Betting on a dream business.

Entrepreneurship is becoming an increasingly popular career choice in today's job market. Unemployed people are choosing to bet on themselves as an economic option. Sure, starting a business is a high-risk venture, but it's a risk that many are willing to take. The world is filled with people who have taken an idea and created a successful business, including our publisher and founder, Earl G. Graves Sr., who turned the idea to create a newsletter into a $53 million multimedia company. Profiling entrepreneurs is a staple of this magazine. BLACK ENTERPRISE celebrates people who see a need, see the value of filling that need, and believe in themselves enough to create a business to do it.

In this issue, we look at a dynamic duo, Dana Powell and Shannon L. Bonner, who found a niche market and created a product to serve it. Powell and Bonner are the publishers of Brides Noir, a bridal magazine for women of color. The magazine was Powell's dream business, inspired by a promise she made to her father when she was 16 years old--to start a black bridal magazine if there weren't any on the newsstands by the time she graduated college. Twelve years later, she kept her promise to her father and launched Brides Noir with 40,000 initial copies in 2002. "The birth of a magazine can be a wonderful event," says BE Editor-in-Chief Alfred A. Edmond Jr., who attended the magazine's launch party. "But like most births, it's usually preceded by a long period of difficult labor."

Many of our readers want to start their own businesses, too. And whether they have a burning desire to turn a hobby into a profession or have been unemployed for too long, these entrepreneurs share one thing in common: they all want to be their own boss. Inevitably, many turn to this magazine for guidance. Features Editor Alan Hughes, who fields many queries about starting businesses from our readers, says he has received so many e-mails that he and Edmond created the "Dream Business" feature, which will be published periodically and profile African Americans who made their business ideas a reality.

"I met Powell and Bonner in late 2002, and I was impressed by their drive and the amount of research they did before launching their magazine," says Hughes.

These features give BE readers a sense of the risks and the rewards of becoming an entrepreneur. Our first dream business feature, "Cooking Up Success" (see February 2003 issue), profiled restaurateurs Carl Redding, former chief of staff for the Rev. Al Sharpton, and Derrick Angus, a former engineer turned caterer.

This month, we look at the publishing industry and at two women who didn't abandon their dream even when it seemed impossible to achieve. "Powell and Bonner successfully identified a viable market that was grossly underserved and put together a product that filled the void," says Hughes. "That's extremely important if you want to succeed."

--The Editors