With over 50,000 listings, BuyBlack.org is the largest directory of Black-owned businesses in the United States. It is the definitive place to find and connect with Black-owned businesses.
BuyBlack.org’s mission is to drive traffic and revenue to Black-owned businesses and close the revenue disparity gap.
Shortly after the murder of George Floyd, BuyBlack.org founder, David Derryck, read an article in the Columbia University Magazine entitled Portrait of a Gen-Z Activist featuring Chelsea Miller ’18 who said:
“People ask themselves, ‘What would I have done during the civil-rights movement? What would I have done during the time of slavery? Well, this is your answer: whatever you’re doing now.”
Talk about a call to action. In response to Chelsea Miller’s statement, George Floyd’s murder, the continued lack of support and investment in Black businesses and the growing wealth inequality gap, David launched BuyBlack.org, an online directory, to catalog the over 2 million Black-owned businesses in the United States and increase consumer spending at these businesses.
It quickly became clear that consumers, regardless of color, looking for Black-owned businesses have to work too hard to discover them. We rely on word-of-mouth referrals, fragmented localized lists, “featured” brands on large platforms eg. Yelp or Google, Black history month and now Juneteenth. In short, one has to overcome significant friction to purchase from Black-owned businesses by visiting numerous websites and/or apps.
David saw that this highly fragmented market was in need of an overhaul. So in 2020 over occasional nights and weekends he began consolidating and aggregating the numerous individual, localized buy-black directories and listicles and adding them to the site. BuyBlack.org was simplifying that process by aggregating these various sources into one fully searchable business directory accessible from any device. However, as the pandemic dragged on and Black-owned businesses closed at a rate faster than non-black ones, the focus shifted from simply cataloging Black-owned businesses to driving traffic and revenue to them.
In 2022, with 10,000 listings and growing, David left his job to pursue BuyBlack.org full time.
