Black Enterprise Profile: Van Woods

Ed Dugger Educated at Harvard Executive Business School, Baruch College, New School of Social Research, and South Carolina State College, Van DeWard Woods is a man in pursuit of empowerment. He attributes his bootstrap success to his passion to do something for his community and to the support of his family. His community is Harlem, New York. His family is Sylvia and Herbert Woods, their four children – Van, Bedelia, Kenneth, Crizette – and a third generation of grandchildren. His business is Sylvia Woods Enterprises.

As the eldest son and company’s visionary, Woods has helped build Sylvia’s Restaurant from a one-room diner into a multi-million dollar enterprise that has contributed to the economic development of Harlem as well as other inner city communities. The internationally recognized Harlem-based soul food restaurant has led to the launch of a restaurant chain, soul food products and hair and skin care product lines, as well as the hundreds of jobs that support the growing businesses.

ATOC Real Estate was Woods’ first venture into community development. With the acquisition of the entire block of prime real estate on Lenox Avenue, between 126th & 127th Streets, the Woods family is a proud Harlem landlord. “Owning Sylvia’s and the contiguous property allowed us to take over the maintenance and upkeep of our own neighborhood,” says Woods.

His next venture, Sylvia’s Food Products, was fueled by the combination of high demand and ethnic pride. A civil rights activist of the ’60s, Woods was troubled by the ethnic marketing he saw as exploitative with images such as Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben. In 1992, instead of “marching in the street” he “marched into business” with his mother’s own home cooking. “People were buying food from Sylvia’s in bulk. And by this time. Lawry’s Seasoning and Uncle Ben’s had come to ask for endorsements of their products. That’s when I knew we were ready to launch our own food product line,” says Woods. Today, Sylvia’s brand food products are sold in retail stores around the country.

It is only natural that his next venture would be Sylvia’s Beauty & Soul Products. Before she opened Sylvia’s Restaurant, his mother was a beautician. “Because of my mother, I have always had a profound respect for Madame C.J. Walker,” says Woods. In the mid-1990’s, Black Enterprise magazine published an article on how blacks had lost the black hair care business to companies such as Revlon and L’Oreal. In July 2006, filmmaker Aron Ranen released his eye-opening “Black Hair Documentary” about Korean dominance of the multi-billion dollar industry on YouTube.com. “Koreans took over the black beauty supply retail shops with no fight,” remembers Woods. “This was just not right. So I decided to do something about it. My business partners in the food business became my partners in the hair care business. We now have two hair and skin product lines, Sylvia’s Beauty & Soul and African Vision.”

“Our mission has always been to give back to the community,” says Woods. “Since we opened Sylvia’s Restaurant in 1962, we’ve been donating food to the community. Everyone around here knows that people who can’t afford to eat can eat at Sylvia’s. It’s not written anywhere, it’s not been formalized. It’s just something we do.” What the Woods family did formalize is the Herbert and Sylvia Woods Scholarship Foundation, named for the father and mother of the family business. Just five years old, the foundation provides college assistance to nearly forty students. “We donít just give and walk away. We follow them, some even for the full four years,” says Woods.