Black-owned city businesses rose 70 percent in 5 years

In 2006, advertising executive A. Bruce Crawley, founder of the African-American Chamber of Commerce, stepped down as its chairman and formed Millennium 3 Management, an advertising/public-relations firm focused on the African-American market.

He was just one of the black business owners who helped a growth spurt of black-owned businesses in the region.

According to data released yesterday by the Census Bureau, the number of black-owned businesses increased in the Philadelphia metro area by 70 percent from 2002 to 2007.

This mirrored a national trend in which black-owned businesses grew by 60 percent nationwide, triple the national rate of 18 percent for all U.S. firms.

But although black-owned businesses continued to be one of the fastest-growing segments in the economy, they also tend to be small businesses.

"The issue is not that African- Americans don't know how to start businesses," Crawley said. "They do it at a faster clip than virtually anyone else in the nation."

Rather, the issue is that "many more African-American businesses" have a harder time "facing accessibility to contracts," he said. "What I've seen in Philadelphia is not especially encouraging."

In the city of Philadelphia, 22.5 percent of businesses were black-owned in 2007. In comparison, about 40 percent of the total population was black.

"In a city like Philadelphia, we should have more black-owned businesses," said Nicole Giles, acting executive director of the African-American Chamber of Commerce of Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware.

She agreed that it has been harder for black business owners to attain capital, connections and contracts.

To that end, the chamber hosts workshops to provide small businesses with hands-on training on topics like navigating the certification process and growing from a sub- to a prime contractor.

The chamber also launched a campaign aimed at increasing more patronage of black-owned businesses by African-American consumers.

Nationally, "over 90 percent of dollars spent [by African Americans] do not go to African-American-owned companies," she said.

The census data, based on the 2007 Survey of Business Owners, do not account for the recent recession, which started in December 2007 and lasted into 2009.

Giles said that the recession, "like any other negative financial trend," hit the African-American population harder.

The Philadelphia metropolitan area saw a jump from 24,486 black-owned businesses in 2002 to 41,617 in 2007. About 24 percent of the black-owned businesses in 2007 were in the health-care and social-assistance industry. About 12 percent were in the repair, maintenance, personal- and laundry-services industry.

The metro area includes Philadelphia; Bucks, Chester, Delaware and Montgomery counties; Camden, Burlington, Gloucester and Salem counties in South Jersey; New Castle County, in Delaware; and Cecil County, Md.