CEO Sees ‘New Alternative’ for Small Companies Throughout Delight

Just a few weeks in the past, Tanner Graham, co-founder and CEO of artistic model company Common Concept, seen a evident improvement whereas attending a Delight parade in small-town Pennsylvania: Main companies that will sometimes march, from blue-chip banks to insurance coverage, pharmaceutical corporations and past, had been absent.

^{Picture Credit score: Courtesy of Common Concept. Tanner Graham.}

 ”It was positively a really totally different tone this 12 months,” Graham tells Entrepreneur. “These Fortune 500 corporations that previously few years have strongly expressed their help for LGBTQ+ initiatives and confirmed a transparent help of Delight initiatives have retracted [that support].”

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As a substitute, Graham witnessed small and native companies step in to march and preserve the momentum established in years previous.

“It creates an actual, new alternative this 12 months, and doubtless for the subsequent a number of years.”

For the reason that 2018 founding of their full-service, luxurious magnificence and fashion-focused company, Graham and Common Concept co-founders Ian Schatzberg and Semjon Doenhoff have all the time centered range, fairness and inclusion. The 5 leaders that make up Common Concept’s C-suite all establish as LGBTQ+.

Graham sees massive corporations’ lower in help for Delight and LGBTQ+ initiatives as an opportunity for small companies to extend their very own efforts.

“There’s an actual alternative to be leaders,” Graham explains, “as a result of as the larger corporations and particularly the publicly traded corporations have needed to flip down the amount [on their LGBTQ+ initiatives], it creates an actual, new alternative this 12 months, and doubtless for the subsequent a number of years to return.”

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Graham calls on small enterprise leaders to concretely and constantly decide to their values.

Common Concept is an authorized member of the Nationwide LGBT Chamber of Commerce (NGLCC), which incorporates annual membership charges to help their community of initiatives. The company has additionally made donations to the Transgender Legislation Heart for a number of years and continues to help LGBTQ+ causes in 2025 by donations to Ali Forney Heart, which supplies life-saving companies to LGBTQ+ youths, and SAGE, a nationwide advocacy and companies group that appears out for LGBTQ+ elders.

Graham says leaders shouldn’t solely talk firm values outwardly but additionally present their groups and organizations why it is so essential to face up for his or her beliefs.

“Variety [brings] the perfect concepts, probably the most forward-thinking concepts.”

Because the Common Concept co-founders first thought of tips on how to develop a contemporary advertising and marketing company and supply the perfect service for his or her purchasers, they targeted on hiring folks with skillsets that will complement one another throughout the present and shifting advertising and marketing panorama, Graham says.

“Variety [brings] the perfect concepts, probably the most forward-thinking concepts,” Graham explains. “Finally, as entrepreneurs, our aim is to talk to a various vary of consumers. We did not got down to essentially create an LGBTQ+ C-suite, however on the similar time, it felt like a snowball impact. The people who we acquired to know and determined to carry into the company and elevate into working their departments occurred to be numerous in that regard, and it is labored very well for us.”

Common Concept has partnered with superstar manufacturers like Savage X Fenty, Ariana Grande and Swarovski over time.

Along with its C-suite, Common Concept has about 50 workers. The corporate prioritizes hiring “distinctive” thinkers and creators who work exhausting and have a robust appreciation for tradition and a capability to faucet into present traits and future alternatives, Graham says.

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Common Concept hires additionally will need to have a knack for discovering options — as a result of that is on the coronary heart of the enterprise.

 ”Each consumer involves us as a result of they’ve an issue to resolve,” Graham says, “whether or not they should promote extra merchandise or join with new audiences, so for us, at the start, it is about understanding what these issues are and attending to the core of that. And a whole lot of instances, it isn’t so clear originally.”

Graham notes that Common Concept would not invoice itself as an promoting company, although relying on a consumer’s wants, promoting is likely to be a part of a “multi-pronged” answer.

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“Our most rewarding initiatives typically are the initiatives that are available in pondering they’re one factor after which find yourself leading to a unique kind of output,” Graham says, “as a result of it implies that we’re not taking these briefs and issues at face worth, however slightly we’re partnering with our purchasers [and] shepherding them into what we consider will create the very best consequence.”

“We actually wish to create an setting that empowers folks to really feel secure.”

In a second when sure corporations are being “quieter round what their values are,” Graham and Common Concept see their dedication to LGBTQ+ points and variety at massive as a path ahead — and one that may put together them and their crew to maintain up with a “quickly” evolving advertising and marketing area and “fully totally different world” wrought by AI.

“We actually wish to create an setting that empowers folks to really feel secure, [to] really feel like they’ll categorical their beliefs and be who they’re,” Graham says. “We wish to create alternatives for folks to thrive inside these senses of safety.”