SHOPPE BLACK, Author at SHOPPE BLACK

Clockwork Raises $2M to Revolutionize Financial Planning For Entrepreneurs

June 17, 2022

1 min read

Mike Webb is the Co-Founder & COO at Clockwork. Clockwork is a software company that uses real-time information to automatically build out financial projections and cash flow forecasts for small to medium-sized businesses.

Through their Startup and Inclusion Program, the company helps any minority-owned company making less than $1 million in revenue with discounted tools and support.

In this episode, Mike shares:

The problem that his business was created to solve.
His experience raising a $2 million investment.
How Clockwork is using their investment capital.
Advice for other founders who are trying to raise money.

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Raised $11 Million to Develop and Launch Celeb-led Brands

June 16, 2022June 16, 2022

1 min read

In this Black Executive Spotlight, we’re speaking with Martin Ekechukwu, Chief Strategy Officer at A-Frame brands.

A-Frame Brands is a Los Angeles-based holding company developing a portfolio of discreet, talent-led sustainable personal care brands.

In March, A-Frame announced an $11.2 million funding round led by Forerunner Ventures and Initialized Capital, to help it create and grow more brands.

Their current portfolio includes Kinlò, Naomi Osaka’s suncare line for melanin-rich skin, Gabrielle Union and Dwyane Wade’s baby line Proudly, and a skincare brand from John Legend in the works.

In this episode Martin shares:

His thoughts on the difference between an influencer and a celebrity.
The reasons why an influencer or celeb-owned brand launch may not be successful.
The keys behind a successful product launch.
Advice for those with a following and plans to launch their own product.

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How to Grow Your Food Services Business Using Small Business Loans

June 15, 2022

4 mins read

Is your food truck, restaurant, catering company, or grocery store doing well this season? Are you thinking of expanding your business?

In this scenario, small business loans might help you buy equipment, hire personnel, expand your business, or pay your bills during a sluggish period. Read on to know about expanding your foodservice business using small business loans.

Listed here are some of the ways in which you should utilize your small business loans to help your food services business develop.

Purchase Inventory

Small business loans allow you to purchase supplies as needed, so you won’t have to worry about running out of inventory. This way, you’ll also have better control over your operations and can fulfill your customer’s needs smoothly.

Hire Employees

If you’re taking a loan to expand your business, you’ll need to ensure you have a staff that can handle the increased workload. Hiring competent employees with prior catering expertise will enable you to serve more customers and deliver the most satisfactory service possible. Furthermore, you might use the loan to train your personnel in areas like customer service, event planning, and food and beverage management.

Prioritize Technology

Although you have a talented team, it’s worth thinking about how technology may make your processes more efficient and easy. You can use your loan to pay for automated technology, like inventory management, cloud computing, and scheduling software.

These technologies will enable you or your team of talented professionals to manage fewer administrative activities, allowing you to focus on more important commitments. Additionally, tech solutions like delivery and tracking apps played a pivotal role in helping businesses offer takeout and curbside pickup options to customers.

Invest in a Marketing Strategy

Even if you have the means to cater more events, your food business will not develop unless you attract new customers. To accomplish so, you’ll have to invest in marketing tactics that will assist you in locating and promoting your ideal customers. You can get a loan to pay for marketing materials or outsource projects to a professional agency.

Purchase or Lease a Vehicle

Before buying a van, consider whether you need numerous vans, built-in storage for food trays, or refrigeration for traveling with prepared food.

Purchasing a new vehicle with a business loan is a wise investment for your catering company. Having a dependable vehicle with the capacity and features you require means you’ll be less likely to be late for events and to arrive with food in perfect condition.

Expand into a Commercial Space

A commercial kitchen will allow you to prepare for more significant events, purchase larger culinary equipment, and store more supplies.

Furthermore, having a physical address for your company can help potential customers see you as a legitimate business. This makes them more likely to hire your services.

Lendistry’s diverse financial solutions provide small food services businesses with the affordable capital they require to expand and serve their communities. If you’d like to learn more, call them at 888-594-7270 or contact them online!

