A national diversity effort announced by Toyota Motor Corp. Thursday will broaden opportunities for minority-owned vendors in Greater Cincinnati, a Toyota executive said.

        The company, criticized for a recent advertising campaign geared to blacks that misfired, promised Thursday to spend $700 million by 2002 on suppliers and companies controlled by minorities.

COMMITMENTS

Toyota Motor Manufacturing North America announced sweeping changes Thursday to its efforts to help minority-owned businesses and minorities by:     • Spending $700 million on minority companies that provide materials for manufacturing.     • Putting an additional $100 million into minority- and women-owned money management firms by the end of 2002.     • Directing $150 million to minority-owned advertising agencies.     • Adding four to six new minority vehicle dealers each year over the next decade with $25 million set aside for a dealer development program.     • Pledging $1 million to train and develop minorities for management positions.     • Build a $4 million training center in the Eastern United States.

        “Georgetown (Ky.) is the heart of (Toyota) manufacturing in the United States,” said Irv Miller, group vice president-external affairs for Toyota Motor Sales USA, the sales and marketing arm of the U.S. automobile manufacturer. Toyota's North American Manufacturing headquarters is based in Erlanger.

        “The Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky region will benefit tremendously through an increase in minority procurement through manufacturing facilities.”

        The company announced at a Chicago news conference Thursday that it would immediately ramp up efforts to identify and do business with minority-owned vendors.

        Richard Coleman, executive vice president of Onyx Capital Ventures, a merchant bank and venture capital fund with offices in Cincinnati and headquarters in Chicago, said the automobile company has set a challenging goal.

        “It's something they definitely need to do,” he said, “but it's going to be very difficult. In the African-American community, companies that could supply them on the scale that they're looking for do not now exist.”

        Onyx creates, expands and develops large-scale African-American-owned businesses.

        Its venture fund will invest in women-owned and minority-owned businesses in Cincinnati and the nation and will renew its efforts to woo Toyota business, Mr. Coleman said.

        Mr. Miller said Toyota also will hire an African-American advertising agency, enhance dealer development in the minority community and identify and train minority employees who have potential to become senior managers and dealership owners.

        About 3 percent of the company's $15 billion in spending in the United States was directed toward minorities in 2000. That amount will increase to 5 percent by 2002, the company promised.

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