Business

Daymond John Offers District Entrepreneurs Tips for Success

James Wright WI Staff Writer

Daymond John, founder, president and chief executive officer of the $8 billion clothing brand FUBU and investor on the ABC show “Shark Tank,” came to the District on Oct. 13 to offer Black entrepreneurs tips for success.

John sponsored a “Road to Black Entrepreneurship’s Day presented by Chase for Business” at the Gathering Spot in Northwest. The event served as a part of Chase for Business efforts to reach out to minority businesses to assist them in coaching, accessible education, and banking solutions.

LaGreg Harrison and Muhammed Hill are co-owners of The Museum DC, a fashion and arts premium boutique located on Rhode Island Avenue in Northeast. They participated in a panel discussion led by John on what it takes to be an entrepreneur and the programs Chase for Business offers.

Harrison said he looked forward to interacting with John.

“Daymond John is considered a legend in the fashion industry,” he said. “He started in fashion and has moved on to real estate and other areas. I am grateful for his advice.”

5 FUBU founder and CEO Daymond John makes a point as Kristina Sicard, LeGreg Harrison and Muhammed Hill listen closely. (Anthony Tilghman/The Washington Informer)

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THE MUSEUM DC

The Museum DC has collaborated with the Seth Curry brand and Under Armour, based in Baltimore, to re-release the Curry, a shoe the NBA star wore during his first MVP and NBA championship wins in 2015. The Curry shoe has a D.C.-inspired colorway.

Additionally, The Museum is curating a small business incubator in Ward 8, called Incubate the Eight, that will begin with fashion and lifestyle products with plans to expand to food and beverages.

Harrison and Hill also partner with D.C. public and charter schools to offer a student merit program. Those students with good grades can receive exchange vouchers for exclusive Museum gear.

Darla Harris, a senior vice president and business consultant for Chase, said The Museum DC owners worked well with the mentoring program.

“They are doing phenomenally,” Harris said. “They know what it takes to succeed and what the community wants. They have a passion for what they are doing, and they love it.”

DAMON JOHN’S ADVICE

John said he, like The Museum DC owners, started from humble beginnings and had to work hard with the help of his mother to build FUBU.

“My mother took out a $100,000 loan on the house she owned and where we lived,” John said. “I used the house to sew and manufacture my clothes. At one point, I tried to get a loan for my business but got turned down 27 times.”

However, John said banks shouldn’t be viewed as insensitive to the needs of struggling entrepreneurs.

“The bank is there to advise you,” he said. “It’s a tool. It is how you use that tool. A lot of people in our community use the checking cashing store as a bank. They take 6% out of your paycheck. At the bank, there is no fee. A lot of people, including entrepreneurs, say that banks aren’t for me. Not true. It is for you. If you have simple knowledge on how they work, it will take you a long way.”

Kristina Sicard, a senior vice president and business consultant for Chase, said she gets many funds requests from entrepreneurs at all stages of their operations.

“When they ask me for money, I say to them, ‘Get more clients,’” she said. “It is important to build relationships with different types of people. You need a relationship with a CPA, an attorney, an economic development specialist, and someone in the mayor’s office.”

John agreed with Sicard on the importance of entrepreneurs’ growing professional contacts.

“It’s about networking,” he said. “People love to get behind a winner. I got to where I am by networking.”

WI @JamesWrightJr10

‘The Till Trilogy’: Sheds New Light on History, Issues a Call to Action

D. Kevin McNeir Special to the Washington Informer

The buzz continues throughout the Greater Washington Area as more people experience the riveting threeplay event, “The Till Trilogy,” now on stage through Nov. 20 at the Atlas Performing Arts Center in Northeast, performed in rotating repertory and presented by Mosaic Theater Company.

The trilogy of works includes: “The Ballad of Emmett Till,” “That Summer in Sumner” and “Benevolence.”

Written by Ifa Bayeza and directed by Talvin Wilks, Mosaic Theater’s artistic director, Reginald L. Douglas, referred to the series of plays as “a testament to the power of theater to interrogate our past, provide insight into the world around us and inspire action and empathy as we look ahead.”

In fact, the playwright’s work, which focuses on the brief life and tragic murder of Emmett Till in 1955 in Money, Mississippi, sheds new light on history while calling us to action today.

Bayeza said the evolution of the work might be best described as “organic.”

“My first effort, ‘The Ballad of Emmett Till,’ when it was performed in Chicago in 2008, had wonderful moments and achieved many things but something wasn’t right to me,” she said. “I was trying to stuff too much into one play. The story was so full and rich that I couldn’t get everything in.”

“When a colleague at the Fountain Theatre in Los Angeles wanted to bring the ‘Ballad’ to the city, I knew that the venue was too small for the play and the ensemble. So, I began to explore how to make it manageable for small theaters. I truncated the play to just be Emmett’s story, following his journey the last seven days of his life and into the netherworld as well where he attempts to understand what has happened to him. It made it a much stronger play,” she said.

Bayeza, while pleased with the success of “Ballad” and the two other plays that would follow, said she began the process because she wanted to highlight the details behind a youth’s rite of passage – tragically aborted because of the intrusion of white violence.

5 The “Till” movie poster hanging in the E Street Cinema. (Robert R. Roberts/The Washington Informer)

In the second and third parts of the trilogy, she also gave attention to Mose Wright, Emmett’s uncle, who witnessed the youth’s abduction and who later testified in court against the accused murders, Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam – an act which placed his life and the lives of his family in grave danger.

She also brought greater attention to the corps of reporters from the Black press, specifically members of Ebony and Jet, who attended the trial and shared the details with readers across the nation.

As Bayeza said, it remains a story that we can ill-afford to forget.

“The Till saga is a national foundational myth,” she said. “It’s a story for now – it’s always a timely story. We continue to return to it because we must. This story had so many crossroads of experience from the assassinations of the Kennedys to being the spark of the Civil Rights Movement to being the synergy and beginning of social music phases and genres like rock and roll.”

“My hope as an artist is that this story will serve as a means of healing and an acknowledgement of so many others who have endured trauma over the generations. It has a poetic resonance that allows for the inclusion of numerous manifestations of symbolism that I explore throughout the

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three plays.”

“ Ultimately, I wanted the trilogy to lift up others, especially mothers like Mamie Till, who are still going through similar forms of trauma and the loss of children either to urban or police violence. Before we can return to battle for justice and lead the next form of protest, we must experience the grief so the healing process can begin,” Bayeza said.

“The Till Trilogy” continues through Nov. 20. For more information, visit www.mosiactheater.org. WI @mcneirdk