Do you take this business? - wedding supplies and service industry

Black Enterprise, July, 1992 by Lloyd Gite

The $32 billion, recession-proof wedding industry has more entrepreneurs saying "I do."

Harold Clarke always dreamed of making it big in the fashion business. When the Kingston, Jamaica, native came to the United States in 1969, his objective was clear: He would one day become a household name in the high-stakes fashion industry.

Clarke got his ambitious dream off by designing pants in his spare time while working as an orderly at New York City's Brookdale Hospital. In 1975, Clarke did what countless other aspiring designers have done before him: He attended classes at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. Five years later, Clarke opened I&H Fashions, a women's clothing design studio in lower Manhattan. Weak sales and lack of access to expansion capital, however, forced I&H Fashions out of business only three years after the company was launched.

But Clarke never gave up on his dream. After holding several jobs in 1987, the risk-taking designer took a second stab at entrepreneurship. With a $10,000 loan from his wife, Iona, Clarke opened Harold Clarke Couture and started designing suede and leather dresses and jackets. Iona, a former Chase Manhattan Bank customer service representative, is Harold Clarke Couture's secretary, treasurer and partner.

Today, the Clarkes have moved on to a more profitable segment of the fashion industry--wedding gowns. Harold Clarke Couture's dresses, which wholesale from $1,100 to $2,000 each, are sold in upscale bridal salons in Brooklyn, N.Y.; Beverly Hills; Boston; Chicago; and Newport Beach, Calif. Clarke, who projects $250,000 in company sales this year, says his gowns have appeared in such major bridal magazines as Bride's, Modern Bride, Elegant Bride and Bridal Guide. Clarke, 42, believes that the decision to branch out into the wedding industry was a wise one.

"The wedding industry is recession-proof," boasts Clarke, who designed and manufactured more than 80 wedding dresses last year. "A lot of people are getting married today, and there are a lot of opportunities out there for business owners such as ourselves."

Adds Iona, 45: "Marriage is the thing to do today. Just about all your life you plan for your wedding day, and generally people don't cut corners in this business. Everyone wants to do it right."

The Wedding Business Boom

The Clarkes are right. The wedding industry is big business and boasts a solid outlook. The long-running recession has had little impact on the $32 billion industry. In fact, the bridal business is one segment of the fashion industry that saw its profits rise--from 10% to 12% in 1990.

Industry profits aren't the only figures that are increasing. According to the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) in Hyattsville, Md., last year, 2.4 million Americans were married--and more than 11% of those couples were African-American. The NCHS says that according to preliminary figures, 2,448,000 marriages took place in 1990 compared with 2,404,000 in 1989--a 2% increase. The 1990 figure was the highest since 1984 and represents the third-highest number of marriages in U.S. history.

Now the trend has more Americans putting off marriage until their late 20s and early 30s when they're earning more money and firmly established in their careers. The NCHS says that in 1988--the most recent data available--the first-marriage average age for women was 24.6 years and 26.5 years for men, compared with 1985 ages of 24 for women and 25.9 for men. For African-Americans, those numbers were even higher. The average age when black women first married was 26 in 1988 and 27.6 years for black men.

"Black women are taking more time to get their education, and get their careers under way before getting married and starting a family," says Andrew Sawyer, publisher of Brides Today, a 3-month-old Northbrook, Ill.-based bridal magazine for black brides and grooms.

According to Brides Today, African-Americans spend an average of $7,000 to $10,000 on their weddings. (The national average for a formal wedding is $16,698, according to Modern Bride). With more than 200,000 blacks tying the knot each year at an average cost of $8,000 per wedding, it's estimated that African-Americans shell out more than $1.6 billion annually on weddings. "The bridal industry," observes Sawyer, "is one lucrative industry."

Experts say that divorce is yet another factor that pushes up the marriage rate. According to the Census Bureau, about 1 million couples divorce each year and almost 75% remarry. And the NCHS reports that a majority of women who divorce eventually remarry an average of four years after the previous marriage ended.

The Growth Areas

All across the United States, couples are joining hands and hearts in holy matrimony. But some of the best opportunities for entrepreneurs looking to open a wedding-related business are in the large metropolitan areas. Why? It's simple: A large population translates into more people walking down the aisle, which means more small business opportunities.