OUR COMMITMENT TO RACIAL EQUITY
Racial Equity

To our Bloomist Community 

In honor of Black History Month, we would like to take this opportunity to reaffirm our ongoing commitment to diversity and equity. We continue to assess our goals, and know we’ve fallen short in a few of those, such as further diversifying our mix of employees, makers, and partners around the world. In order to have a true assessment of our vendor community we initiated a comprehensive survey. We have made great strides in identifying our vendor profiles through this process and hope to complete the first round assessment this spring in order to set clear and tangible goals for improvement and measure our progress in upholding our Fifteen Percent Commitment. We look forward to continually revisiting our commitments and updating you all on our progress.

As always, we welcome your comments and questions.

OUR WORK IN PROGRESS

DIVERSIFYING

Bloomist remains part of the Fifteen Percent Pledge and we are halfway through completing our Supplier Diversity survey to develop clear and measurable goals to support this commitment.

We have held workshops with our team where we engaged in dialogue, collective learning, and individual reflections on how structural racism shows up in the design field at large. We realize the work here has just begun and commit to continuing this conversation and co-creating our Racial Equity strategy with the guidance from our Design Strategist Andrea Miranda Salas.

In order to better prioritize collections from BIPOC makers we needed a long-term strategy. With the guidance from our Design Strategist Andrea Miranda Salas we approached setting about our Brand’s Racial Equity strategy by co-creating it with our entire team. That’s right, everyone on our team will be contributing and shaping our strategy!

Our company strives to create a culturally and racially diverse mix of employees, makers, and partners around the world, but we know we can do more. While our team of 11 is culturally and ethnically diverse we could be a more racially varied group. We still have a UX Design internship open where we are prioritizing hiring talent that identify as Black.

AMPLIFYING

We recognize how systemic racism plays out in business and within the design sector at large. We will continue to use our platforms to help elevate, celebrate, and amplify our makers’ and collaborators' work through our emails, website and in our elevated journal stories.

This February we are featuring the inspiring work of four farms who are fighting against food inequity. As of May, 2021 approximately 17.1 million people live in food deserts and disproportionately affect communities with high African American and Latinx populations. Rise & Root Farm, The Ron Finley Project, Soul Fire Farm, and Planting Justice each tackle the issue of food insecurity through education and involvement with their local community. Please take time to read about their missions and hope you consider donating to their causes if you are able.

We continue to highlight journal stories that feature work of Black creators, Our featured work including Maryah Greene, Hilton Carter, and Tiffany Griffin, Magalie Dresse, Julia Turschen, and Karen Washington.

We want to continue to grow our partnerships with Black led businesses.From previous product introduction, such as papier maché from Caribbean Craft, handmade ceramics from Tracie Hervy, natural candles from Bright Black Candles and Peacesake Candles, we have established long term relationships. We will continue to seek out partnerships and expand our BIPOC maker community.

Below is our ever-growing list of BIPOC makers, designers, influencers, plant experts and Black brands we admire and highly encourage you to visit and support. We will continue to keep this list current and add more talent as we discover them. Shop Black resources below

DONATE

This year we want to highlight the ongoing challenge of Food Sovereignty and the issue regarding lack of access to nutritious food within low-income communities of color. As part of our commitment to equality and the environment, this February we are donating $500 each to Rise & Root Farm, The Ron Finley Project, Soul Fire Farm, and Planting Justice.


WHAT WE WILL DO AS INDIVIDUALS

Each of us plays a different role to bring about change, from donating, listening, protesting, learning and unlearning, and sharing, to calling on our representatives to demand reform. We believe that by working together we can help make a big impact.

RESOURCES

Some of our recommended resources are:

SUPPORT

LEARN

FOLLOW

SHOP BLACK

We support the #BUYBLACK initiative and have curated an ever-growing list of favorite Black creatives and resources below. We will continue to build on this list. Please follow these creators on Instagram. Share, comment, and like their posts, and most importantly support them by buying their products or services wherever and whenever you can.

MAKERS + SHOPS

GARDENERS + FLORISTS

SMALL STEPS, WORKING TOGETHER TO HELP CREATE BIG IMPACT.