Business owners who are proud to #BuyBlack.

Welcome to Money talksIn this series, we interview people about their relationship with money, their relationships with each other, and how those relationships impact each other.

Nicole Alesi is 42 years old and from New York. Nicole Marie Paperiis a stationery company whose greeting cards have been sold at more than 100 retailers, including TJ Maxx, since 2013. Constance Panton, 52, a Baltimore resident, is Bifties Giftsa gifting platform where people can buy Black products, support small businesses, and donate to charity. The two met in 2020 when Panton was looking for Black businesses selling products that could be included in the Bifties gift boxes.

The following conversation has been lightly condensed and edited.

Nicole: I started out as an illustrator and was looking for affordable ways to communicate my art. During the holidays, people always asked, “Can you draw me a card?” So I decided to mass produce one. At the same time, I was walking through a drugstore stationery shop and realized that I didn’t see any cards that really moved me. The cards always had a message in them, but the font was not my favorite.

I’m tired of coloring my own face, too, you know? I just can’t see the cards representing me or my friends who are getting married. Before same-sex marriage was legalizedand my reaction was, “I don’t see a card that would be suitable for their wedding!” I felt very inspired to draw something I knew and loved, and from then on I started creating.

This is one of my original cards. A wedding card. Are we talking about 2013? It was a really fun time to explore. Social media felt smaller. You could post something and, dare I say, it felt a little more friendly? I was able to find my community of illustrations and creators on Etsy because that was the time Handmade movementIt was post-recession, and everybody was out of work, and people were knitting scarves and making things, and I was like, “Maybe this could be my career.”

It was a great time to try something different. It felt powerful and exciting. Nicole Marie Paperie — which made sense because Marie is my middle name so I’ll never get tired of it and I’ll never regret it — and Paperie, like peanut butter and jelly, goes together perfectly, so why not?

Constance: Bifties started as a gift exchange in 2016. Tamir Rice, Eric Garner — I started to get really frustrated. I started to really feel it, and I thought, “Wouldn’t it be nice if I could give a hug to the black community? Give everybody a hug, because it’s hard to be black in America right now.”

It was the holidays, and my aunt invited me to a gift exchange. You just paid $5, and it went to a women’s charity, and then she matched you with some random people to buy a gift. I thought, “This is awesome. I’m going to do the same thing, but instead of spending $5, I’m going to buy gifts from black businesses.” We’re giving the black community a financial hug.

I have been running this gift exchange program for about four years and have encountered many challenges.George Floydand many people don’t “buy black products.” I’ve had people give gifts to other people, but they bought them at a big box retailer and they had African prints on them. Or they bought something from Mary Kay because the supplier for Mary Kay is black—there are so many different versions of “buy black products.”

Another factor was that a lot of my non-Black friends were like, “This is a call to action for Black people. I don’t know if I should participate.” I was like, “No, no, this is a call to action to support Black businesses!” When you combine all of that together, people who didn’t think they could participate in this opportunity, people who I didn’t think matched the gift I wanted, I decided to launch Bifties as a service in January 2020.

What are Bifties? I simply changed the words “black,” “best,” and “gift” to “Bifties.”

Bifties is a community of black people – yes, that’s a noun – who buy the best black gifts regardless of race, color, religion and creed. The “Donate Black” in parentheses is because a portion of our proceeds go to charity. It’s like “Give Back, Donate Black.”

In 2020, I launched this site and I said, “Okay, now you have no excuses. No matter what you look like, no matter what you believe in, you can go on this site and create your own gifts.” And these gifts are hand-picked by me! I don’t have to worry about you buying it at a big box store or from the Mary Kay lady down the street. I was able to create the aisle that I really wanted, and that’s how Bifties was born.

Nicole: The month she launched this product, January 2020, was really important. It was a crazy year.

Constance: Yes. I launched Bifties in 2020. Then in May of 2020, the George Floyd incident happened, and it was an opportunity — here I was trying to get people to buy Black, no matter who you were, and then all of a sudden the country decided we needed to buy Black. Companies were looking for me. I had what they needed at the time to be in front of their employees, their friends, and their families — and that’s where my success came from.

Nicole: I always say authenticity is key. While my cards are art driven, we are selling a feeling and an emotion. The only way to convey that feeling and emotion over the internet is with jokes, memes, and laughter. If I don’t laugh out loud when I see this card, “Congratulations on Quietly Quitting Smoking” —

Constance: I saw that!

Nicole: I see your smile. I see your face light up. I couldn’t have done that in the 90s or early 2000s, but thanks to Facebook and Instagram, I can just draw and the middleman disappears. It’s very freeing for people like us. Women like us.

Constance and I are both divorced. We’re both moms. When things get hard, I’ll say to her, “We don’t have a choice. This thing has to work.”

We started working together during the Buy Black movement. We had no idea we would get sucked into it. It was like being caught in a vortex. We were flooded with all kinds of emotions, positivity and sympathy, but also negativity, like, “I’m an artist and my work speaks for itself.” It was sad to open my inbox and see things that made me feel like people were buying from me because of how I looked, not because of my work.

Constance: There are a lot of Black-owned businesses that you didn’t know were Black-owned. I was doing market research, putting together my profile, and it was very difficult to verify who was a Black-owned business before 2020 because people weren’t identifying their businesses in that way at the time.

Now, on Facebook and Instagram, you can say “Black owned” and “Women owned,” but before that, I had to search and dig. A lot of companies said, “I don’t want to be identified as Black owned. I don’t want to be categorized.” I get it. This is a real problem. There was a period around 2020 where everyone wanted to be identified as Black-owned, but now that we’ve come out of that period, we’re having the same discussion again. “My work should speak for itself.”

I wanted to sell awesome gifts. And it just so happened that everything in the gift boxes was Black owned.

Nicole: And you just happen to like it!

Constance: You can give it to your friends, but that’s okay because it speaks to everyone.

Nicole: Personally, I would have kept the hashtag (#blackownedbusiness) no matter what. I’m not ashamed – there’s nothing to be ashamed of. One, it’s about bringing joy back to black people, and two, representation is important. I remember when I was a kid, I didn’t see anyone who looked like me. My mom is Italian, and she didn’t even look like me. There are millions of TV shows now with people who look like me, and some people’s moms don’t look like them – I didn’t have that when I was a kid. If anyone, anywhere in the world, saw my work and saw that they looked like me, they would be in my inbox asking, “What do I do about this?” It’s my responsibility to get that information out there.

Constance: Long term, my vision is to have a brick and mortar store that you can come to. I want to be the next Black Hallmark! I want you to come in and everything in the store is Black owned. I want to be in Downtown Disney too!

Nicole: For me, I just want to expand the medium. I want my products to be more than just cards—clothing, homewares, that space. I also want to explore new creative and artistic areas. At the beginning of every year, I always say, “This year I’m going to paint.” I want to paint, I want to consult, I want to mentor. That’s what I love to do—help people.

Constance: She’s so good at helping people, and she’s an incredible businesswoman. It’s incredible. I had two business problems, and I came to Nicole and she said, “Okay, this is what we need to do.”

Nicole: Because we’re going to Downtown Disney!