- December 20, 2024
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Palm Coast’s Colour Collective, a marketplace event showcasing local black-owned businesses, held its first event in four years on March 30.
The marketplace is a subset of Naturals of Palm Coast, an organization focused on highlighting and celebrating the success of black women in business. Naturals’ founder LaToya Taite-Headspeth said the marketplace event featured a variety of female entrepreneurs — from beauty and artists to virtual assistants and small business owners.
“Our motto is ‘support, swap, shop,’” Taite-Headspeth said. “We come together to be in a supportive environment, encouraging one another. We come to swap information, but we also swap products. ...So the Colour Collective is actually that shop piece.”
Before the COVID-19 pandemic struck, the Colour Collective had just finished its third annual marketplace event. Four years later, Taite-Headspeth said she was nervous at first planning the come-back event, but it felt good returning to the grind.
In the end, Taite-Headspeth gathered 30 local business-women — and even some men — at the African American Cultural Center to show off their products and services.
“It's just such a beautiful time of connection and networking and just, you know, pooling resources together and collaboration,” Taite-Headspeth said. “I would say it was truly a success.”
The Colour Collective and Naturals of Palm Coast are spaces where women of color can really shine, she said. Outside of Black History Month, Flagler County and the cities don’t have enough visible representation, even outside of the business networking world, she said.
“Even, say, picking up picking up the paper. I don't see myself,” she said.
Most of the entrepreneurs who attended the Colour Collective marketplace were from the Flagler County and Palm Coast communities. And it’s important, Tiate-Headspeth said, that every part of the county’s community is highlighted.
“If we're highlighting Flagler County, let's highlight all of Flagler County,” she said. “It should just be a no brainer. If should just be a given. We're here.”
Later in the fall, Taite-Headspeth said she plans to host the next marketplace event. As she organizes more events, she said she hopes even more people will attend.
“We can all shine at the same time. And so just creating that space creating that platform is just vital”
