Black Economic Culture Disaster: When Supporting the Culture Becomes Too Expensive for the Culture

Buy Black.

Support Black ownership.

Keep the dollar circulating within the community.

Build Black Wall Street.

Those messages have value. Black ownership matters. Building businesses that create jobs, assets and generational wealth matters.

But there is another side of the Black economic conversation that deserves the same level of honesty.

A business cannot claim to serve the culture while pricing much of that culture out of becoming regular customers.

That is the economic contradiction Black businesses must confront if the goal is to build a functioning Black economy instead of a collection of premium brands that Black consumers are encouraged to support primarily because they are Black owned.

AfroPop Soda provides an interesting example.

The Oklahoma based Black owned beverage company has built its identity around Black culture, creativity and representation. Founder Jamel Stephens says the company was created because he wanted to see himself and his culture represented in the products he purchased. AfroPop describes itself as unapologetically Black and says its mission is to celebrate Black culture through its products.

That mission deserves recognition.

The company is also doing something that is extremely difficult.

It is attempting to compete in an American beverage industry dominated by enormous corporations with massive manufacturing systems, national distribution networks and marketing budgets that small businesses could never match.

AfroPop has already expanded into more than 100 retail locations and recently announced a distribution partnership with Republic National Distributing Company that could help it reach substantially more consumers.

That is progress.

But there is an economic problem that cannot be ignored.

The price.

AfroPop currently lists its 12 packs online for $35.99.

That works out to almost $3 per can before shipping.

Customers ordering less than $50 worth of products through the company's website are also charged $9.99 in flat shipping.

Compare that with one of the largest competitors in the beverage business.

Walmart currently lists a 12 pack of Coca Cola for approximately $8.57.

That is roughly 71 cents per can.

The comparison is not completely equal.

Coca Cola benefits from enormous production volume, decades of infrastructure, global distribution and purchasing power that a young independent beverage company does not possess.

AfroPop also markets itself more like a craft beverage.

Its products contain seven grams of sugar and are marketed as having no artificial flavors, dyes or artificial sweeteners.

Those differences matter.

But consumers still have to make decisions based on what is in their wallets.

And that is where culture meets economics.

A family standing in a grocery store does not pay its bills with cultural symbolism.

A mother buying beverages for four children has to consider how many drinks she can purchase with $10.

A working family planning a cookout has to calculate how much food, meat, drinks and other supplies it can afford.

A consumer living paycheck to paycheck may genuinely want to support Black owned businesses while simply being unable to justify paying several times the price of a mainstream alternative.

That consumer should not be made to feel as though he or she has failed the culture.

The business has to compete for the consumer too.

Cultural loyalty cannot replace competitiveness

One of the most dangerous habits developing around some Black owned businesses is the idea that Black consumers have a special obligation to purchase the product regardless of price.

That reverses the traditional relationship between a company and its customer.

Businesses are supposed to earn customers.

They earn them through price.

They earn them through quality.

They earn them through convenience.

They earn them through service.

They earn them through innovation.

Culture can strengthen that relationship.

But culture cannot permanently substitute for those fundamentals.

If the primary sales argument becomes, support this because it is Black owned, something important has gone wrong.

The Black consumer becomes responsible for solving the company's economic disadvantages.

That is not sustainable.

A successful Black economy requires Black businesses that people purchase from because the products are competitive, accessible and valuable, not simply because consumers feel culturally obligated to purchase them.

The underserved cannot continuously pay premium prices

This becomes particularly important when businesses say they exist to serve underserved communities.

The word underserved has an economic meaning.

It frequently describes communities where household income is lower, access to capital is weaker, transportation options may be limited and consumers have less discretionary income.

Those are precisely the customers who are most sensitive to price.

If a company creates a culturally targeted product but sets the price beyond what much of its intended community can regularly afford, the company creates a contradiction.

The brand belongs culturally to the community.

But economically, the product becomes a luxury.

That is not necessarily wrong.

There is nothing improper about creating premium products for consumers willing and able to pay premium prices.

Black entrepreneurs should absolutely participate in luxury markets.

Black people should own premium brands.

But a company cannot simultaneously build its identity around broad community representation while ignoring whether the broader community can afford regular participation.

There is a difference between selling to Black consumers and building an economy with Black consumers.

This is bigger than AfroPop

AfroPop should not become the villain in this conversation.

In fact, its challenge helps demonstrate a much larger structural problem confronting Black businesses.

Small companies frequently pay more for manufacturing.

They pay more for ingredients because they purchase smaller quantities.

They pay more for packaging.

They pay more for shipping.

They may receive less favorable financing.

They have less bargaining power with distributors.

They cannot spread marketing and administrative costs across billions of units.

Those disadvantages inevitably affect prices.

AfroPop's founder has acknowledged that beverage manufacturing is a volume business, and the company's new distribution partnership is intended partly to increase that volume and become more competitive.

That may ultimately help reduce the economic disadvantage.

But this is precisely why Black economic development must become more sophisticated.

The solution cannot simply be telling consumers to pay more.

