Finding untapped opportunities
Magazine founder says fortunes have changed for minority-owned companies

by Liza Prezioso Linnell
for Virginia Business
July 2006

Earl G. Graves Sr. has monitored the economic climate for minority-owned businesses for more than 35 years. The founder of New York-based Black Enterprise magazine at one time might have told black entrepreneurs to avoid Virginia because of the state’s “massive resistance” to desegregation in the 1950s. “It was here that issues were the greatest,” he says. “It was here that they closed down the schools.”

But his opinion of the commonwealth has changed. In recent years, Graves says, Virginia has made great strides. “There is much to be said that is positive now about what’s going on here.” For minority businesses, Virginia has become “a comfortable place for business, both national and international, to set up their offices.”

In fact, the number of black-owned companies in the state is increasing. They numbered 41,149 in 2002 (the most recent year tracked by the U.S. Census Bureau). That represents an increase of more than 20 percent since 1997.

Graves visited Chantilly in May to speak at the Virginia Business Opportunity Fair sponsored by the Virginia Minority Supplier Development Council. The organization helps connect minority-owned companies with large corporations, government agencies and nonprofits.

Graves, a former Green Beret, founded Black Enterprise in 1970. He also headed the nation’s largest minority-controlled Pepsi-Cola franchise in Washington, from 1990 to 1998. In 2002, Fortune magazine named Graves one of the 50 most powerful and influential African-Americans in corporate America.

Graves attributes his achievements to persistence. “You can’t take ‘no’ for an answer,” he says. “You’ve got to figure out how to get around the person who said ‘no’ to you.”

Persistence is slowly beginning to pay off for minority-owned companies that want to do business with Virginia’s state government. A survey released in 2004 found that companies owned by women and minorities received less than 1.5 percent of the state’s procurement dollars.

A push to diversify the state’s vendors begun by former Gov. Mark R. Warner has been continued by Gov. Timothy M. Kaine. A key element of the effort is getting companies to sign up for eVA (Electronic Virginia), a computerized procurement system that state agencies use to request bids and plan orders. “We’re doing all we can to work with minority businesses to make sure they participate in our eVA program,” Kaine says.

But state government is just one arena of opportunity for minority-owned companies in Virginia. Graves’ advice to them was to target Northern Virginia because it is the home of many Fortune 500 companies, a strong tech sector and many federal agencies.

Graves also recommends cultivating relationships on different levels. One suggestion is for business owners to network through their banker. “Who does he know, who does she know, that can open the door?” Yet relationships are only as good as the follow-through, he says. “When you promise people you’re going to do something, you do it.”

Try to be a person people can look up to,” Graves adds. “I try to do that. What you’re really talking about is character.”