14 The Hampton Roads Messenger


Seniors Get Crafty for Online Fun--and Profit


BY REBECCA S. RIVAS ST. LOUIS, Mo.--Ioni


Dodson, who lives in Queens, New York, is “so happy” to be 72 and retired from her career in word processing because now she has time to do more of her fine crafty crafts, she said.


One of her most prized


creations is a three-dimen- sional, African-themed quilt using bright colors she calls “Celebration.”


Dabanga dos Santos, a senior and microbiologist, who became a jeweler, enhances her income with online sales.


“When I was in grammar school,


I wore a uniform,” said Dodson, who worked for the Human Resources Administration in New York City for 36 years. “I thought this was the worst thing I could ever do. When I attended high school, I made and designed my clothes. I love to be different.”


From Hobbies to Small Businesses In November 2009, some of her


friends encouraged her to make her crafts more than just a hobby. They urged her to sell her quilts, knits and ceramic dolls on Etsy, an online marketplace for handmade goods.


“They thought that I would do well


financially,” she said. So she decided to set up her online


shop, Ionis Creations using an Internet shopping mall called Etsy.


Etsy was created by a painter,


carpenter and photographer named Rob Kalin in 2005. Like many artists, Kalin felt there wasn’t a viable marketplace to exhibit and sell his creations online. He found other e-commerce sites had become too inundated with electronics overstock and broken appliances.


So Kalin – along with Chris


Maguire and Haim Schoppik – launched Etsy on June 18, 2005, after only three months of planning. Now Etsy has over 800,000 active shops and 14 million members.


Dodson is one of the few African-


American seniors who have braved online commerce. Although she has not made her fortune yet, she is up for the challenge. So far she has found her clients by word of mouth and Etsy, she said.


“Etsy has grown by leaps and


bounds, therefore, you must work harder to get your things seen,” Dodson said of the wide variety now competing for customer attention.


Her motto is: “No matter what you do, sometimes nothing works. Do not


despair. Keep working at it, and it will happen in God’s own time.”


More Time and Income for Seasoned Americans


Pat Brown-Dixon, administrator


of Region 7 of the U.S. Small Business Administration, which includes St. Louis, is constantly talking with small business owners. In her experience, few seniors who are business owners are familiar with online sales tools, such as Etsy.


However, she encourages small


businesses to use all available Internet sources to their advantage. Etsy can be a low-cost marketing aid, she said.


“As more seasoned Americans


realize the value of using the Internet, it can allow them to have more control of their time, and help them be home-based while gaining extra income,” she said.


Brown-Dixon cautioned seniors to


be wise in terms of receiving payments. She recommends transferring money through reliable third-party sources, such as PayPal. She strongly encouraged sellers to keep up with orders and build strong customer relations.


“And when fulfilling orders, sellers


of products must be diligent to deliver the products quickly in order to build their reputations as good suppliers,” she said.


Dabanga dos Santos, a senior


originally from Mozambique, was a microbiologist who became an artisan specializing in metal jewelry. She creates ethnic fusion jewelry using metals. Dos Santos became an Etsy user in 2009, when her own website crashed and she needed a means to reach her retail clients.


“I maintained the site even after my


website was rebuilt,” said dos Santos, who also lives in New York. “Between the two, I am busier now than I ever was.” According to Black Design News Network, “She uses her gift to support many fund raising efforts; especially


Volume 6 Number 9


Autism and Habitat for Humanities.” The income from her Etsy


shop, Dabanga [www.etsy.com/shop/ Dabanga], supplements her wholesale jewelry business, she said.


Etsy leveled the playing field for


its thousands of merchants when it introduced search-engine optimization, which helps her virtual shop pop up in online search results more often.


The website offers ways to share


ideas and collaborate through the website’s forums, teams or online workshops for its members.


Although social media can be


overwhelming, dos Santos said it is also a necessary component for online sales. Of course, sellers have to make time to create the products.


“People often say there aren’t


enough hours in the day,” she said. “Of course there are. Time management and meeting goals are essential parts of getting the job done, since social media is very time-consuming.”


