Helping retailers support Black-owned brands with the right resources to thrive

How can retailers do more business with existing diverse suppliers and build a strong pipeline of contract-ready diverse suppliers that have access to the resources they need? Find out how Next Street can help.

The Retail Landscape

Consumer demand for Black-owned brands is high and retailers are responding to this moment, increasingly prioritizing meaningful commitments to supplier diversity
And, meeting the demand is not only good for retailers but good for business – companies that embrace supplier diversity yield 144% higher ROI (Hackett Group)
However, retail supplier diversity teams charged with delivering on these goals face real challenges in sourcing, vetting, and supporting Black-owned brands that can meet their companies’ and customers’ needs
Retailers bear high counterparty risk and incur additional costs when their suppliers are not prepared to work with large merchants and lack the capacity and resources needed to deliver on their contracts. Yet most supplier diversity teams don’t have the capacity of channels to provide effective, direct support to the Black-owned brands they partner with

Helping partners become shelf-ready

Addressing these challenges requires building a pipeline of shelf-ready suppliers and supporting their continued success. This can be achieved by connecting Black-owned brands to essential resources that they need to grow and thrive – access to quality business advice, resources, and capital they need to scale their operations to fulfill contract opportunities

With almost 20 years of experience, Next Street has supported more than 4 million small businesses (70% POC SMBs), helped redirect $4.5 billion in capital to those entrepreneurs, and worked with clients like DoorDash, Walgreens, Verizon, Starbucks and more

We can help you support Black-owned brands in becoming shelf-ready and succeeding by providing current and potential suppliers with high quality business training curriculum, 1:1 coaching, and access to a range of responsible capital solutions designed to meet their needs

Addressing key challenges with the right approach

For retailers seeking to source and onboard more Black-owned brands, we can leverage our networks and go-to-market team to help build a pipeline of diverse suppliers and assess potential suppliers’ shelf-readiness with our proprietary diagnostic tools.
For vendors that are not yet shelf-ready, Next Street designs and delivers culturally competent programs and curriculum to help retailers partner for performance with Black-owned brands. Our curriculum and approach have been developed with business owners of color and support brand performance by providing the knowledge and tools needed to be successful vendors.
Next Street’s capital marketplace helps ease the financial burden of Black-owned brands looking to scale their operations to fulfill contract opportunities by providing easy online access to responsible, affordable capital options. Our customized Scale platform provides access to a full range of curated, vetted financing products all in one place, and can integrate directly with a range of retailer platforms to help vendors access the capital they need to deliver and succeed.

Next Street also has a full suite of solutions to meet your needs including: go-to-market support, strategic planning, program design and delivery, capital advisory, and more. Check out our special RILA x Learning program designed exclusively for retailers.

Relevant client work has included:

DoorDash: Next Street designed and implemented an educational curriculum for DoorDash Accelerator for Local Goods, a supplier diversity incubator onboarding program for local market CPG brands. Read our case study to learn more.
Walgreens: Next Street developed an assessment and helped streamline Walgreens supplier diversity outreach to underrepresented small businesses