The solution has to include helping Black businesses produce for less.

Black Wall Street needs supply chains, not slogans

If Black owned companies consistently have higher production costs, the Black economic strategy should focus on lowering those costs.

That means Black owned manufacturing.

Black owned distribution.

Black owned warehouses.

Black owned trucking companies.

Black owned packaging companies.

Black controlled investment capital.

Purchasing cooperatives that allow smaller businesses to buy materials collectively.

Shared production facilities that reduce manufacturing expenses.

Retail networks that give Black products shelf space without crushing margins.

That is what an economic ecosystem looks like.

If ten Black beverage companies separately purchase cans, bottles, labels and ingredients, each company may have limited negotiating power.

If those businesses collectively purchase millions of units of packaging, their negotiating position changes.

That is economic cooperation.

The original idea behind Black Wall Street was not simply that Black people owned businesses.

It was that businesses existed within an interconnected commercial ecosystem.

One business purchased from another.

Professionals served other businesses.

Money circulated.

Assets accumulated.

Institutions developed.

That is significantly different from today's version of Black business advocacy, which too often ends with telling consumers to pay a premium.

Providing less purchasing power is still providing less

The phrase providing less does not necessarily mean the product itself is inferior.

AfroPop may offer ingredients and flavors some consumers prefer over conventional soda.

The issue is purchasing power.

For roughly $36, a consumer purchasing AfroPop online receives 12 cans before shipping costs.

At a current Walmart price of $8.57 per 12 pack, that same approximately $36 could purchase four 12 packs of Coca Cola, with money remaining.

That is approximately 48 cans compared with 12.

Again, Coca Cola's enormous scale makes that comparison inherently unequal.

But the customer's household budget does not disappear because one competitor is smaller.

That is the brutal reality of business.

Customers compare what their money buys.

A company that provides fewer units for the same amount of household spending must provide enough additional value to convince customers that the difference is worthwhile.

Culture can be part of that additional value.

It cannot be the entire value proposition.

Black businesses must compete outside the Black community too

There is another reason pricing matters.

The strongest Black owned companies should not have to survive exclusively on Black customers.

They should compete for everyone.

A Black owned soda company should want White consumers buying it.

Hispanic consumers.

Asian consumers.

International consumers.

Convenience stores.

Restaurants.

Hotels.

Universities.

Airlines.

Corporate cafeterias.

Major retailers.

Government facilities.

The objective should be building a Black owned corporation with a universal customer base.

That is how ownership creates wealth.

If a Black owned company depends primarily on Black consumers accepting higher prices because they want to support Black ownership, the company's growth may eventually reach a ceiling.

Coca Cola does not ask consumers to support Coca Cola culture.

Pepsi does not survive because customers believe purchasing Pepsi is a social responsibility.

They compete ruthlessly for price, distribution, shelf space, marketing and customer loyalty.

Black companies seeking national scale eventually have to compete on those same fundamentals.

Affordability is part of serving the community

There should also be pride in creating affordable Black owned products.

Premium should not automatically mean progress.

A Black owned company that figures out how to sell a good product for $1 and make a profit may have a greater economic impact on underserved communities than a company selling a similar product for $4.

Why?

Because accessibility creates volume.

Volume creates revenue.

Revenue creates jobs.

Volume creates distribution leverage.

Volume lowers manufacturing costs.

Lower costs can create better pricing.

Better pricing can create more customers.

More customers create additional volume.

That is how companies scale.

The economic goal should not always be extracting the highest possible margin from every Black consumer.

Sometimes the stronger strategy is creating a price that allows hundreds of thousands or millions of consumers to participate.

Supporting Black business has to become a two way agreement

Black consumers absolutely should consider supporting Black owned businesses.

But Black businesses also have responsibilities to Black consumers.

Support should become a two way economic agreement.

The consumer says:

I will consider spending my money with you because your ownership matters to the economic future of our community.

The business should respond:

And I will work aggressively to provide you with competitive value because your financial future matters too.

That relationship is healthier than guilt.

It is healthier than obligation.

And it is much more capable of building a sustainable economy.

The goal is not to criticize AfroPop for attempting to build a successful beverage company.

The opposite is true.

Black Wall Street Economy wants to see companies like AfroPop become enormous.

We want Black owned products in every major grocery chain.

We want Black manufacturers.

Black distributors.

Black bottlers.

Black logistics companies.

Black investors.

And Black owned brands competing nationally and internationally.

But getting there requires confronting an uncomfortable economic reality.

Culture does not repeal the laws of competition.

If Black owned companies want Black consumers to make them part of their everyday lives, affordability has to become part of the strategy.

If the people a brand represents cannot regularly afford what the brand sells, the economic relationship eventually breaks down.

And when Black businesses outprice the Black consumers they hope will sustain them, nobody truly wins.

The consumer loses access.

The company loses volume.

The community loses circulation.

And Black economic development loses an opportunity to become something larger than a slogan.

The next generation of Black Wall Street cannot simply ask Black people to buy Black.

It has to make buying Black economically make sense.