Black Owned Business

After a 10-week campaign by black consumers to compel CompUSA to advertise with black-oriented media, the president of the computer retailer is promising to hire a black-owned advertising agency and offer 10% discounts to protesters. "I tell you I wish it hadn't taken so long," CompUSA Chief Executive Jim Halpin said Tuesday in an appearance on the syndicated black radio program "The Tom Joyner Morning Show."

Inner-city redevelopment may be the hot topic in political and academic circles, but Los Angeles County's black entrepreneurs continue looking elsewhere for economic opportunity, according to a Los Angeles Times Poll. The survey, which included responses from more than 1,400 minority business owners, showed that blacks are more likely than other ethnic minorities in the county to be considering relocating their firms.

A landmark black-owned insurer has announced plans to demutualize and merge with an Alabama insurance company. Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Co. of Los Angeles said it will ask policyholders for permission to end its mutually owned status and combine with employee-owned Booker T. Washington Insurance Co. of Birmingham. A mutual insurance company is owned by its policyholders. Golden State would continue operations as a separate entity under a parent corporation to be called A.G.

All afternoon, Los Angeles designer Karl Kani, godfather of urban sportswear, has been waiting for this moment, when he unveils his new line. Jesse Gutierrez, a production coordinator, walks into Kani's downtown office: a sweeping suite of rooms, several filled with comfy leather sofas, glass-top desks covered with awards, banks of television screens playing Kani's commercials, runway shows and rap music. In Gutierrez's hands are two men's suits. "Aren't they sweet?"

Visa USA said it renewed its sponsorship of the Triple Crown, making it the preferred card at Churchill Downs, Pimlico Race Course and Belmont Park, where Charismatic will attempt to become the 12th triple crown winner on Saturday. Financial terms weren't disclosed. . . . Publicis, a French advertising agency that's been on a shopping spree lately, acquired a 49% stake in Chicago-based Burrell Communications, a black-owned agency and specialist in advertising to minorities.

Los Angeles-based clothing designer Karl Kani Infinity Inc. and 19 other California firms rank among the nation's leading African American-owned businesses, according to Black Enterprise magazine's latest report on the the nation's largest black companies. The apparel design and manufacturing concern posted sales of $65 million in 1998, earning it the No. 40 spot on the magazine's list of 100 top industrial and service firms.

Come on a Saturday, says Freddie Carter, the man who has owned Styles Ville for four decades. That's when you'll find a row of eight barbers, buzzing, snipping and shaping heads. That's when you'll breathe in the musky spice of peppery oils, hair tonic, after-shave and an incense called Black Love. That's when you'll hear the clamor of loud talk and quiet whispers, of dominoes slapped down by men playing in the back, and the slice and whir of clippers. Bzzzzz, slash, slash, slash. Bzzzzz.

There are roughly 70,000 black-owned businesses in California, out of a total of 2.5 million companies, says Patricia Means. That's only 3% of the state's businesses and that's not enough, says the publisher of Turning Point, a 7-year-old magazine targeted at readers in the black entrepreneurial class. So Means hopes to help black entrepreneurs increase their chances next Wednesday at the California African-American Business Summit '99 at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles.

With an eye to taking the nation's only black-owned cable network to a distinctive new level, Black Entertainment Television founder and Chairman Robert L. Johnson recently detailed the network's plans to launch a major original programming initiative. The first phase begins this month with production on 10 original movies marking the introduction of BET's Arabesque movies.

In a potential embarrassment for the Los Angeles Community Development Bank, the nation's only African American owner of a full-service dairy has been ousted by his South-Central Los Angeles beverage company's board of directors. Kevin Copeland, 37, said he was fired as president and chief executive in a hostile meeting Wednesday after the three other directors expressed concern that Copeland Beverage Group was nearing default and needed a proven turnaround team at the helm.