Do You Know The Two Types of Credit Scoring Models?

June 12, 2022

4 mins read

If you’re just beginning to track your credit score regularly, you can be confused about where to start. Which credit score should you check? Your FICO Score or VantageScore? Is tracking one of them sufficient, or should you monitor both? How are these models of credit scoring different?

This article explains and breaks down the differences between these credit scoring models. Keep reading to know more!

What Is a Credit Score?

A credit score is a three-digit number that represents a borrower’s creditworthiness. It’s determined based on your credit history, including your open accounts, the total amount of outstanding debt, credit repayment history, and other such factors.

Credit scoring models use a 300-850 point credit scoring scale, with each credit score falling within a specific range. Your scores influence a lender’s decision to offer you credit. They help lenders understand how you’ve used credit in the past and how you’re likely to use credit in the future. The higher your score, the better you look to potential lenders.

What Are the Main Credit Scoring Models?

Although there are different types of credit scores, most of them fall under two main credit scoring models: FICO and VantageScore. Both your FICO Score and your VantageScore measure your financial stability and how likely you are to repay your debt. However, there are a few minor differences between them. Keep reading to know more!

FICO Model

The Fair Isaac Corporation first developed the FICO credit score in 1989. Over 90% of top lenders use FICO scores to make lending decisions. FICO regularly updates its credit scoring models to accommodate changes in the industry and provides a more nuanced perspective of a borrower’s creditworthiness

FICO uses the following ranges to determine your credit rating:

Exceptional: 800-850
Very Good: 740-799
Good: 670-739
Fair: 580-669
Poor: 300-579

According to FICO, a score between 670 and 739 is considered good, and it can help you secure lower interest rates from your lenders.

Five factors determine your FICO score, and each of these factors carries a different weightage. They are as follows:

Payment history, which measures your on-time payments. (35%)
Amounts owed are the debt you’re carrying relative to your credit limits. (30%)
Length of credit history measures how long you’ve been handling credit. (15%)
New credit measures how often you apply for new credit. (10%)
Credit mix measures how you handle different types of credit, such as credit cards and loans. (10%)

VantageScore Model

In 2006, three major credit bureaus, Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion, in collaboration, created the VantageScore credit score model. The VantageScore model uses many of the same factors as the FICO credit score model to determine your credit score. However, it weighs these factors differently.

In the FICO model, your payment history is the most significant factor affecting your credit score. However, in the VantageScore Model, your credit utilization ratio is the most influential factor in credit scoring.

The VantageScore credit score ranges are as follows:

Excellent: 781-850
Good: 661-780
Fair: 601-660
Poor: 500-600
Very Poor: 300-499

The VantageScore model uses the following factors to calculate your credit score:

Total credit usage, balance, and available credit (Extremely Influential)
Credit mix and experience (Highly Influential)
Payment history (Moderately Influential)
Age of credit history (Less Influential)
New accounts (Less Influential)

If you have further questions about calculating your score and which model to follow, get in touch with a credit bureau.

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5 Ways to Expand Your Business

June 10, 2022June 10, 2022

3 mins read

When it comes to running a business, one of your main goals is to maximize your profits. One way to do that is to expand your business. However, funds are needed to take your business to the next level of growth.

That’s where an acquisition loan comes into play. With an acquisition loan, several business owners have been able to expand their companies. But aside from that, there are many other ways you can further develop and grow your business.

We’ve put together a list of five ways you can grow your business.

1. Research the Competition

Whatever your business may be, the marketplace tends to be a highly competitive space with multiple vendors selling similar products or services. One way to stay ahead of the competition is to do thorough research on what other businesses have to offer and the strategies they implement and embrace new concepts that could work for your business.

2. Implement a Loyalty Program

Implementing loyalty programs can help increase sales and help you upscale your business. Research shows that acquiring new customers tends to be more expensive than selling to an existing customer.

However, with a customer loyalty program, businesses can retain existing customers while also attracting new leads who can contribute to your business’s growth. A customer loyalty program can be designed, developed, and implemented to work with both existing and new customers.

