Bright jobs, big city
IT'S TOUGH to be an inner-city business. "Inner city" is often heard as code for poor, ethnic, and dangerous. And certain businesses get typecast as worker-exploiting bad guys. It adds up to Scrooge in the 'hood.
But the facts tell a brighter story.
Some of it is told when the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City, a local nonprofit organization, throws its annual bash honoring fast-growing businesses located in inner cities across the country, as it did Thursday night. For neophytes, it's a celebration of who-knews.
Who knew about the Worcester company Bulbs.com, which sells light bulbs over the Internet? Who knew that one time taxi driver Dawson Rutter started Boston's Commonwealth Worldwide Chauffeured Transportation company? Who knew a landscaping company could have $10 million in revenues, as Christy Webber Landscapes does in Chicago? For an earlier, shakier business venture, Webber had to get her mother to lease a truck for her. Now Webber has more than 150 employees and hires ex-convicts, giving them a second chance.
These companies are on the Initiative's new 2007 Inner City 100 list, an annual ranking. The 100 were chosen from a list of 4,500 nominees. As a group, the CEOs are strikingly mixed: men and women; white, minority, and immigrant; old and young. So they sweep away stereotypes about who can open businesses where. The companies have also been chosen for their impact, for hiring inner-city residents, paying an average annual salary of $48,000, and, in 99 percent of the cases, providing health insurance plans.
Policy advice lurks behind many names on the list. One theme is that businesses can't go it alone. They need other companies, from banks willing to make loans, to well-known large companies willing to do business with them. One Inner City 100 example is Roxbury Technology Corporation, a toner cartridge and imaging supply company in Jamaica Plain that found a productive partner in
Another challenge is sparking future inner-city business successes. In part, this means reaching teenagers. To do this, schools or other institutions might borrow from the science fair model and run business fairs, asking students to create companies.
The Initiative highlights this group by recognizing businesses run by youngsters ages 14 to 20. Among them: Alyssa and Lauren Burgos, 14-year-old twins from Brooklyn who own Bklyn Blingz, a jewelry company that sells products for $12 and less.
Inner cities are known for having problems such as poverty, unemployment, and low incomes. But they should also be known for having plenty of room for business growth. 