ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, June 30, 1996 TAG: 9606280018
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: 6 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: RICHMOND
SOURCE: JAN CIENSKI ASSOCIATED PRESS
Most whites have never used the services of attorney Victor Motley or bought a house through Ralph L. Samuels & Associates Realtors. Both businesses say about 90 percent of their clients are black.
Motley, Samuels and thousands of other black-owned companies have found a way to garget the people who need them - they advertise in business directories or yellow pages aimed at blacks.
``You advertise where you think most of your clients are listening,'' said Motley, a Richmond lawyer. ``A lot of people don't think black lawyers will do a good job.''
``Black businesses often find that the majority of their revenue comes from black consumers,'' said David Walton, publisher of the Richmond-Petersburg Black Pages of America.
``They are often located in heavily black areas or white consumers just don't patronize them,'' he said. ``The concept of the black pages allows for more affordable advertising than the yellow pages.''
Walton says he charges $1,900 a year for a full page in his directory, which reaches 30,000 people, while a full page in the yellow pages, which reaches every telephone subscriber in the Richmond area, costs $3,360 a month.
Directories for black consumers have been around for decades, said Gerry McCants of Portsmouth, who publishes Black Pages USA directories in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida.
``Historically, there have always been difficult problems for African American businesses to break out - it's not anything new,'' he said.
Both McCants and Walton said many blacks go out of their way to shop at businesses that advertise with them out of a sense of solidarity.
That kind of loyalty is what makes ethnically focused directories so powerful, said Mark Perry, a professor at the Darden Graduate School of Business Administration at the University of Virginia.
``Companies are trying to build contacts with consumers who may have a vested reason in seeing the business succeed for reasons that have little to do with the product,'' Perry said. ``They're hoping people will buy the product because they want the business to succeed.''
Directories aimed at blacks are just part of a wider phenomenon. Other directories target gays, senior citizens, Hispanics and every other imaginable ethnic and demographic group, said Stephanie Hobbs, spokeswoman for Bell Atlantic Directories.
``It has to with the closeness of the community and with the willingness of people to do business in the community,'' she said.
Hobbs said that the Yellow Pages haven't made much of an effort to penetrate the fractured community directory market, which she says is dominated by dozens of small, aggressive firms.
``I wouldn't call them a competitive threat,'' she said. ``I think we can coexist. Since nine out of 10 people advertise with us, we feel pretty confident they'll stay with us.''
Walton said that there is nothing sinister about ethnic directories.
``It's not a separatist kind of thing,'' he said. ``If it makes sense for Americans to buy made-in-America and Virginians to buy made-in-Virginia, then that same logic holds for any group of people.''
End Advance for June 29-30|
AP-DS-06-24-96 2218E
LENGTH: Medium: 73 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: Publisher David Wlton's Richmond-Petersburg Black Pagesby CNBof America is just one of many community directories that target
every imaginable ethnic and demographic group. AP.