For many years, the purchasing power and business ownership of Black Americans has increased while, at the same time, there has also been a movement to support Black businesses across the country. This effort has come to be known as Blackout Day and, this year, Best Buy joins many others in offering our support. That’s the encouraging news.
The unfortunate news is that as we looked to highlight the Black-owned businesses that we purchased consumer electronics or accessories from, we realized just how short that list is. We’ve spent the past few years working to engage minority-owned business as suppliers for our day-to-day company operations but, regrettably, had not focused on using our industry influence to find and nurture Black- and minority-owned manufacturers of products we might sell. That changes today.
On BestBuy.com you’ll see phone cases made by a company called Pivet. We highlighted our work with Pivet earlier this year as part of a video series we produced around Black History Month. We’ve been proud to sell these accessories for a while now, but next year you can expect to see many more items produced by Black entrepreneurs and businesspeople like Michael Pratt, who founded Pivet.
The goal, of course, is to not just focus on this issue on Blackout Day but, rather, to add it to the growing list of ways we commit to being part of the change we all increasingly seek.