3. Identify Opportunities That Complement the Business

Another way to expand your company is to start diversifying your offers and selling products that compliment your existing business.

Essentially, by tackling your consumer base’s pain points and identifying the possibilities, you can take advantage of the opportunities within your niche and further grow your business.

4. Consider Entering a Franchise Model

If your business is booming and aims to expand, entering into a franchise model can help. It can make a difference for business owners looking for rapid growth and expansion.

5. Take over Another Business with an Acquisition Loan

Another way to expand your business is to acquire another company that complements your business with an acquisition loan. This type of loan also allows you to purchase assets.

Acquisition loans are typically given out to business owners looking to expand but don’t have the capital. However, before sanctioning the loan, the lender tends to take into account several factors, including the business owner’s capability to successfully run their expanded business and pay back the loan.

There are different types of acquisition loans, and in order to be eligible for one, your business should be operational for a specific time period.

If you’re considering expanding your business and are looking to acquire an acquisition loan, get in touch with Lendistry. They offer a wide range of comprehensive and affordable financial services.

Black Owned Foodservice Business Receives $17M Contract in Boston

June 1, 2022June 1, 2022

2 mins read

City Fresh Foods is a Black owned foodservice business based in Roxbury, MA. The family-owned business was recently awarded a contract to provide meals to almost 50,000 Boston Public School students starting on July 1.

Sheldon Lloyd is the CEO of City Fresh Foods. He started the company with the goal to provide nutritious, fresh meals to seniors and minorities in the Boston area.

“This is the community feeding the community right here, many of my cooks are going to be feeding their own,” Lloyd said. “We make diverse food, so you have the flavors of the community.”

Boston Mayor Michelle Wu announced the $17 million contract is the largest non-construction contract the city has ever issued to a certified Black-owned business.

“[This is a] long time coming,” Lloyd said at the press conference. “Twenty-eight years ago, City Fresh began around the corner on Dudley Street — 1,200-square-foot kitchen with less than 10 employees delivering a couple hundred meals a day. And look at City Fresh now. We produce and deliver thousands of meals every day to residents of the city of Boston and we have a team of 160 locals.”

“City Fresh is building a state-of-the-art institutional foodservice production plant in the heart of Roxbury to provide critical nutrition and flavor to even more children and families in the Greater Boston community for years to come,” Lloyd said.

Lloyd, whose own children are in BPS, said his goal has always been to hire straight from the community and now calls the chance to feed the children of the Boston Public Schools a full-circle moment.

“The mission was to hire local and feed local, hire younger and serve the older community,” Lloyd said. “We were selected because we are from Boston, we had the best proposal, we know the city well and we have a special connection to the community because we are a reflection of the community.”

Cover photo by Morgan C. Mullings

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$1.7 Million in Student Debt Erased for Black Women at Bennett College

June 1, 2022June 1, 2022

2 mins read

In North Carolina, students at Bennett College with past-due tuition bills in collection will see $1.7 million of their debts erased.

A union of borrowers known as the Debt Collective purchased and paid off the student loans of nearly 500 Black women at Bennett, an all-women liberal arts HBCU in Greensboro.

Bennett College issued this statement about the cancellation:

“We understand that this has been an exceptionally challenging time and want to ease people’s burdens. The debts that were erased for these 462 individuals were debts owed directly to the school. These debts are different from federal and private student loans, which we do not have the ability to cancel because they are owned by the federal government.”

The group describes itself as a debtor’s union, with dues-paying members. It’s partially because of those funds that the collective was able to coordinate the buyout of the Bennett College debt.

The Debt Collective acquired the debt through a sister entity known as the Rolling Jubilee, a nonprofit that buys and discharges medical, carceral and other forms of consumer debt.

Braxton Brewington, a spokesman for the organization, said they chose Bennett College in North Carolina because Black women on average have higher student loan balances than any other group of borrowers. The debt cleared does not include federal student loans, only money owed directly to the school.

“These are the people that are really taking the brunt of the student debt crisis,” Brewington said.

