Thursday’s event is about celebrating Black history and creating Black future.
“I mean legacy and future, our ability to connect and impact that is super, super important,” Hartford Yard Goats Foundation Executive Director of Community Partnerships Aisha Petteway said.
It’s the third time the Hartford Yard Goats partner with The Sto to host a Black-owned business expo.
“Helping expose the businesses not only to our community, but also our commitment as a stadium that sits in this community to help impact how their business do in the future,” Petteway said.
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The Sto, which is a play on the word store, was co-founded by Jennifer Wilder in 2021.
“On Saturday morning, when you wake up, your mom or dad tell you, you have to clean the house before they come back from ‘The Sto,’ and so ‘The Sto’ can be anything,” The Sto co-founder Jennifer Wilder said.
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Wilder’s mission is to help Black entrepreneurs get exposure and build their clientele while also creating a network where businesses can lean on each other for support and growth.
“We are creating a community of dope creators; these are people who are real innovators within their spaces. The idea is that we are starting to source from each other, we are uplifting each other,” Wilder said.
The expo is free to the public and open 6 to 8:30 p.m., and the first 150 visitors will receive a tote bag. Over 60 vendors are participating, including Socks by GeeGee, Red Label Cosmetics and Wilder’s very own mobile bookstore: Big Red Book Truck.
“I am bringing the bookstore to the block, changing the narrative about affordability, accessibility and abundance of just brown books that just show all of our greatness,” Wilder said.
