Along the St. Petersburg Pier, you’ll find several kiosks where entrepreneurs sell their products. But then there’s 1Pier, a kiosk of nine entrepreneurs, all African-American women with different businesses, banding together.
“1Pier is the initiative of One Community that the city of St. Petersburg was able to partner with through our Urban Affairs Department. We really wanted to focus on making the Pier a welcoming place that really reflected the demographic of the city and what better way to do that than through a women’s collective like this that shows the true diversity of our community,” said Nikki Gaskin-Capehart, the urban affairs director for the city of St. Petersburg.
Safrone Presley of Glow Up Body Oils says the city’s support makes a big difference.
“Being able to work with the city of St. Petersburg, we get a lot of support from them, they’ve helped us make sure that we try to have our businesses together so that we can succeed and we also work with each other to succeed,” Presley explained.