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A FEW YEARS AGO, a sterile Wells Fargo branch in southwest Los Angeles got some soul. Bland white walls were painted vivid red and African sunset yellow. A nondescript carpet was ripped up and replaced with an earthy brown zebra-striped rug. Framed and matted swaths of African kente cloth were hung on the walls; a mural of Buffalo soldiers was painted behind the tellers.

The transformation, completed in 2004, illustrates Wells Fargo's ongoing effort to tap the fast-growing African-American business market. Like many financial firms, including Merrill Lynch and Bank of America, Wells Fargo has been studying statistics that show a dramatic rise in the number of black entrepreneurs, who represent a new market for credit lines, cash-management services and investment advice. Marketing and image consultants also want to serve this burgeoning field, offering everything from tips on creating business cards to a web site where African-American entrepreneurs can buy or sell merchandise to members of the black community.

U.S. Census data released last year showed that black-owned businesses grew by 45% between 1997 and 2002, the fastest rate of all minority-owned businesses, which in general are increasing faster than the national average of 10%.

That growth prompted Wells Fargo, a big lender to women and minority-owned businesses, to make over retail banks in L.A.'s Baldwin Hills and several other black neighborhoods. "This is a deliberate attempt to really say we want to do business with you," says Brenda Ross-Dulan, spokeswoman for the bank's African American Business Services program, which has a lending goal of $1 billion by 2010 to African-American entrepreneurs. "We saw this growth, and thought: We need to outreach to the community."

Dwayne Redmond, national director of Merrill Lynch's three-year-old African American Marketing effort, says the bank's outreach programs to black entrepreneurs are designed to assuage concerns of discrimination, especially in lending practices. "There is a basic level of mistrust with financial institutions," he says.

Merrill's approach is to host events clearly designed for black clients, such as a lecture series featuring motivational speaker Dennis Kimbro and scholar Cornel West; a private concert by jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis; and cultural programs at centers such as the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit.

A Wells Fargo branch gets an afrocentric makeover.

Elsewhere, some of the new products and services aimed at African-American business owners, perhaps not surprisingly, have been created by black entrepreneurs themselves. Sonya Lowery, who owns graphic firm Solaris Corp. in Greenbelt, Md., recently published the book "The Secret Language of Business Cards," which gives image-polishing advice to black business owners.

"I wrote it for the brother and the sister who will spend more money on their car or their suit, but leave behind a business card that is perforated," she says, adding that nonprofessional email addresses on business cards are another common problem.

Some research has suggested that the nascent African-American entrepreneurial community, while growing robustly, may be hindered by a lack of exposure to successful business strategies and other obstacles.

A study published in December by professors at Babson College and the German Institute for Economic Research found that blacks are almost twice as likely as whites to try starting a business, but are significantly less likely to survive beyond the initial start-up process. The discrepancy isn't explained by socio-economic data, which led the researchers to conclude that black entrepreneurs still encounter racism and other barriers.

Resources for Black Entrepreneurs

National Black Chamber of Commerce
This business association, founded in 1993, represents 95,000 black-owned businesses and has about 200 affiliated chapters throughout the country. Its station mission is to economically empower and sustain African-American communities through entrepreneurship and capitalistic activity.

Black Enterprise
This company, which publishes a print magazine, also hosts an online forum and a web-based "small business channel" with advice for black entrepreneurs.

National Minority Supplier Diversity Council
Certifies and matches more than 15,000 minority-owned businesses with 3,500 corporations, universities and hospitals that want to purchase goods and services. To qualify, the business must be at least 51% owned, operated and controlled by a member of a minority group.

Minority Business Development Agency
A division of the U.S. Department of Commerce, the MBDA is the only federal agency exclusively focused on the establishment and growth of minority business enterprises.

Target Market News
Provides news and statistics about the black consumer market via a web site, and hosts an annual conference, the Black Consumer Research and Advertising Summit, which spotlights trends in marketing to African-American consumers.

iZania
iZania's mission is to create a "virtual black community" that provides networking tools for entrepreneurs and professionals. An auction site launched last year allows black entrepreneurs to buy and sell merchandise.

Merrill, which targets high-net-worth African-American individuals, recognizes that "a lot of the wealth has been built through entrepreneurship," Redmond says. Women and minorities, in general, may have turned to small business because of discrepancies in pay and equal treatment that still exist in corporate America. "In the African-American community, there has been a major emphasis on entrepreneurship being the way to personal success," he says.

Connecting African-American small businesses is the goal of iZania.com, a web site that some customers have nicknamed the "Black eBay," according to founder Roger Madison. The two-year-old site has nowhere near the volume of behemoth eBay but encourages black entrepreneurs to buy and sell products through its auction platform, launched in November. The site also provides free business listings and a networking forum for black-owned firms.

Madison, who created the site following a 28-year career in sales at IBM, says many ethnic groups try to "recycle" money within their communities. Black business owners tend to be dispersed in cities across the country, making it difficult for entrepreneurs to find and support one another. "It's the reverse of looking for a needle in a haystack," he says. "It's a needle in a haystack trying to be found. You're a small black entrepreneur, and you're looking for buyers or sellers who are interested in doing business with you."

The goal of iZania, he says, is to "connect descendants from Africa via the Internet." The site has nearly 12,000 black-owned businesses in its database, and gets 50,000 page views a month — a small figure in Internet terms but one that Madison says has doubled since the site launched in late 2003.

The growing number of products and services available to black entrepreneurs is a "real positive," says Martha Daniel, an African-American business owner who launched her firm, Information Management Resources Inc., in 1992. The company, which provides technology services to clients in the private and public sector, posts $5 million in annual revenues.

"If I had the support system that women and minorities have today when I started my business, I could be trading on the Nasdaq," Daniel says with a laugh. "It just seriously wasn't there." Now 54, she's encouraged by the increase in networking programs, financial products, and marketing tools for black business owners, especially women. "I'm looking at young ladies now just coming out of college saying, I'm going to be [an] entrepreneur,'" she says. "That was never thought of years ago."