LITTLE ROCK, Arkansas — In an effort to shine a light on Black owned businesses in Central Arkansas, one business created a free community expo that featured well over 50 other businesses just like theirs.
They titled the event, 'Minding My Black Owned Business,' and event founders, Gabrielle Wilkerson, Antwane Wilkerson as well as A'Ja Rolfe wanted to show how 'minding your own' can help empower a community.
Asides from being the event founders, they are also the owners of local food and catering company, Southern Pasta Twist.
"When you're a business owner, you're just going. You're minding your own business. You're trying to do your hustle. You're trying to just work around, and that's kind of where it was, 'Minding My Black Owned Business,'" said Wilkerson, when speaking about how the origin of the name came to be.
The inaugural business expo held at the Loft 1023 event venue in Little Rock was jam packed with a lot of products and services all provided by Black owned business owners. The key takeaway from the event was for businesses in the community to be able to come together and really showcase what all Central Arkansas has to offer.
"A lot of times vendors come to events like this and the whole point is to sell things. This is different. We wanted to network. We wanted our business owners to be able to mix together and communicate with each other," said Wilkerson.
Derrick Rainey, with small business development in Little Rock, attended the event on behalf of Mayor Frank Scott Jr. who could not be in attendance. He said events like this one help add to the economic equity that the mayor has initiated and is currently focusing on.
"This was an amazing event. We're excited about the city of Little Rock supporting Black business owners. If you can see what I see you would want to be here too," said Rainey.
A'Ja Rolfe helped host the event. She was overwhelmed, excited and overall glad to see so many people supporting the local 'black-owned' businesses.
"We need to be able to have a space where Black people can come as a collective and see different variations of business. We have people in finance, people in education, people in beauty, all different industries," said Rolfe.
Wilkerson said this event also gives Black owned business owners the opportunity support the community by allowing potential customers to browse the expo and encourage shoppers to buy Black.
"Black businesses from around not just the state, but around the country are seen at a lower level than other community's businesses and we want to make sure that people can see that we're not only on that same level, but that we can exceed it as well," said Wilkerson.
Overall, event organizers said that their ultimate goal, was to provide a means for everyone to support businesses within their community.