Cultural connections - Blackberry retail stores

Nation's Business, Sept, 1996 by Maynard Roberta

It was a friend's frustrating search for an African-american doll that caused E. Diane White, then a financial analyst at the World Bank in Washington, D.C., to become interested in retailing. But her journey into entrepreneurship took several years.

White has a master's degree in international studies from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and an MBA from Harvard University. Before she undertook the MBA program, she had viewed people who didn't have 9-to-5 jobs as somewhat suspect. Her studies at Harvard changed her view of work styles and led her to see business opportunities in everyday events.

For example, before getting her MBA, she says, the doll incident would have been a brief subject of conversation, talked about and for@ gotten. "Now, I saw it as a market failure. I thought, 'If my friend had trouble finding goods that reflected black heritage, maybe others did, too." That led White to think about starting a business.

Her idea was to open an Afro-centric" store - one with African-inspired products, but adapted for a Western market. Sculpture made into a candleholder, African cloth made into a pillow. Taking traditional items and weaving them into lifestyles, making them functional."

She found a gift store specializing in items from Africa and persuaded the owner to let her work -for free - evenings and weekends. She began going to trade shows, festivals, and craft shows, where she collected contemporary African products. When she had a living room full of items, she began looking for retail space. She and a friend put together $12,000 and, in November 1989, opened a 300-square-foot store in a suburban mall in Maryland's Prince Georges County They called their shop Blackberry.

An incubation program offered by the mall to help start-up businesses gave them discounted rent and paid for interior decoration of the store. By the end of December, Mute and her partner had made back their investment and more.

In 1992, she opened a second store, a 500-square-foot space in the upscale Pentagon City mall, in Arlington, Va. White had been in the new location for just six weeks, on a month-to-month lease, when the mall management told her that despite Blackberry's strong sales, its products weren't sufficiently upscale and White would have to leave.

"It was the first test of the little company," White says. And we decided not to go quietly away." She decided her only hope of going up against the mall's management company was through a public-relations effort. White told her customers of the predicament, and they connected her with media people who might be interested in her story. Almost overnight she got coverage on Washington,s black radio stations, on local TV, and in several newspapers. Eventually, the mall let her stay.

The barrage of publicity resulted in her being noticed by department store chain Woodward & Lothrop, which led to an invitation to open small stores in two of the company's locations.

She accepted, but when the chain went out of business last year, she lost the two locations, causing a substantial drop in her revenues, which had approached Sl million in 1995. But her success in operating shops in a major retailer's stores won her a slice of retail heaven: a 500-square-foot space on the main floor of Macy's in Manhattan.

After four years in business, White had begun to think of herself as an entrepreneur. She decided to pursue retail full time. She and her partner went their separate ways, and her mother, Dorothy White, became her new partner.

"When I started, it was a hobby," Diane White recalls. "As I got into it, the vision of it became so compelling... I knew If I got to be 65 and hadn't [pursued that vision full time] I would regret it."

White plans to seek private investors for capital to expand to the top 10 U.S. markets for blacks. Her goal is for Blackberry to be a national chain with $100 million in annual revenues. She hopes to expand her offerings with furniture and perhaps more food items. Top sellers now include books, ceramics, and greeting cards.

White attributes much of her success to her focus on building networks. She is on the small-stores board of directors of the Washington-based National Retail Federation and is a member of the Social Venture Network, an organization of 500 socially minded business leaders and entrepreneurs, based in San Francisco. Particularly important, she says, is her willingness to talk to the big guns in retailing and to learn from them. The major players will talk to you if you ask them," she says.

White traded a career and a steady income at the World Bank for short-term leases and cash-flow concerns. Does she miss her former life?

As a 9-to-5 job, it's a good place to work," she says of the World Bank. But as an entrepreneur, she says, she has "the power to have a vision and execute it. If you're lucky, you can have a few things in life that you really feel passionate about."