“Urban Entrepreneurs” in Economic Downturn


With the prolonged downturn of


the economy, many people have been getting laid off who were not yet ready for retirement, said Kevin Lockett, chief operating officer for the Urban Entrepreneur Partnership, [www. uepkauffman.org] a business-coaching program of the Kauffman Foundation. These people have begun to look for ways to leverage their knowledge.


Discrimination FROM PAGE 11


stereotypes that we have been fed, and then they’ve become a part of who we are and shape our behavior in powerful ways. These negative racial stereotypes lead to societal discrimination.”


Understanding the power of


unconscious bias has emerged as a new mission for leaders and advocates working to bring racial healing and racial equity to communities across the United States.


Dr. Gail Christopher, vice president


for program strategy at the Kellogg Foundation, explained that centuries of a racial hierarchy in America has left its mark on our society, especially pertaining to how people of color are perceived by whites.


“Our society assigns value to groups


of people,” she said. “It is a process that is embedded in the consciousness of Americans and impacted by centuries of bias.”


During the discussion, panelists


shared insights demonstrating how people make unconscious decisions. Dr. Phillip Goff, assistant psychology professor at UCLA, showed examples of how law enforcement officials can be motivated by unconscious bias not only to race, but also to what they perceive as threats to their masculinity.


Moreover, Rachel Godsil,


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director of research for the American Values Institute, maintained that many Americans believe that racism no longer exists and they want to be colorblind.


“For many whites, what the culture


has told us, what the right has successfully convinced us of, is racial equality equals color blindness, that to be non-racist means not to talk about nor even to notice race,” he said. “And so those of you who are Stephen Colbert fans, we’re just not supposed to be able to see it, right? I don’t know that I’m white. I don’t see that. And as we know, that’s an illusion. And it’s actually not something certainly


…that people of color are looking for, for sort of somehow me to pretend that when I’m look around, everything looks strangely pink.”


Godsil said that researchers have


found that “not talking about race allows those precise, implicit biases, those negative stereotypes that our toxic culture feeds us to actually continue to grow and metastasize and to affect our behavior.”


The last panelist, John Powell,


director of the Haas Center for Diversity and Inclusion and Robert D. Haas Chancellor’s Chair in Equity and Inclusion at the University of California at Berkeley, closed the session sharing several examples of how our mind looks at pictures, images and the world around us, and the impact on our unconscious.


“We have to learn to talk to the


unconscious,” he said. “The unconscious doesn’t like facts and figures. It doesn’t like numbers. It doesn’t like analysis. It likes metaphors; it likes stories.


“I’ll give you an example and I’ll


close with this. Some people say they don’t trust President Obama because he had this fiery Christian minister named Minister Jeremiah Wright. And then the same people would turn around and say they don’t like Obama because he’s a Muslim.


“Now most Muslims I know don’t


have a fiery Christian minister. What they’re really doing is talking to the unconscious. They’re saying he’s not one of us. They’re not making a factual claim; they’re making an emotional claim. And when we come back with factual refutation, we’ve missed the point. We’re not talking to the unconscious. We’re talking to the conscious and they’re talking to the unconscious. And when there’s a tension in large societies, the unconscious normally wins. So we have to become much more aware of the unconscious and learn how to talk to the unconscious.”


May 2012 “You saw an influx of seniors trying


to start their own businesses,” Lockett said. “It doesn’t surprise me that they started to use products like Etsy. When seniors are in those dire situations, many of them will reach out and use everything available to them.”


Jill of the Etsy shop jill2day,


which features her women’s fashions, spent many years in corporate design departments until the downturn left her unemployed, she stated in the Etsy blog, “Quit Your Day Job.”


Taking her career change as a


motivating opportunity to start her Etsy shop, Jill said she learn more about e-commerce and began supporting herself through her artistic voice. Based in Madison, Wis., she’s now successfully making her living through her Etsy business, loves making her own schedule. If she could go back in time, she said she would do it sooner.


“In losing my job I have found out


that Richie Havens was right when he said, ‘Backwards is not necessarily a negative direction,’” she said.


Lockett said Etsy has given


entrepreneurs of any business size in any location the ability to market their products to a wider audience.


Ioni Dodson’s goal is to be able to


at least send her grandchildren to college and pay for their expenses.


“You must give up a lot of time,”


she said. “You must be professional. You must keep up with new products and must have fortitude – and, above all, patience.”


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