welcomeMoney talksA series where we interview people about their relationships with money, their relationships with each other, and how those relationships inform each other.
Nicole Alessi is a 42-year-old New York native who runs Nicole Marie Peppery, a stationery company, since 2013, and whose cards are featured in over 100 retailers, including TJ Maxx. Constance Panton, a 52-year-old Baltimore resident, is the CEO and founder Bifties gift, a gifting platform that allows people to buy black, support small businesses and donate to charity. The two met in 2020 when Panton was looking for black-owned businesses to sell products that could be included in beefy gift boxes.
The following conversation has been lightly condensed and edited.
Nicole: I started out as an illustrator, and I was looking for an affordable way to communicate my artwork. During the holiday season, people always ask, “Can you draw me a card?” So I decided to mass-produce one. At the same time, I was going through the stationery store at a drugstore and I noticed that I didn’t see any cards that really spoke to me. These cards always had a message inside in a font I didn’t like.
I was too tired to paint my face, you know? I didn’t see cards that represented me or my friends, who were all set to get married. This was before same-sex marriage was even legal, and I was like, “I don’t see a card I can send them that’s suitable for marriage!” I felt really inspired to draw what I know and love and it just took off from there.
This is one of my original cards. A wedding card. Are we talking about 2013? It was such a fun time exploring. It seemed like social media was small. Can you post something and it feels, dare I say, a little kind? I was able to find my illustration community and a community of makers on Etsy, because it was during the handmade movement. It was post-recession. Everyone was laid off, and people started knitting scarves and making things. I thought, “Maybe this will be my career now.”
It was a great time to try something different. It felt powerful and exciting. Nicole Marie Peppery — it just made sense, because Marie is my middle name, so I’ll never get tired of it, I’ll never regret it — and Peppery, it just went together like peanut butter and jelly, so why not?
Constance: Beefy started in 2016 as a gift exchange. It was around the time of Tamir Rice, Eric Garner — I started to get really depressed. I started to really feel that, and I thought, “Wouldn’t it be really great if I could embrace the black community? Embrace everybody, because it’s hard to be a black person in America right now.”
It was around the holidays, and my aunt invited me to a gift exchange. All you have to do is $5, and it goes to a women’s charity, and then she matches you with random people to buy gifts. I thought, “That’s great. I’m going to do the same thing, but instead of $5, only buy your gift from a black-owned business.” We are going to embrace the economic black community.
I ran that gift exchange for about four years and had many challenges. This was pre-George Floyd, and a lot of people weren’t “buying black.” I want people to send someone a gift, but they bought it at a big-box retail store and it was an African print. Or they got something from Mary Kay because the Mary Kay seller was a black person — a whole different version of “buying black.”
The other element was a lot of my non-black friends, like, “This is a call to action for black people. I don’t know if I’m going to participate.” I said, “No, no, it’s a call to support black business!” When you put it all together, people who didn’t think they could get involved with this opportunity, that’s what I’m looking for. In line with my idea, I decided to launch a service in January 2020.
What are Bifties? I literally took the words “black,” “best,” and “gift” and turned it into “beefties.”
Beefy is a community of people — yes, that’s a noun — regardless of race, color, religion and creed, who buy the best black-owned gifts. “Giving B(l)ack” with brackets, because a portion of our proceeds go to charity It’s like “give back, give black”.
In 2020, I launched it, and I said, “Okay, now you have no excuse. No matter what you look like, no matter what you believe, you can go to this site and you can make your own gift.” And I curate the giveaway! I don’t have to worry if you bought it at a big-box store or from the Mary Kay lady down the street. I was actually able to make the lane I was able to make, and that’s how Beeftiz happened.
Nicole: The month he introduced, January 2020, is really important. It was a wild year.
Constance: Yes it was. I launched Bifties as a platform in 2020. With the George Floyd incident in May of 2020, it was an opportunity — here I am, whoever you are, trying to get people to buy black, and then all of a sudden the nation decides we have to buy black. I had corporations looking for me. I had what they needed at that time to show off to their employees, their friends, their family – and that was the beginning for me.
Nicole: I always say that authenticity is key. As much as my cards are art-driven, we’re selling a feeling and an emotion. Jokes, memes, laughter is the only way to communicate through internet. If I can’t help but smile at this card, “Congratulations on your sobriety” —
Constance: I saw that one!
Nicole: And I saw your smile. I saw your face burning. I couldn’t do it in the 90s or early, but thanks to Facebook and Instagram, I can just draw something, and the mediocrity is gone. It is very liberating for people like us. women like us
Constance and I are both divorced. We are both mothers. I tell him, when things get tough, “We have no choice. We have to make it work.”
We started working together during the Buy Black movement. We didn’t know that this was the thing we’d come across. It was like being caught in a shock. There was all this emotion, positivity and empathy, but also negative emotions like, “I’m an artist, my work speaks for itself.” It was hard to open my inbox and see things that made me think people were buying from me because of the way I looked rather than the work I did.
Constance: There are many black-owned businesses you didn’t know were black-owned. I’m doing my market research and I’m putting my boxes together, and it was very challenging to verify who was a black-owned business before 2020 because people didn’t identify their businesses that way back then.
Now, on Facebook and Instagram, you can put “black-owned” and “women-owned,” but before that I had to search and dig. Many of my companies said, “I don’t want to be identified as black-owned. I don’t want to be put in a box.” I get that. It’s a real problem. There was a time around 2020 when everybody wanted to be identified as black-owned, but now we’re coming out of it, we’re having that same discussion again. “My The work should speak for itself.”
I want to sell great gifts. It just so happens that everything in that gift box is owned by blacks.
Nicole: And you just happen to like it!
Constance: You can give it to your friends and it doesn’t matter because it speaks to everyone
Nicole: For me, personally, I’m going to keep that hashtag [#blackownedbusiness] Regardless I’m not ashamed – there’s nothing to be ashamed of. Bring back black joy, number one and number two representation issues. I remember being a kid and never seeing anything that looked like me. My mother is Italian, and she doesn’t even look like me. Now you have millions of TV shows with people who look like me and whose mothers look different from them – that wasn’t the case when I was a kid. If there’s someone somewhere in the world who sees my artwork, and they look like me, and they ask in my inbox, “How do I do this?” It is my responsibility to pass on that information.
Constance: Long term, my vision is to be a brick-and-mortar store you can come to. I want to be the next Black Hallmark! I want you to come in and everything in the store is owned by blacks. I want to live in Downtown Disney too!
Nicole: For me, I just want to expand the medium. I want to see my products more than just cards — clothes, home products, that area. I like to explore new creative and artistic fields I always say, at the beginning of every year, “This is the year I’m going to paint.” I want to draw, I want to consult, I want to advise. It’s something I love to do – helping people.
Constance: She’s really good at helping people, and she’s an incredible business woman. It’s weird. I had two business problems, and I came to Nicole, and she said, “Okay, here’s what we have to do.”
Nicole: Because we’re going to Downtown Disney!
