Courtesy of BlackLit via Nia-Tayler Clark
Nia-Tayler Clark
At some point in the near future, Nia-Tayler Clark, in her pursuit to secure capital for her budding business enterprise, will be — pun wholly intended — pitch-perfect.
She must have been pretty persuasive, however, during the pitch competition at Fort Worth’s Global Entrepreneurship Week last month.
She won, pitching to judges her concept, BlackLit, a monthly book subscription box that features the work of Black authors and Black entrepreneurs. She outlined her company’s mission and the need for capital to meet a growing demand.
“Our biggest need right now is building a team,” Clark says in a phone interview. “Thus far, BlackLit has been run out of my one-bedroom apartment.”
With the help of her 4-year-old.
“It’s gotten us pretty far, but we need to hire.”
There actually has been some expansion. BlackLit recently moved to a warehouse location in Farmers Branch to ship and fulfill orders and answer customer inquiries. It employs four part-timers.
During the holiday season, Clark says subscriptions will grow to 500 this month, though typically through the year, BlackLit is doing 200 – 250 a month. That’s not because the demand doesn’t exist. It’s the manpower.
“Several corporate clients and organizations have reached out to buy large quantities, but because of a lack of capital and hiring needs, we can’t fulfill those orders,” she says.
“Increasing our capacity is the next step for us.”
Two price packages are offered: A mini-mailer priced at $39.99 a month. It includes one book by a Black author, one custom bookmark designed by a Black artist, and one shirt designed by a Black creative. The big bundle includes a book, bookmark, T-shirt, and three to five additional products from Black-owned businesses. It also comes with discussion probes on the book for journal entries or to engage with friends reading the same book.
There’s a box for fiction, nonfiction, and children's books. There’s another box for faith traditions.
A 10th-grade English teacher at Irving High School, Clark says she was spurred to create the business when a Black student said he didn’t read and didn’t want to because he didn’t relate to any of the characters in books.
“His classmates started agreeing with him,” she says. “It stayed on my mind. At that moment, I made a decision: How can I change his mind.”
While back in her hometown in Maryland, the seed was planted for BlackLit when she stumbled over a collection of children’s books featuring Black subjects, written by Black authors. Her concept, she said, was not designed to be exclusive but rather a means to stimulate young readers with relatable and relevant content in the Black community. It is designed to foster well-roundedness and curiosity through reading.
“Reading impacts our communication,” Clark says. “It directly reflects how we communicate verbally and through the written word. Reading also exposes us to worlds that are familiar to ours but also to those that are completely different. Some of our kids will never travel outside of our ZIP code, but a book will take them all over the world.”
When Clark stepped into the world of entrepreneurship, she had no background in it, other than a “willingness and determination not to quit.” Balancing her job as a teacher and her business has resulted in “a lot of early mornings, a lot of late nights, and a lot of missed sleep,” she says.
Oprah has taken notice. When Oprah Winfrey mentions you, you’ve arrived, no? O, The Oprah Magazine selected BlackLit as one of the “25 of the Best Book Subscription Boxes.”
Clark eventually wants to build a brick-and-mortar store.
Her prize for first place at GEW Fort Worth was a tech package from Dell Computers. Her first pitch competition was with the Subscription Trade Association. Before Fort Worth, she did another with the Dallas Entrepreneur Center, where she finished second.
She is waiting to hear back from judges at Impact Ventures Accelerator, and she has applied to pitch at Black Girl Ventures.
In due time, Clark believes, she will have perfect pitch for her capital idea — and the funding she needs.