Bennett College pulled $1.7 million in student debts the college had sent to collections and instead allowed the Rolling Jubilee to buy it. That price? $50,000, or about three cents on the dollar.

The Debt Collective’s model for eliminating student debts isn’t going to solve the debt crisis. Rather, Brewington said, the group’s hope is to highlight how cheaply and easily debt can be cleared.

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6 Ways to Avoid Burnout in Your Small Business

June 1, 2022June 3, 2022

4 mins read

While many business owners are passionate about what they do, they may eventually reach a point of overwork, stress, and burnout.

Burnout is not a diagnosable medical condition and is classified as an occupational phenomenon by the World Health Organization (WHO). They have even outlined the characteristics of burnout as:

A reduction in professional efficiency,
An increase in negative feelings like cynicism in relation to one’s job,
A lack of energy and exhaustion.

If left unaddressed, burnout can negatively impact an individual’s mental well-being and affect a business’s ability to operate at its best. As a small business owner, it’s important to take a step back from work in order for your business to operate efficiently in the long run.

Read on for tips on avoiding burnout and taking care of your mental health.

1. Take a Break

Taking regular breaks is not a waste of time, despite popular belief. In fact, it’s been found to improve productivity and overall performance. You should also indulge in activities close to the heart, whether catching up with a friend or starting a hobby.

Also, ensure to plan holidays and vacations. This means refraining from official communication unless it’s an emergency.

2. Learn to Identify and Deal With Stress

Stress is one of the primary reasons many small business owners experience burnout, so it’s necessary to nip it in the bud.

The symptoms and signs of stress at work can be physical, psychological, and behavioral. Make sure to identify what triggers stress and work on ways to manage it. Keeping it at bay can boost productivity at work and improve your mental wellbeing.

3. Stay Organised at Work

Not having things organized and in place can leave business owners in no man’s land. If you’re not sure where to find work-related files and folders or a structured workday, it can lead to distraction and more stress.

4. Make a Checklist

If you find that you constantly have a lot on your plate, consider making a checklist of all the tasks and activities that need to be done. You can also add notes, prioritize by deadlines, and mark completed tasks. This will help you stay organized and on top of things.

5. Set Reminders

Despite having a checklist of all the things you need to do, some tasks and activities could remain incomplete. However, setting reminders will help you ensure tasks are completed and on time.

6. Take a Power Nap

Avoiding burnout is essential to the success of a business. For a small business to operate and function productively, it is vital for its owner to remain both mentally and physically healthy.

Research has shown that including power naps in your day can lead to many benefits, including an increase in productivity.

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Grovara Is Transforming Global Trade With a Game Changing B2B Marketplace

June 1, 2022

1 min read

Abu Kamara is the CEO and co-founder of Grovara, the first B2B global marketplace to connect food and beverage brands with international retailers.

To date, Grovara has raised $8.75 million on its quest to transform global trade.

In this episode, Abu shares:

The current state of global trade and US exports.
The current export process and how Grovara is disrupting it.
How they have raised over $8.7 million to date and what the fundraising process has been like.
Why he has been intentional about creating a diverse team.
Advice for brands that intend to expand into international stores.
Building an innovation center in Sierre Leone and mentoring the next generation of young entrepreneurs.

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Black Owned Ice Cream Businesses You Should Know

May 26, 2022March 18, 2024

2 mins read

Walmart’s recent attempt to commercialize Juneteenth with a new ice cream flavor backfired.

Their “Celebration Edition: Juneteenth Ice Cream,” was met with outrage and has sparked a backlash from many on social media.

Juneteenth ice cream found in a Walmart store in North Carolina.

The company has now pulled the product from its shelves and issued an apology. However, don’t worry, they still have several other Juneteenth related items for sale including the “It’s the freedom for me,” can cooler :/

Black Owned Ice Cream Businesses

This is a great time to remind all that there are several Black-owned ice cream businesses that we can support, starting with Creamalicious, the brand that originally created the swirled red velvet and cheesecake flavor that Walmart used for its own version.