(Salt Lake City, UT) The Initiative for a Competitive Inner City (ICIC) announced that Brand+Aid is a winner of the 2020 Inner City 100 (IC100) award which recognizes the 100 fastest-growing firms in under-resourced communities across America. The winners were picked based on revenue growth and job creation during the four-year period from 2015 to 2019. All 100 winners were revealed at the 2020 ICIC National Conference held virtually on December 8th. The full list is available here.
CEO of Brand+Aid, Renya Nelson, was ranked #42 based on its four-year revenue growth rate of 191.37% and job creation of 13. Read our Fortune Article Here.
Renya Nelson, CEO
Brand+Aid is a 100% woman-owned business with a simple mission: “Create merchandise people will keep forever.” Its 360∞ merchandise model gives companies across the globe a hands-free solution to their product purchasing and distribution needs with web stores, virtual pop-up shops, logo design, product licensing, and more. The Salt Lake City-based company strives to reduce the industry’s carbon footprint by influencing companies to select the highest quality, reusable, and eco-friendly products wherever possible.
IC100 companies are forces of economic opportunity, optimism and transformation in their communities, and it’s an honor to recognize their leadership,” said ICIC CEO Steve Grossman. “Especially during this incredibly challenging time, as small business owners reckon with the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic, these pioneering entrepreneurs have demonstrated a deep commitment to and passion for their local communities.”
Community engagement is an integral part of Brand+Aid’s company culture. Some recent projects include painting a 150′ mural for the VOA homeless youth shelter, donating face shields to local elementary schools, and creating an e-commerce face mask store in which proceeds go to support a local LGBTQ non-profit. Brand+Aid constantly strives to make an impact with merchandise and art within the Granary District and the Salt Lake City community at large.
These numbers also show some encouraging trends. This year’s IC100 list had the highest number of women-owned/led companies. There was an increase of eight companies from 2019 and 17 since 2015. The 2020 list also contains the highest ever number of BIPOC-owned/led companies. This is an increase of seven since 2019 and 11 since 2015.
We are so excited for 2021, and cannot wait for you to see what’s to come.
