Poet and entrepreneur Stephanie Pruitt-Gaines has spent years teaching artists how to turn their craft into a profitable business. Midway into the pandemic, she took that leap herself.
Pruitt-Gaines started test-driving her new venture, Nailed It Myself, this year, providing artist-designed, dry-polish nail strips for easy and gorgeous manicures — no salon costs, steady painting hand or drying time needed. Her vision involves innovative technology applications to transfer art and poetry onto fingernails.
As an entrepreneur, Pruitt-Gaines knows the value of market testing, and she found the perfect place to do some research: the Nashville Black Market. Setting up around town, the market is the brainchild of cousins Carlos Partee and Javvon Jones, who decided to mix business with family in 2018. They were on a mission to give Black businesses exposure. Both men believed creating the market could help businesses gain customers before the stressful experience of searching for a location to rent.
“Nashville rent is expensive,” says Jones. “It’s a lot of Black excellence going on, and it’s not a lot of light being shone on them. We were trying to figure out how to make it more noticeable.”
The market features Black-owned businesses, and you can currently find them at the Nashville Farmers’ Market on the first Friday night of every month. They also participate in festivals, like the upcoming Juneteenth celebration on Buchanan Street. Partee and Jones are creating a cultural experience for the Nashville community and empowering Black businesses while curating family-friendly events.
“Nashville has massive event growth,” says Partee. “We need a piece of that. We’re aiming to be Nashville’s front door to Black-owned businesses.”
Pruitt-Gaines says the market helped her test products, find a target audience, meet sales goals and get immensely valuable feedback before launching her website. “Vending with them quickly moved Nailed It Myself from the messy, question-filled first step to a validated business concept,” she says. “My first time vending at a Nashville Black Market event, I sold several designs with over 200 transactions from the thousands of customers who attended! I have no idea how long it might have taken to get 200 customers to purchase from a cold website launch.”
According to the founders, the first event brought in more people than they could have imagined. “What we decided to do was start a pop-up,” says Partee. “That’s what we were calling it at the time. … We did a pop-up shop in North Nashville, and we had 15 vendors sign up and one food truck. We had 1,000-plus people show up that day for the event.” Over the years, the owners utilized various locations such as churches, community parking lots and event venues to host pop-ups. According to Partee, vendors can make more than $1,000 apiece in sales. He also says the market helped businesses gross more than $205,000 in 2021.
Many vendors have gravitated to the market to sell their products. Businesses come from different states to participate. At a typical event, at least 60 vendors rent out booths, paying $150 on Friday nights and $250 during festivals. Visitors can expect to find anything from soap to home-baked goods to booksellers.
Erika Rucker is the founder of Mellow Bar, a company that specializes in creating vegan cold-process soap and natural skincare products. She says she’s grateful for the Nashville Black Market, especially because the pandemic impacted many businesses — including hers.
“Being a small business, I wasn’t prepared for a storefront, and of course, the pandemic placed most small businesses on pause,” Rucker says. “As time passed, more businesses were ramping back up, and I needed a platform to connect with customers on a personal level.”
With e-commerce, Rucker found it difficult to describe the texture and fragrance of her products without having in-person conversations with customers. “I tried different pop-ups, markets, etc.” she says. “Most were a waste of time. It could have been the location, low traffic flow or maybe not quite the target market I was searching for. A person told me about the Nashville Black Market last October, and I’m so happy I connected! I became a vendor last October and I have continued to be a vendor every month afterward.”
Rucker tells the Scene that the platform has allowed her to connect with many people, and that the professionalism and support vendors receive are top-notch. Rucker’s customer base has doubled since being a part of Nashville Black Market. “Our city needs this,” she says.
Pruitt-Gaines can be booked for private events as well, and she aspires for Nailed It Myself to be the official nail wrap of national sports leagues, universities and sororities. She believes the Nashville Black Market is filling a need in the marketplace for businesses and consumers who want to consciously champion equity.
“There are very real systemic and historical reasons for the wealth and entrepreneurship gaps in our community,” she says. “While some dangerously regressive folks are trying to outlaw us, even [for] talking about and teaching that history, partners like the Nashville Black Market are out here actively helping to solve it.”
