For Us, By Us Market’s Origin Story
Jailaih Gowdy and Alexis Smith, founders of the For Us, By Us Market (F.U.B.U. Market) based in New Orleans, Louisiana, sat down to discuss how their organization supports Black entrepreneurship while promoting health, wellness, and education. Here are some highlights from the interview:
For Us, By Us Market’s Origin Story
Jailaih: The For Us, By Us Market (FUBU) was created almost a year ago. Last year, on my birthday, it actually fell on Black Out Tuesday, it was obviously a birthday that was super reflective just on how I could get involved with what's going on currently. Obviously, my biggest thing is health and wellness with me being a personal trainer, and I just really wanted to kind of create a space where Black businesses could come and showcase themselves and also promote the importance of health and wellness within our communities. So I linked up with my girl, Alexis. We actually met in a gym; that's actually kind of how our friendship started. I met her at a gym and she trained me on working there. She was super passionate about health and wellness; also, extremely passionate about entrepreneurship and just kind of having the background there. From there the collaboration just grew and then from there was born the For Us, By Us Market.
Alexis: When Jailah invited me to be in on this idea, soon as I heard it, I thought it was amazing. What I specialize in is helping people bring their ideas to life. Instead of just like helping her out and letting her go with it, I was like, “No, actually can I be a part of this.” It was just what our community needed, and it was just so in line with the things that I work on and my passions. It was a beautiful blend and it was just kind of a beautiful blend of what she could bring to the table and what I could as well.
The Founders’ Backgrounds and Passions
Jailaih: I have a huge passion for health and wellness. I've done, or I'm kind of becoming known for on my Instagram on, this challenge I like to do where you like completely eliminating meat from your diet. I struggle kind of with endometriosis, which is an inflammatory disease. I say kind of with now because it's basically curable with all of the health and wellness things that I've done, such as kind of switching up my diet, being more intentional with what I put into my body, and also just being very very physically fit. Not just having to go to the gym and pump iron, but just getting active by walking or just doing something in your daily life. So that was just something that I've always been passionate about. Once I saw the results that kind of came with my body I was like, “Oh yeah, the black people gots to get this.” I just really wanted to share that as much as possible. Then, also to just living within New Orleans because I'm not from here; I'm from Mississippi. I was just really exposed to a lot of different businesses that were Black owned that were focused on health and wellness. I was just blown away, obviously coming from Mississippi that's not really healthy. I was just super super super shocked to see all these people kind of growing these vegetables and produce but not turning it back and selling it to a store but just putting it back into their own community and kind of creating a service for them. So that's kind of where my passion lied and I wanted to kind of create something where we can showcase that for the For Us, By Us market. Then from there with Alexis being super passionate about businesses and also adding flavor with the politics of things it was just a crazy blend.
Alexis: Yeah, I've been working in the community for a really long time here in New Orleans, just with different organizations and then my own initiatives. I did my first community event at like 18, and so from that point I knew like I just wanted to be influential in the Black community. So I also chair an organization called “Us Helping Us.” So For Us By Us, Us Helping Us- just that “us” aspect and just making it as full as possible was really really important to me. I'm super big on health and wellness just from a growth aspect for Black people. Understanding that part of why they put so many fast food places in the hood and lack of access to healthy options is all part of a plan and a ploy to keep us quiet or keep us unhealthy, keep us needing some type of assistance. So just like the Liberation from all of that is really really important to me. I believe that the school is full of indoctrination and not knowledge and education. So also including that educational piece and then just creating more resources for us to support businesses that really help our community and not just make other nationalities rich poisoning us. So just kind of like those real, true Black empowerment ideas and something that I’m pretty much building my entire social entrepreneurship platform on. I do a free summer camp program for kids here in the city, and so every morning as part of our pledge you don't pledge allegiance to the United States. We say the Black Panther pledge and we do that every morning so is that it completely aligned with you know just my whole mission.
FUBU Market’s Focus on Mental Health and Spiritual Growth
Jailaih: I think just a huge part of our brand is we don't just hit on the physical we hit on the physical, the mental, the financial, spiritual- all different aspects of health. It all literally incorporates how you move and operate as a person. So you can go to the gym all day, but if the spirit ain’t right. I will credit Alexis for incorporating community resources. We do highlight health and wellness businesses, but we also have community resources that come out and talk about the importance of COVID and getting tested and making sure that you're up to speed about your health. Also, two people that come and speak with mental health people and getting involved within the Black Community and trying to find ways to better and advance the Black community. Aside from that, we also like to speak on just being politically knowledgeable about what's going on in politics. Not just what's happening with presidential elections, but also with just regular elections. Alexis has literally been a huge, huge, huge, within advocate for within the For Us, By Us market. So we always have a political candidate come out and speak just about how they can help our community and we literally create the space where we can hold them accountable just to be like, “What can you do for us and what have you done for us?” So I think that's just been a huge part of the brand with For Us, By Us, with this being able to touch on so many different aspects of health and just kind of giving our platform to different community resources.
Alexis: For me, 2020 was such a reflective year of like clarity. Not only just like 2020, but just the climate of what was going on. When Jayla invited me in on this idea, it was also too with Blackout Tuesday. It was so many things that was heavy burden on me. Like right now at the forefront of every young black person’s mind needs to be growth. So we're going to create this marketplace and I wanted to ensure we touched on all of that. We do a huge praise and worship before every market. We speak amazing things about this Market, as far as its growth, our vision for it. Then just how blessed and how I covered it is. We make sure that it's important to us all of that just you know bleed through the market just because that's really who we are too and you know what our true values are.
Centering Black Joy
Alexis: I called this our Black hood love story like because we are the culture, we are the creators. We are the creators of the universe. It's so important for us to return back to the Garden of Eden. It's amazing Ted talk about how you know Africa has all of the veggies, all of the fruits, all of the woods and you know jewels and gold and whatever yet we still pay taxes to all these other countries. Someone else said you know if it wasn't for black people everywhere it would be like Idaho what the hell is in Idaho... potatoes. Love is going to help us heal but its ownership of who we really are and not other people telling us who we are. So you know the ownership automatically comes with joy and pride, because you know who you are. My favorite quote from Marcus Garvey is, “People disconnected from their roots are lost people.” For so long we've been disconnected for our roots. The For Us, By Us market just really connects who we are, how genius we are, and that we don't need anything outsourced from white people- hair care, healthcare. We have Black-owned urgent cares.
I wanted people to feel you know like home, you know like, “I'm in my hood. This is our community.” We can sustain ourselves you know especially with like I was saying before everything that was going on at the time that we are back in.
Jailaih: It's really feel in the family that we create; a meeting with the vendors that participate we literally treat them like family. There are so many different pop- ups that are happening at this time obviously to shed light on entrepreneurship, which I love that. But we just want to make sure with the For Us, By Us Market you're not just coming on as a vendor. We want for you to grow as a business with us as well.
There are so many new businesses that have participated and have been like,“Since I came out to your market and became a vendor, I'm sold out and I've got more confidence in promoting myself as a business owner. I have different materials now to promote myself. I know how to utilize social media now like this.”
You can already see and have that field of Black Joy, Black love kind of radiating throughout.
If you are interested in learning more about the Jailaih & Alexis, upcoming events and vendors, follow For Us, By Us Market on Instagram.
