NBC News: 70+ Latino-Owned Businesses to Support in 2022 and Beyond

By Mili Godio, Zoe Malin and Justin Redman

During and after Hispanic Heritage Month, here are some Latino-owned brands worth knowing about — and what present realities mean to them.

Latino-owned businesses are edging towards recovery

Cavazos said Latino-owned businesses are rebuilding and recovering — Latino entrepreneurs, like many others, are successfully responding to the pandemic by rapidly adopting technology and e-commerce, noted Marlene Orozco, lead research analyst at SLEI. She said Latino business owners are "leveraging technology to make processes more efficient" and noted that there will likely be long-term benefits from these changes.

One of those business owners who learned to adapt is Nadine Fonseca, who launched Mighty Kind, an anti-bias educational company, barely six months before the country shut down. She found herself adopting a digital model at a moment’s notice.

“We had so many deals in place for independent bookstores and shops to stock our magazine, but once these small businesses had to close their doors, we had to call off all of those wholesale orders,” she said.

The digital, pay-what-you-can model for Mighty Kind’s magazines for kids was “for those who found themselves suddenly homeschooling” or needing books for kids “stuck at home indefinitely.” The brand’s pivot to digital paid off, Fonseca said: They reached over 1,000 new customers in just that first month of the shutdown and have “continued to see steady growth.”