‘Around The Way’ app locates black-owned businesses

A new app “Around The Way” locates black-owned business all over the country, according to The North Star News.

The New York-based company has teamed up with Washington, D.C.-based mobile-app development firm Clearly Innovative to create this app that aims to “empower and support black-owned businesses.”

“Other ethnic groups have been supporting their own businesses literally for thousands of years,” said Eric Hamilton, chief marketing officer and co-founder of Around The Way. “Around The Way is our attempt at doing what other ethnic and racial groups have been doing for a long time.”

Currently, the app is only available for the Apple iPhone in the Apple app store, but the company plans to expand to Android in early 2013. The app currently can locate over 17,000 black-owned businesses in the 50 states, mostly in New York City and other Metropolitan areas, but black businesses can add their own business on the company’s website.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau Survey of Black-Owned Business: 2007, there were more than 1.7 million black-owned businesses in America, who together recorded revenues of $137 billion that same year.

Washington, D.C., Georgia, Maryland, Mississippi and Louisiana reported the largest percentage of black-owned firms in 2007, according to the survey.

Around The Way is partnering with the New York African American Chamber of Commerce and other black chambers with a goal of empowering black-owned businesses by executing on the following goals:

· Encouraging owners to download the Around The Way app;

· Encouraging users to patronize businesses with their company information on the Around the Way app;

· Maintaining the integrity of the information on black-owned businesses with the Around the Way app.

Follow Marquise Francis on Twitter @mKfly