8/30/2008
IWDM Study Library
Muslim Business Convention Detroit MI
By Imam W. Deen Mohammed
Enter Here
Thank you. Thank you very, very, very much. Yes, the situation is excellent. Excellent. Yes. Let me quickly bring to you what I want to bring to you here because the time, we have a time schedule we are on here. What I'm going to be giving you in a few minutes here is information that'll help you see better where we are with the business and our improvements that we have made, which you've gotten a lot of that already, and where we hope to go very soon with the business. So at this Annual Muslim Conference here in Detroit, Michigan, the Motor City, we are asking Allah to bless the gathering and to bless our vision and to increase us in light and understanding so we can progress continually and in the way that pleases our Lord, the G-d of the Heavens and the Earth, Allah, Subhana Wa Ta Alah. Business members, and I believe that a lot of our investors are in this audience. How many of you have invested into the business effort? Yes, I felt that and that's the way we want it. We want to talk to you because you are our business partners. We all are business partners in this.
Again, Peace be unto you, Asalaam Alaikum. How are we like Irish Americans and many others? We Muslims are obligated to accept responsibility for the space we occupy. If we don't have that space, Islam obligates us, us Muslims, to get it. In Atlanta, Georgia we have that space and we are growing there. In Bermuda we have that space and we are growing there. Where we are, we're stretching out to reach more so we can have more growth. Collective Purchase Conference, CPC, our Grace Line Fashion Show, our Graceline Fashions, open up opportunity for us to grow more.
Soon after I conclude we are going to have Grace Line fashion show. That's why this extension is here. We are also having cultural program after the fashion show, and we are going to have entertainment that does not retard the Muslim life. All of this represents more reach that will bring more growth. Business can't thrive if there's only business. Business thrives because of the needs in families more than the needs of individuals. It thrives because of the needs in a neighborhood. It thrives because of the needs in bigger and bigger dimensions of space. The space that we are looking at now that we want to claim is space for us to establish a model of community life in the neighborhood. A model of community life in the neighborhood. Now we know this is not our vision. We didn't come into this vision. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad started this. We want to have schools; we want to have Masjids. We want to have a social center, a place for us to have weddings and celebrate new births in the community.
And have banquets and skating rinks so that our children can find an outlet and won't have to go outside of our neighborhood or outside of our community to get it from somebody else. We want to keep ourselves as much together as possible so that we enjoy life together, that make a people grow stronger. The more we have opportunity or space to grow in and to grow the full life that people need and should want, the better the spirit of the people, the better the work of the people, the better the production of the people, the better the life of the people. These things are all tied together. They're not separated. So, we can't just grow in one dimension. We have to grow in many dimensions. And that's what Allah has blessed us with by telling us that we are a community. "Surely you are the best community, evolved for the good of all people." That's what Allah says. So, we have to come into the understanding of what is really meant when we say we are a community. We just can't say it and have no understanding. It means much more than the average one of us are aware of, much more. When you say you are a community, then where is your community?
It should be visible. But if you're developing plans to strengthen business and extend business, the business life for the group that you identify in or with, then that tells people that you are reaching for something big, and it tells people that you are growing in community dimensions. It tells people that these people doing this work, having this vision that they have, they will soon be able to manage their space called the black neighborhood or the African-American neighborhood. Do you know our souls will never rest and we won't even know why we are burdened and why we feel so low down, so down in spirit. We won't know because the world keeps us so busy we don't have time to think and to find out exactly why we are feeling so down and bad.
Yeah. Most of us need a psychiatrist 24 hours a day. Yeah. Even when we sleep, we need a psychologist to be there watching us and to see if you make some crazy twitches in your sleep and he'll make a note of it and work on you once you wake up. Recently we acquired another piece of property in Chicago Heights, H-E-I-G-H-T-S, Chicago Heights. It's on an artery, a business artery Halsey Street, that stretches from miles and miles through Chicago into the south suburbs where we are, the South suburbs. And Chicago Heights I like the name.
It's difficult for any people who want to have a situation to build their life and build it together. It's very difficult to do that in these big cities that are already well established and they don't have room for little people. It's too difficult and too expensive, but you can go out as most of them do. I started off by saying how are we like the Irish and many more ethnic groups. We can do as they do. They find an area open; they enter that area, they make sure they got room to grow and they end up being the ones that develop that area. And that's what we want. And I believe we have that situation in Chicago Heights. Chicago Heights has recently changed its makeup. It's not the same people, same people not there. They moved out of there, they're gone. They're gone to I guess better situations. They found better situation, they moved out. And they have left the city, even the downtown area, abandoned
And a lot of the property is available just for the taxes that are owed on the property. And much of the property has hardly no tax obligation, but they have no one on the land. So the city can't make money if nothing's on the land. They make money only if they have something on the land where they can get taxes. So, they can get taxes. So, it's an excellent situation there. And I took the name Chicago Heights as a message. We started in Chicago and we acquired land and we were doing a great job, but it wasn't meant to be done there, at least in the circumstances and under the circumstances that existed at that time. It wasn't meant to be fulfilled there. And now we have opportunity to do it again in another place, A smaller place, smaller area. And it has a bigger name than really Chicago. It's not just Chicago, it's Chicago Heights. So I took it as a message to me that G-d's saying come into this area and I'm going to lift you up to the heights.
