2/9/2005 Small store, big dreams: After four years in the United States, boutique owner Suad Mohamed is well on the way to achieving success
Kelly Westhoff
Suad Mohamed sits in her office. On her desk sits a computer, a telephone and a cell phone. With a nimble wrist, she rolls her mouse across her desk. She logs on to the Internet, pulls down her list of favorite sites, and in seconds is online sorting through pictures and descriptions of jalbabs and abayas, the long, flowing garments wore by many Somali women.
Her cell phone rings. She answers it.
Her telephone rings. She answers it.
Her computer dings. She has an instant message. She answers it.
Mohamed is busy. Not only is she the owner of Al Saadaa Boutique, she is also a wife and the mother of four children. The most recent addition to her family, her five-month-old girl, sleeps in a car seat just beyond her office door.
Mohamed's office is tucked in the back of her small clothing store on Central Avenue in northeast Minneapolis. In addition to the jalbabs and abayas she imports from Jordan, the store sells wide scarves used as head wraps. They come in muted tones and vibrant patterns that have caught the attention of many recent African and Muslim immigrants to the Twin Cities.
In fact, Mohamed developed her idea for Al Saadaa Boutique in response to her own shopping frustrations as a Somali woman in Minnesota. "I could not find anything I could wear‹nothing elegant." she explained. She held up an arm and pulled at the gold embroidery work stitched into the wristband of her own fluid dress. "Nothing like this," she added. "Everything was too cheap or too American."
Mohamed's boutique opened last fall, at a time that coincided with the birth of her baby. While most women might think twice about opening a business and giving birth to a baby in the same month, Mohamed is not your average woman. Not only is she raising a family and running a business, but her deft use of technology is in outright defiance to many cultural stereotypes of what a Somali woman does and how a Somali woman behaves. Too often, Americans view Muslim women as submissive, staying at home trapped beneath their long robes and headscarves. Mohamed wears both, but she does not feel trapped.
A quick tour of the merchandise inside her store produces evidence of this. Hanging beside the embroidered garments sought by many traditionally dressed Somali women are two-piece suits imported from Turkey that other women might wear to work or worship.
Mohamed takes this opportunity to point out that her customers are not strictly African immigrants. The boutique's location in northeast Minneapolis is well beyond the Riverside neighborhood where many Somalis live. Her store's large display windows overlook a busy intersection heavily trafficked by city buses.
"Women come here," she said, "and they say, "I saw your sign yesterday. I saw your window the other week.' And that's why they come inside."
"If you are in a mall, people just come to see the mall," she continued. "But if your store is off by yourself, then you are special and people come just to see you. I have customers from Rochester and Wisconsin that come special for me."
Mohamed's approach to business‹to attract and pull in customers no matter their citizen status or city of residence‹is an approach she learned during a class at the African Development Center in Minneapolis. The center offers a training course for African immigrants to help them understand and navigate the U.S. marketplace. To give their small business a greater chance of survival, participants are encouraged to develop a business that doesn't just meet the needs of their own community, but those of society at large.
The center guided Mohamed through the process of creating a business plan and put her in touch with the Neighborhood Development Center in St. Paul and the Minneapolis Consortium of Community Developers. Through the St. Paul Neighborhood Development Center, Mohamed was able to secure an interest-free loan (Islamic law prohibits her from paying interest). She used that and personal savings to start her business.
While Mohamed admits the classes helped her get organized and the St. Paul Neighborhood Development Center helped her locate funds, she attributes her business flair to her parents. Mohamed grew up in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, where her family owned its own business. "In Somalia," she said, "we used to have businesses. Goats. We export and import goats. And a grocery. My family had a grocery."
Mohamed's parents worked hard just to support their family: Mohamed is one of 12 siblings. Even though her family was large, she attended school and learned Arabic, Italian and English, in addition to the Somali language she spoke at home.
Mohamed cherishes her memories of Mogadishu as a girl, but has no plans to return. The civil war that has killed entire villages and torn her nation apart, Mohamed said, began when she was about 20 years old. "I would never go back. I can't go back," she declared, falling silent for a moment. Then she added, "It is killing you when you know people who die."
And her family is no longer there. Mohamed and two of her brothers immigrated to Minnesota; the rest of her family moved to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. Mohamed is grateful two of her brothers live nearby; she arrived in the United States without them, or her husband, in 2000. She came with her oldest two children‹both then under the age of five‹and she was pregnant with her third. Her husband stayed behind to wait for Mohamed to earn enough money to sponsor his arrival. Initially Mohamed lived in Ohio, where her sponsor family lives. Within a year, however, she moved to Minnesota.
Mohamed said she learned valuable lessons in Ohio. First, she learned the kindness of strangers. "It's very difficult and embarrassing when you don't speak the language," she confessed. "There is no word for how difficult it is. You feel lonely and even though you know things, you can't understand what is happening because you don't speak the language. There's a lady, I cannot forget her, she helped me with everything when my baby came. The hospital. I'd never heard of W.I.C., of government assistance. And she taught me."
She also learned to pay her own bills. "Back home, we depend on men. The bills‹they take care of everything," she explained. "So I never pay the bills. My gas bill came‹three times‹and I did not pay. My connection was stopped. It was so cold and my baby was two months old. I did have the money. I did. I never open envelopes."
Mohamed learned to manage her money. And when she moved to St. Cloud in search of a larger Somali community, she found a job as a translator and women's advocate. She taught others about paying bills, about government assistance, about the opportunities available to them in the United States. "It gives you a feeling you did something good for another," Mohamed said, smiling. "And interpreting, I learn new words every day. It was like going to English class."
Her job in St. Cloud also helped Mohamed earn money to bring her husband to the United States. Now that her family is reunited, Mohamed wants to focus on her business. If the past four years are any indication, her future seems assured.
She has even adopted the U.S. habit of dreaming big. "My dream," she said, "if God wills, I want to make Al Saadaa Boutique the biggest store in Minneapolis of cultural clothes. And I want to make my own web site."
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