bridgeway Capital engaged with African American creatives to identify solutions that would help more come to the CBA and take advantage of the program’s business-propelling resources. Based on those conversations, the CBA launched ORIGINS, a multifaceted initiative to improve access to business development services for makers of color. ORIGINS comprises five components: the cohort, a peer network of African American creative businesses characterized by mentorship and collaboration; the incubator, six-12 weeks of individualized in-depth guidance for businesses; an online platform, which celebrates African American creatives, provides them greater visibility, and connects them to wider audiences and markets; the residency, 12 months of subsidized light industrial space to businesses ready to ramp up production; and new market opportunities, including subsidized booths at retail events.
ORIGINS fully subsidized high-touch, one-on-one product development and marketing consultation to an inaugural cohort of 16 African American makers. The CBA is tracking pre- and post-program sales and social media data to validate ORIGINS’ ability to increase African American creatives’ visibility in target markets.
CBA has analyzed Pittsburgh-area supply chains and market demand to help ORIGINS participants to identify and access potential new markets. Monmade, another CBA program, helps to connect local makers with new markets, is working in concert with ORIGINS.
“What’s most compelling to us about the ORIGINS approach is that it lets the CBA help entrepreneurs access capital to grow their businesses while simultaneously helping African American creatives expand into new markets,” says Lee Wellington, executive director of UMA. “Growing businesses aren’t just saddled with debt; they’re also able to quickly access opportunities to leverage that debt and grow their businesses. It could not be more squarely aligned with what we’re doing at UMA—in particular with the Pathways to Patient Capital cohort program.”
ORIGINS’ outreach and engagement is a key part of making the program successful. “Nisha Blackwell brings direct experience to bear in her position leading outreach and strategy for ORIGINS. She is the founder and owner of Knotzland Bowties, an apparel manufacturing business, and has worked for over three years to engage and understand the needs of Pittsburgh’s African American creatives. The ORIGINS program is the culmination of this effort, and provides customized business development and marketing programs designed to close the barriers faced by these entrepreneurs,” says Tanu Kumar, UMA’s director of special projects and a lead on the Pathways cohort.
CBA is now identifying additional funds to raise that will provide grants to allow business owners participating in ORIGINS to step away from their side gigs and focus on full-time entrepreneurship.
This case study was co-authored by Mark Foggin and Johnny Magdaleno and published in 2020 as part of the Urban Manufacturing Alliance’s “Forging Fairness: How community-based lenders are centering both inclusion and manufacturing to promote equity [link to report].” This report highlights the work of practitioners in UMA’s Pathways to Patient Capital cohort, and approaches these leaders are taking to help entrepreneurs of color–including makers and manufacturers–get access to the capital and know-how they need to realize their business ideas and plans at scale.