KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — The number of Black businesses in Knoxville is growing. That's according to the founder of the Knoxville Black Business Directory.
According to DC.gov, there are about 3.12 million Black-owned businesses in the United States. Jade Adams is one of those business owners with the Oglewood Avenue Plant shop.
"We opened in October of 2020 during the height of the pandemic," said Adams.
She said it's important to support not only black businesses but small businesses as a whole.
"I think Knoxville doesn't have a lot of black businesses in general. So I do think it is important to kind of serve your community and put kind of your funds, in a local small business and then also minority and so I think it's just important if you wanna see spaces with Black owners, Black businesses and people where everyone kind of feels like love and accepted," said Adams.
The plant shop isn't the only thing that started during the Pandemic. 2020 is when the Knoxville Black Business Directory also emerged.
"It was projected that we would lose about half of those businesses that are already existing. And so I thought, you know, it would be really cool if we had a space that we could grow and promote Black-owned businesses," said Damon Rawls, the founder of the Knoxville Black Business Directory.
According to CNBC, 80% of Black-owned businesses fail within the first 18 months. That's why there are support systems in place for black business owners in Knoxville.
"Whenever I first started I was a part of 100Knoxville, which is a sort of Black business accelerator. There's the Black Business Directory. There's the Bottom Knoxville. So there's a lot of support systems and groups for black business owners," said Adams.
Rawls said the number of Black businesses in the area and those registered in the directory are increasing.
"It's growing, it went from a year one, I think we launched in that first six months, right, like in the fall of COVID. But we got to about, I think we were at 70, 80, now we're over 300," said Rawls.
He said businesses are able to register their profiles online to be added to the directory.
Black women business owners are now the fastest-growing group of entrepreneurs in the country according to a report from GoDaddy.
The Black Business Directory site is currently down because it was hacked. Rawls said the directory is moving to a different platform and should be up in a few weeks.