Meet Constance Panton: CEO and Founder – Bifties Gifts

We had the good fortune of connecting with Constance Panton and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Constance, what was your thought process behind starting your own business?
In 2015, we were dealing with Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, Walter Scott, Freddy Gray. It was overwhelming and as you know they weren’t the only ones. I was getting depressed and thought what could I do? I wish I could hug our entire community, show love and support to us as a whole. I was invited by aunt to join a holiday gift exchange, the idea was fun and you would be sending a gift to someone you never met. I immediately thought, I can do a gift exchange too! But the only criteria would be that all gift items would come from a Black-owned business. It didn’t matter if you were Black or not to participate, all you had to do was buy your gift from a Black-owned brand. We had great interest, but it became clear that one, my non-Black friends thought this event was only for Black people, and that many of my Black and non-Black friends didn’t know many Black-owned businesses, much less ones that sold what one would normally buy as a gift. After four years of hosting this gift exchange, with little to no movement in growth of participants, people sending poorly designed products, or Amazon packages, and not taking the time to loving wrap their gifts. I decided to launch as an e-commerce store in order to make gifting Black for someone else as easy as possible. No excuses, no more “I can’t find this” or “do you know who sells that?” No more underwhelming gift wrapping. I would make it easy and convenient. You pick it, add card and message, and we will ship it. Everything down to the card comes from a Black-owned brand and 5% of our proceeds goes to a charity doing work in or for the Black community. I wanted to give a metaphoric hug to the Black community economically and keep the money in our community a little longer by giving back to charities.

Alright, so for those in our community who might not be familiar with your business, can you tell us more?
What sets Bifties apart from others is that at the core of it we want to be of service to the Black community. We want to highlight our community and make gifting Black easy for all people. From our community to yours type of thing. I am proud of the community we have built so far. All the people we do business with I directly communicate with all of them. I am proud of the support we have for one another. We are all rooting for each other.

It wasn’t easy getting to where I am, and I am still just starting out. I made so many mistakes, some that cost a considerable amount of money, however I learned a lot from them. You overcome challenges by understanding the lesson and continue to move forward. I literally had to say to myself, shake it off! Let’s keep moving. What I’ve learned is, I don’t know what I don’t know. You can’t plan for everything, so you just have to start and deal with the detours and challenges as they present themselves and be solid enough in your vision to not let it get in your way.

I want people to know that Bifties is for everyone! If you find yourself with a need for a gift, look to us! We have great gift items from awesome brands!

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
I would like to give a shout out to Jacqueline Carrington of People of Color Beauty for being an advocate for me when I first launched Bifties and a very supportive business friend.

Website: https://bifties.com

Instagram: @biftiesgifts

Twitter: @biftiesg

Facebook: biftiesgifts