The Weekly - July 7, 2020 - 12

FEATURE

Slim Pickins
Outfitters

before. These retailers claim they
don't know who my market is, and
don't see why they should take a
chance on me, but my reputation
shows they should.

Jahmicah Dawes
Slim Pickins Outfitters
When we started this shop back

Jahmicah
Dawes

12 THE WEEKLY / OUTDOOR RETAILER SUMMER 2020

in 2017, I asked everyone I ran
into if they knew of any other
Black shops in the nation. For a
long time no one knew of another,
until I learned about Mark Boles at
Intrinsic Provisions. That baffles
me. When you're about nature and
the outdoors, whatever passion
you're into, regardless of what
drives you to be out there, you take
in your surroundings and you value
the diversity-the plants, animals,
trees. There is never an absence
of color. Yet when we talk about
gatekeepers and advocates of the
outdoors most of those faces are
white. It doesn't make sense to me.
They want to diversify the outdoors
and become anti-racist if they get
to control the narrative and the
finances. That's not how it works.
I think it sometimes gets lost
on white people that for so long us
Black people...we were owned. Or
we couldn't own things like land
and businesses. So when you finally have the opportunity to own
something, there is this ancestral
connection and this shop takes on
a new meaning. I'll do whatever I
can to make it succeed.

The biggest issue we have at
the shop is access to capital.
We started our business on
$56,000 from local investors.
I've met umpteen time with
banks and when they look at my
debt-to-profit ratio they tell me
what I need to change. I do that,
but there's still another barrier.
One thing I love about the
outdoor industry is that it gets
the concept of community.
As a Black retailer, I have the
opportunity to reach out into
these other spaces, places these
brands might not think to go.
There may not be many of us in
this space but we're a village.
We watch out for one another.
We're starting to talk about our
experiences with racism and
being taken advantage of. I see
my job as a being an advocate
for the outdoors, as well as being an advocate for my people in
the outdoors, to make sure that
others can find the knowledge
they're looking for. I'm not Rue
Mapp. I am not Melanin Base
Camp, and that's okay. We all
have our roles to play.

F R O M TO P : FAC E B O O K , FAC E B O O K

worked to get a patent, and I had a
great attorney. It was a small firm
and I was a small business and
we saw the value in each another.
That's been one of the joys of this
journey, finding other small business owners and recognizing the
worth in one another.
Most of the things that have
happened with this company are
just the ups and downs of starting
a business-any business. I've done
business accelerator programs in
my hometown and learned more
about manufacturing, e-commerce, and the paperwork side of
doing business.
I get a lot of nos. I can't always
tell if I'm being paranoid, or if it's
because I am new to the market. I
don't know if people always understand what I do, and they decide
they don't want to take a chance on
my product because it's new.
Most of my sales for the first
three or four years came from
individuals-they still do. Initially,
I thought that my goal was to be
in stores. It's extremely difficult
to break into those spaces and
I didn't realize that because I'd
never done anything like this
https://slimpickinsoutfitters.com/
The Weekly - July 7, 2020

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