Pitch Perfect: Celebrating Black Business Success in the City of Staunton

If you ventured into Staunton's Gypsy Hill Park on a recent September weekend, chances are you stepped into the middle of a powerful current of history. Once a sprawling public fairground that was open to the City's Black residents only a single day out of the year, the park bandstand is now home to the annual African-American Heritage & Multicultural Festival--a vibrant, deeply-rooted gathering that is the oldest and largest celebration of its kind in the Shenandoah Valley. For years, the Festival has included celebrations of worship, creation, artistry, connection, and shared understanding. This year, for the first time, it was also the stage for several local Black businesses to stand before the community in celebration of their journeys as entrepreneurs as well.

Otis and Coushatta Hawkins of Coushatta's Creations celebrate their winnings at the first SBBC x SCCF Pitch Competition. Coushatta's Creations won second place and took home the People's Choice Award at the event.

The history of Black entrepreneurship in Staunton is deeply embedded in the foundational history of the City itself: even as the exploitation of Black laborers powered the Shenandoah Valley's prosperous farms and fields before the Civil War, when only about one-sixth of the area's African-American population was free to earn an independent living, we still have record of early blacksmiths, shoemakers, laborers, domestics, and barbers. After the Emancipation Proclamation, these early Black entrepreneurs paved the way for a small but vigorous business economy. In 1891, Staunton had 26 Black-owned businesses that included barbershops, grocery stores, cobble shops, a restaurant, and a boarding house. By 1904 this number had reached almost 50 independent businesses, including a hotel, a newspaper, a meat market, more restaurants, an insurance company, a jewelry store, multiple doctors, and a lawyer.

But historical record--and living memory--tell us that this growth has not been linear. With the Urban Renewal Project of the 60’s, Black business took a steep decline that has had a significant and lasting impact on the vitality of the community even today. The process for regaining that footing has been slow. 60 years later, Black-owned businesses still face many challenges--including limited access to capital, training & support, ability to attract and retain a solid customer base, and building advantageous professional relationships.

The Staunton Black Business Collective believes it's time to change this part of the story, too.

The idea for a pitch competition created by and for Black entrepreneurs originated within the SBBC, a self-organized group of community business owners, entrepreneurs, and non-profit founders dedicated to the advancement of Black businesses in the Staunton community. Pitch competitions are widely recognized as one of the primary ways for an established business to access the support funding and investor attention necessary to grow to their full potential--but where do those investors come from in the first place? And how do you learn to pitch your business, anyway? If you aren't lucky enough to have connections to Shark Tank or powerful family friends, even that starting line feels a long way off. But what if you could start local--pitching to your own community and potential customers instead of a table of sharks, and learning the art of the pitch in the process?

Keisha Nicholson, of the Staunton Black Business Collective (left), and Gabrielle Cash, ERC Fellow through the Shenandoah Community Capital Fund (right), pose with pitch competition winner Simone McKelvey, founder of Simone & Tuesday, LLC (center)

Through close collaboration with SCCF, that idea became a fully realized project. Supported by grant funding from the City of Staunton and the generosity of private donors, SCCF and the SBBC developed a plan to use the framework of a pitch competition to provide local businesses with not only cash prizes and community engagement, but specifically tailored and culturally sensitive training preparing them for the rigors and rewards of championing their business before an audience.

"It was an opportunity to shift awareness, mindset, and perspective around traditional scalability and investment worthiness for businesses," says ERC Fellow Gabrielle Cash, who led the coordination of efforts surrounding the competition as part of her ongoing work to drive shifts in opportunity for Black and Brown entrepreneurs in the Valley. "As well as the dynamic and engagement of the local community being investors in your business."

The team worked diligently to craft a concise, focused pitch training that included a totally bespoke pitch planning workbook, in-person sessions to teach fundamentals and workshop pitches with real-time feedback, free professional marketing services and interview experience, and, of course, the final pitch competition itself. But even creating access to those resources or the training and acumen to utilize them effectively was still only half of the vision.

In the words of Sabrina Burress, Director of the Staunton Black Business Collective, "Our work is not just about helping businesses find their voice, it's about making sure the community hears that voice--or in this case, pitch. We hope[d] to build lasting connections and networks for business owners.”

The best venue for such an opportunity, then, felt obvious.

"The African-American Heritage & Multicultural Festival is such an integral part of our community," Burress said, calling it "an honor" to be included in the official lineup of activities. Incorporating the competition into the Festival agenda not only created an opportunity for increased exposure for all of the participating businesses and an engaged target audience, but a chance for the community to see what successes are taking place locally and to bring awareness to the entrepreneurial spirit alive in Staunton.

"Beyond [the participants], we also had an opportunity to elevate visibility for other businesses that have worked with the Staunton Black Business Collective," said Cash. "Through this grant funding, we were able to print this Profiles of Success booklet that discussed business stories for members of SBBC, and thus provided an opportunity for them to receive recognition--and, hopefully, support--as a byproduct of the pitch competition." Many of these businesses are also SCCF clients.

Awareness of their stories and visibility for their businesses weren't the only prizes up for grabs that day, however.

Formal cash prizes of $1000 for first place, $500 for second place, and $250 for third place were awarded based on judging by an independent panel of local business experts unaffiliated with either organization. A People's Choice Award was also selected through public opinion--audience members were encouraged to vote for their favored winner by placing dollar bills into jars for each participant, which were also awarded to their respective candidates as a supplemental cash prize. The three winning businesses also received tickets to the Founders & Futurists conference hosted by SCCF and the Shenandoah Valley Tech Council at Blue Ridge Community College's Plecker Center. All applicants to the pitch competition were given a complimentary short-term membership to the Staunton Innovation Hub, a local co-working space for startup and independent businesses to operate, collaborate, and grow with quality resources and a supportive community in a professional space.

From left to right: first place winner Simone McKelvey, second place winners Otis Hawkins and Coushatta Hawkins, and third place winners Jeffrey Placide and Cutter Chisnell.

First place went to Simone McKelvey's Simone & Tuesday, a natural skincare solutions business that produces high-quality, affordably-priced soaps, scrubs, body butters, and other self-care goods with a focus on principled business practice and ingredient transparency.

Coushatta's Creations, which took home second place and the People's Choice Award, is the project of wife and husband team Coushatta and Otis Hawkins, who provide baked goods and sweet treats with a rich family history.

Third place winner HEARD the store, by Jeffrey Placide and Cutter Chisnell, is a boutique fashion destination with a focus on quality, experience, and sustainability, sourcing vintage goods and like-minded local designers.

While the pitch competition was an unquestioned success in the eyes of the organizers and participants, both the SBBC and SCCF see their work as far from finished--and the Festival day as only one peak in an ongoing campaign to shift the fundamental landscape of business equality through both the support we provide and the stories we tell. Per the SBBC's website, "the Staunton Black Business Collective is committed to empowering Black businesses in our community, through collaboration, opportunity building, connection and support. We believe that every Black business has not just the ability, but the right to thrive here in the Valley and beyond!"

To read more about the Pitch Competition from the SBBC and to watch the highlight reel, you can visit the SBBC website's event page here. For more information on the profiles of success referenced in this article, you can click here.

To stay tuned on further activities coming from the partnership between the SBBC and Shenandoah Community Capital Fund, follow our website and subscribe to our ongoing newsletter.

Research cited in this article comes from the Staunton Black Business Collective, the City of Staunton, and the Staunton Parks & Recreation Department. Special thanks are given to Gabrielle Cash, Sabrina Burress, and Chris Lassiter for their work and contributions in shaping the narrative of this story.