And I do believe that's going to happen. So, we acquired a piece of property there. I think we bought it for a good price. We got it for a good price, and soon we are going to be selling our products in that facility and we'll be paying rent to CPC and we'll be selling CPC products. And I'm sure that with this kind of money that we are opening up now to our business people in this community, there's going to be many such stores opening up around the country and CPC is going to be selling hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars in products around the country. We are not greedy. A leader has to have a plan to make the people grow. And the only way the people are going to grow we have to bring products to the people through our business distributors, our business person, bring products to them that will enable them to get those products at a cost that would make them feel that it was a good deal, not to make them pay more. We have to find a way to compete with others. And Allah has blessed us to have that. Before, there was no way for us to compete with these stores like Walmart. And I know you're saying "You can't compete with Walmart." Yes, we can. Yes, we can. Yes. Where they go, the people like us more.
You'd be surprised how Allah, the Lord G-d of the heavens and earth has put African-Americans in the hearts of many foreign people. We're in their hearts. They know our history, they know how we have suffered. They know how we have been put down and kept down. And they know that how we have been put in a condition psychologically that's almost impossible to overcome. They know that. They know what we don't know. And their hearts are with us. Their love goes out to us. My friend there from Pakistan, Brother Atif Mahmoud. When I saw him, I thought he was in Pakistan. It just warmed my heart up so and I just had to go touch him and shake his hand and hug him because he's always loved us like that. He's always had that love for us. We as a people, we have room, big room in the hearts of Brother Atif and in the hearts of the Pakistani Muslims. Big place in their hearts. Yes. So you have to be aware of these things and I want you to be aware of these things because once you can see what I see, you won't have any trouble running like I run.
And I know you see me at 75 years old almost. You see me pulling up on the stairs and creeping up here. But inside, oh boy, I can win five gold medals easily. Praise be to Allah. Yes. The spirit is young and that's what counts. The spirit is young. So, I'm going to get to now some figures. The property that I just mentioned to you in Chicago Heights, it's costing us right around $200,000. But in my opinion, it's worth much more. We have an opportunity to get, we don't have a parking area, but we have an opportunity to get parking area right across the street from this facility. There's a place that's for sale really and they have plenty of parking area there, plenty of open land. So, the situation is excellent. We don't have the money right now to buy that land. The man is asking a little bit too much, but he's in Chicago Heights too and he's ready to move. But we just sit on him for a while I think we'll be all right. We are not going to rush to get that land. We are just going to sit on it for a while. And there's land five or six blocks away that we can get right now. So, if we can't get that land, that's very close right there where we can get the benefit of not having to go anywhere but just across the street. Cross the street and you're right where we are. And it has I think four of those big doors that raise up by remote control. Like a dock, like a dock. Four, four trucks could actually pull up in there and load and unload. And I'm hoping that we'll be able to get that Inshallah.
We have a big inventory of goods. To save time, I'm just going to give you the total for the inventory. We have inventory right now of $187,964 and 71 cents. And our inventory can easily be multiplied by three and you'll have a minimum of how much money that's going to give us when our distributors sell the inventory. Yes. So, if you multiply that by three, that's approaching a million dollars. With the order we have just put in, the order that Yahya mentioned to you. Beautiful, very high-quality women dresses but also women's suits. You can wear 'em if you work at the bank, you can wear 'em to the bank, you can wear 'em to a business office downtown, wherever, whatever. They're very nice business suits, very well designed and high-quality, high-quality material that you can afford because we going to make sure that you can get 'em from us cheaper than you can get 'em anywhere.
Anywhere. We don't believe in undercutting the market or trying to beat the market, but we a club, just like we started out, we started out where you say Pledgers Club, you remember that?. Some of you remember that. We started out Pledgers Club even had the Pledge Club cards and it says Pledger and right now you think of a good time, right? But actually, it was pledge like you pledged to stay with it. You pledged to be loyal to your own community and to the interest developing in your own community. That's what I meant when I put Pledger card on it. It spells Pledger. Okay. Alright. So, when that order is completed and we have paid for it, we will have an inventory of $285,964 and about 71 cents right to the money, right to the penny. Now you multiply that, that's almost $300,000. You multiply that by three, that's close to a million, isn't it? That's very close to a million dollars. But we talking about how much money is going to come back into the community as income, as income to the person's working and sharing this responsibility. It's going to be close to a million dollars. Now this is just the beginning. We are just beginning. Do you know pretty soon we'll be talking about billion dollars.
