Cityblack.com

Written by Jeffrey Engmann for the MGP, July 23, 2009
On February 21, 2008, Angela Shah of the Dallas Morning news produced an article discussing the creation of an innovative website called goblackbusiness.com The site provides a directory of all the black owned businesses in Fort Worth Texas and its initiative is to help the bridge the gap between the large African American consumer market and black owned businesses. The reasoning behind creating such a website could not be more firmly presented than in second line of Shah's article, as marketer Shane Heffer touched upon the dichotomy concerning the African American dollar. \"Blacks spend billions, but you couldn't tell that by riding through our neighborhoods,\" he said. Heffer decided to use the internet to combat the disturbing trend, and entrepreneur Ed Sai is following in his footsteps.

Sai's online projects venture to both unite and ignite black enterprises not only in the state of Texas but across the United States. Cityblack.com is just one of the many projects he has embarked on that focuses primarily on networking and bringing communities together. Advertised as 'the ultimate list of happenings within the black community, city black.com provides information parties, church events, cultural outings that locals can attend. The site also includes local news stories and links to various headline news. Events can be submitted by any and everyone, as 48 different cities across the US have their own webpage of events. Users are allowed to post and advertise free of charge. According to quantcast.com, the website reaches close to 8,000 people per month (7,974) and targets an African American audience. According to studies, the African American consumer is the fastest growing market online.

Dallasblack.com is also another project which is very similar to city black. However it focuses solely on the happenings of Dallas, Texas.

Robert Farlie is professor in the Economics at the University of California. In his article entitled The Importance of Family for Entrepeneurial success Farlie explained the importance of breaking the trend of few opportunities for African Americans to excel as black owners.

\"To break the cycle of low rates of business ownership and relatively worse business outcomes being passed from one generation of African Americans to the next, we need to address the lack of opportunities to work in family businesses.