business

Apex Noire, the cannabis dispensary headed by former City Councilor and mayoral candidate Tito Jackson, celebrated its grand opening Saturday.

Times were tough for people of color who owned businesses in Boston in 2008. The great recession had kicked off, putting stress on businesses of all sizes. Entrepreneurs faced difficult choices, from whom to lay off to whether to keep the doors open.

The Boston Impact Initiative (BII), a nonprofit impact investment group focused on businesses and entrepreneurship in Massachusetts communities of color, recently announced the launch of a new $20 million investment fund aimed at Black and brown entrepreneurs and local and regional community-controlled real estate ventures.

Robert Glover thinks of fixing shoes like sculpting. “Like making something out of clay. I’m taking a pair of shoes, tearing them apart and putting them back together,” he said, while sitting behind a counter labeled “No refunds” and surrounded by medieval-looking presses, clamps, shoe stands and single loose shoes.

For 19-year-old Ayah Harper from Revere, the civil unrest that followed George Floyd’s death in 2020 served as a motivator to encourage uncomfortable conversations in her elite private high school and start a small business to enact change.

Business owners in a building slated for redevelopment in Nubian Square say they were tricked by the incoming development team, who is now forcing them out of their storefronts. In response, Lawyers for Civil Rights (LCR) has taken up the case and is urging city officials to halt the approval process for the project.

A Hyde Park couple is one step closer to making their financial dreams come true. A deal set to become final next month between the nonprofit Historic Boston Incorporated and business owners Nikia Londy and Baron Langston of Intriguing Hair will pass ownership of the recently restored Vertullo Building, in which the wig shop has conducted business for the last six years.

After a study released last year looking at racial disparities in city contracts showed steep inequalities between dollars going to Black, Latinx and white bidders, Mayor Michelle Wu is now looking to close the gaps with a new pilot program being pitched to the City Council.

America’s biggest bank planted official roots last week in Mattapan Square with the cutting of a Chase-logo ribbon by America’s most powerful banker.

When local community activists approached Gordon Thompson to supply masks to local communities, the CEO of the medical supply company Westnet didn’t hesitate.

In a packed, warmly lit room looking out on Columbus Avenue and the Northeastern University campus, speakers celebrated the grand opening of The Underground Cafe + Lounge Sept. 20.

Supplier diversity is a crucial part of an organization’s success. It’s a way for companies to promote innovation, cultivate networking, boost hiring, and perhaps most important of all, a way for companies to experience the many benefits of diversity while taking steps to close the racial equity gap.