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Companies like Target and Walmart have committed to buying more from Black-owned businesses.
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Procurement expert Tiffany Stannard founded a startup to make that happen.
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Stannard is one of Insider’s 100 People Who Will Transform Business in 2022.
After George Floyd’s death at the hands of police in May 2020, businesses responded to mass protests, in part by buying more goods from Black-owned businesses, helping the Black community. We promised to better support you. Target has pledged to spend more than $2 billion on black-owned businesses by 2025. Walmart then pledged to spend $5 billion on products from “diverse suppliers” by 2025.
“The best way to help our community is not just by providing jobs, but by buying from businesses and helping them grow,” said corporate procurement expert Tiffany Stannard.
Attempting to spread this spending across various business owners is something many businesses have not attempted before 2020. Many companies that have tried have found it difficult to manage, Stannard told his Insider.
“Procurement is the biggest cost factor for any organization,” she said. “But there is very little information about these businesses.” The race of the owner is not her point, the data typically collected in her transactions with the business, but suddenly the importance and value of that data has increased. I was.
Two years before George Floyd became famous, Stannard founded Stimulus, a software startup that builds data services to make it easier for large buyers such as retailers, hospitals and governments to make purchases from a variety of businesses. Founded So when diversifying his supply chain became a priority the same year the Stimulus platform launched, the young startup got a boost. Stanard will raise his $1 million in 2021, and in August he raised $2.5 million in a seed round led by Black Ops Ventures.
there is a startup for that
Procurement technology is a growing area for entrepreneurs. One of the reasons is that new constraints and ever-changing supply chain conditions require companies to make faster decisions about which suppliers to buy from in days or weeks rather than months. Because there is
Stannard’s goal is to create a data set that allows buyers to account for diversity.
“The hope of our product is that it really lowers the barriers that exist between companies that are data-driven and less diverse,” she said.
Scale is just one of the data points that businesses may be attracted to, Stannard said. Larger companies can easily overlook smaller suppliers closer to their facilities in favor of larger, more distant suppliers. This increases transportation time, costs, and emissions. However, smaller companies may be more willing to customize their products. And it could also be owned by a woman or a black person.
“We help diverse companies win contracts and create jobs to build better communities. But these billion-dollar companies save time and money. And that doesn’t mean we’re not helping them increase their profit margins,” Stannard said. He said.
Stimulus plans to launch a more hands-on service for small businesses next year. The service uses platform data to help you decide where to expand and how to grow.
“The biggest thing people forget is that every company starts small, right? Someone gave them the first contract.”
Read the original article on Business Insider