Yes. We have a piece of property on 159th Street. It's just been sitting there. They gave us a lot of problems but I think they say sometime a knock can be a boost. Yes. I think really, it's a blessing in disguise that we have had that trouble and still there with that property and haven't been able to develop anything there. Big development has taken place all around us since we purchased that property. Big developments. Big developers of just recently, like in the last three or four months or so, have started a big project right behind going south from where we are located. And every time any new development comes in your area, the value of your property goes up. So the value of our property has gone up. We got an offer. I made an offer first. I told the brother who's carrying my message to these people, who wants that land, I told him, tell them that we want $400,000 for it. He told 'em that. All of them agreed. But one of their partners said, "No, we can never give it to him." So, he brought me that response from them back. I said, go back and tell them now it's 600,000. And we had somebody look at it from out of town. I think he was a little bit more excited. He didn't know enough about the environment there. But he told me, he said, I'm looking at a million dollars. He said, because once they find out you're going to sell it, Wendy's gonna want to get it.
McDonald's might want to get it to keep Wendy's out. We don't have a Wendy's in the area, but we have most of those other fast-food places. So, who knows, it could be a real blessing in disguise. And we do have brother, very able brother. In fact, he'll be speaking to us tomorrow I believe. He is a well-established architect. His work is well known, well established. He has built small and big projects, commercial projects, and he's working with us because of his respect and appreciation for what my father did and what he see me doing. So, he's not working for money. He's working because he believes in what we are doing and he wants to help. Yes. So you'll hear from him tomorrow. He's going to give a brief presentation I believe tomorrow. And soon we'll be able to sell that piece of property. When that piece of property is sold or when any real estate property sold that belong to CPC, we don't keep not a penny of it. We don't have any employment anymore. We don't have any employment. People work for us, they have to get a commission. You don't have a sale, no commission.
They do a work for us, a service. We give 'em a fee. We pay 'em a fee based upon what the service is worth. So, employment can really kill you. It can kill a business, you employing people. Because it's very hard to find persons in the field now who respect work. They're only looking for a paycheck. They have no respect for work and no respect for the people who hire them. No respect for their job. It's pitiful. The workforce has deteriorated so much in America and don't think it's just us. It's us and the people who used to possess us or own us. Us and the white man, the white American. It's not the Asian, it's not the African. They still have their life. They have their family life, they have their devotions to their family and they have their devotion to work. But this American black man and that white man, oh boy, they ruined. They are ruined. They're burn out. Burn out. I'm serious. Okay, so let me see if I can hurry up and wrap this up now.
What you have, what you've just received is total inventory and that represents the total purchase. But I'm going to give you some idea of what we have bought. We have even got some products in our inventory that come from Pakistan through our brother, Atique Mahmoud. We also have Sara International products. This is another Pakistani brother who imports a lot and he and his wife, they work hard at their business and their quality is excellent. So we have beautiful garments....You might see some today, maybe you saw some already. If you saw area that had two female, what you call those things. Two mannequins. Thank you. Thank you. Two female mannequins. You might have seen one of the dresses from this group here, Sarah International on there. So we had bought a big quantity of Sarah International Goods, beautiful garments, beautiful styles. And we have some few clothing items for children. Not many, but in the future we'll get more. We are waiting for the right opportunity to do that too.
And some Islamic artifacts from them. Also, Malcolm Shabazz Development Corporation. We have brought leisure suits through Malcolm Shabazz Development Corporation also with Imam Pasha as our connection of course. We bought also jewelry from them and from Turkey. We made a purchase in Turkey of $24,000. We have some beautiful fabric suit, fabric and a few suits, business suits and some very attractive jewelry that we got while we were in Turkey. But the bulk of our inventory had been purchased from China because China is the leader now in producing such materials for the global market. Also, we have purchased from the Los Angeles area. I went there some time ago with Brother Rafa and we went just to explore the area to see what was possible there. And we found a location. We found beautiful garments for ladies and I brought samples back and gave 'em to Brother Yahya. And as he said, they came back even looking better.
I'm hoping that this gives you a picture of where we are and how we are progressing. As soon as we sell the land on hundred 59th Street, the money will go directly into CPC and the money will not show or be there for us to spend. It'll only be there for investors. So you will get some dividends pretty soon. Pretty soon, within six months to a year, you're going to see some dividends. You're going see growth for your investments. Thank you very much. And Inshallah we will have the fashion show start in just a few minutes, and we will speak to you more if not today, tomorrow. A big one tomorrow. Asalaam Alaikum.


