JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Ahead of Small Business Saturday, several local businesses joined in on Black Friday in Jacksonville.
More than 50 Black small business owners set up at the Melanin Market Friday afternoon on Jacksonville's Eastside. The event included activities for kids, like a train ride, Santa and food vendors as well.
"We've been doing this to really showcase and uplift Black entrepreneurship," said Angie Nixon, co-organizer and newly elected representative for House District 14.
It was Melanin Market's fourth year holding the market on Black Friday, but this year was different.
"During this COVID day in age where a lot of shops have closed, we wanted to allow an opportunity for small business owners to expose themselves and show what they really have," Nixon said. The vendors agreed.
“Missing out on coming out to events like these, to the markets and everything, it affected it ... it's something terrible," Charletta McCoy, owner of Mbellish by CharMega said.
McCoy sells a lot of her art at markets and said she lost close to $25,000 between April and August with those markets not operating due to COVID-19.
"You miss the community. You miss this, and there’s a lot of finance in it. It's very lucrative, so you really really miss out on a lot of income because of COVID-19," she said.
"It has stricken a lot of small mom and pop businesses. You’re going to remember that. It really left its mark," McCoy said.
Takesha Stephens, the owner of Lip Kocktails, said the pandemic pushed her to start her business. She said spending more time at home, she had more free time to work on it. Stephens named her products after five of her close friends fighting breast cancer. Quarterly, they choose a non-profit to donate to.
Stephens said the market was a boost many small business owners needed right now.
"Small businesses have truly been affected by COVID-19, so to see something like this and to see people who want to come out and support, it’s very amazing," Stephens said.
McCoy agreed, saying it was a big deal to be able to sell her art Friday for more reasons than one.
"This means so much to a Black woman and to Black businesses, the love, and the unity and the care because they try to give us such a bad name. They really do us a disservice not knowing who we really are, so if you don’t know who we really are and you don’t come out to know us, and especially us being in the skin that we’re in, some of us are held captive to the beliefs of what others are saying about us," McCoy said.
"So to come out and actually visually see that we are not lazy, we’re not trying to get it easy, we’re not trying to get on welfare, we’re trying to make our own money. We’re trying to do our own service and service our communities. This is a great deal to a person like me anyway," McCoy added.
The event ran from 3 to 8 p.m. Melanin Market holds the market quarterly.