Business
Ujamaa Deals makes it easy to click and support African-American businesses
There has been much publicity this shopping season about supporting African-American-owned stores and businesses in the United States. It was made a little easier for shoppers with the Around the Way app that locates black-owned businesses in your area, but here’s a site you might want to keep in mind for the final hours of your gift hunt –Ujamaa Deals.
(More: Eric Hamilton: An entrepreneur partners to create iPhone App that supports black-owned businesses)
Ujamaa Market is the online store for Ujamaa Deals, which is a daily deals site and online store that features products from black-owned companies. And you get a discount as an added incentive to support them.
Ujamaa deals was founded to not only encourage African-American consumers to shop at black-owned businesses, but on the concept that if more people frequent these businesses it would boost employment in the black community.
African Americans spend more than 90 percent of their money with businesses they don’t own.
Ujamaa is on a mission. “Black-owned companies are more likely to hire black employees,” said Tre Baker – the CEO of Ujamaa. “Therefore, the best way to increase black employment is not to beg or demand that other companies hire so-called ‘minorities’ like Bob Johnson suggests, it is to support our own companies so they can grow and afford to hire more people. Affirmative action style policies can only take us so far. We need to start relying on ourselves for full employment.”
Ujamaa finds black-owned businesses via their own research and through submissions.
