Public Thrift closed its doors on Joseph Campau in Hamtramck in May 2025, after almost three years in its brick-and-mortar location. The store ran a final $5 Fill A Bag sale on May 9 and 10. Hangers, racks, and store fixtures got tagged for sale.
The co-op opened on Joseph Campau in 2022 after starting as a pop-up in 2019 and a temporary residency at the Build Institute in early 2020. The model was unusual. A worker-owned cooperative second-hand store, more than half Black-owned, with queer-owned, woman-owned, and first-generation-immigrant-owned co-founders.
Margo Dalal helped start it with collaborators who had grown tired of working for businesses that did not respect their employees. Everyone who worked the floor owned an equal piece of the company. Profits, when there were profits, came back to the workers.
The dandelion logo was a reference to a plant that gets called a weed but is actually pretty. Donations and Patronicity crowdfunding got the store off the ground. A Detroit Community Wealth Fund loan helped.
Two crowdfunds in 2020 and 2021 brought the rest. The Hamtramck space at 10237 Joseph Campau put the store on a stretch with two other worker-owned businesses. Iyengar Yoga Detroit and Book Suey are both worker-owned cooperatives within walking distance.
The merchandise was the standard thrift mix. Clothing, shoes, bags, books, household goods, furniture, art. Nothing was organized by gender.
Prices were low. Donations were screened. Dalal said in 2022 that they did not want anything that had been collecting dust in someone's closet.
The vibe was meant to be a community space, not a Goodwill knockoff. What killed the store has not been spelled out in public. Hamtramck's Joseph Campau corridor has gotten more competitive in the last two years, with several new vintage and thrift shops opening on the same block.
The overhead in a small storefront with a small staff is hard to carry. Worker-owned businesses fail for the same reasons any small business fails. Whether the model gets another shot in Detroit, with a different group, depends on someone willing to try. 10237 Joseph Campau Ave., Hamtramck
