Pingree Detroit opened its first storefront at 11:11 a.m. on 11/11. Veterans Day, intentionally, because most of the company's co-owners are veterans. The store is at 22 West Columbia Street, in the pedestrian corridor between the Fox Theatre and Little Caesars Global Headquarters.
The space was previously Good Cakes and Bakes. Pingree is a worker-owned cooperative. Founded in 2015 and named after Hazen S.
Pingree, the late-19th-century Detroit mayor who put unemployed Detroiters to work growing potatoes in vacant lots, the company makes shoes, bags, and accessories from upcycled automotive materials. Leather seats, seat belts, airbag fabric, all sourced from the Detroit auto industry, all otherwise headed for landfill. Over the past decade, Pingree has diverted 55,000 pounds of that material into handmade goods.
Co-founder and CEO Jarret Schlaff said at the opening that the brand has been manufacturing on the Livernois Avenue of Fashion for several years. The Columbia Street location is partly a homecoming. Schlaff started Pingree in the basement of a church on the same block.
The cooperative shares 77 percent of profits with employees, who hold equity in the business. Pingree employs both Detroiters and U.S. veterans, and runs free skilled-trades training programs in shoemaking, leathercraft, and industrial sewing. The store doubles as a workshop.
On Footwear Fridays, customers can watch shoes get made at a street-facing bench while they shop. Nathaniel Crawford II, an Air Force veteran and Pingree co-owner, told reporters at the opening that the company has spent a decade selling through more than 18 stores nationwide and online. Columbia Street is the first time Pingree has had a place of its own to put the work in front of customers.
He called the store more than a showroom. A place to tell the story and demonstrate the craftsmanship, in his words. Hours are noon to 7 p.m. daily. Pingree Detroit, 22 West Columbia Street, Detroit.
