We were lucky to catch up with Michael Dedenbach recently and have shared our conversation below.

Michael, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

When I began this clothing journey many people said that it was a pipe dream of mine, which would never amount to a brick-and-mortar shop in Detroit. In middle school I told people I would open a clothing shop someday. At that time in my life, it was a skate shop influenced by hip hop and extreme sports like snowboarding and skateboarding.

Maybe it did start off as a dream, but it was my dream, and it was one I was dedicated to accomplishing. However, I didn’t go to fashion school, instead I studied Psychology and Anthropology, which looking back helped me immensely when it came to opening shop. I love people and I love clothes, so understanding people and their behaviors helped me decided what clothing meant to me and how I wanted to portray it to people.

When I was in college in Detroit during the early 2000’s, the city was starved for a real shopping experience. When I graduated, I had a few options to consider, furthering my education or taking the leap to open my dream right here in the city of Detroit. I fell in love with Detroit as a kid, I was fascinated by it and when I began living here, I just knew deep down inside that I wanted and needed to open my store here.

I found the perfect neighborhood and was set to find a brick and mortar, but I never took a business class in my life, never seen a business proposal, my credit score was that off a young fool who couldn’t comprehend the value of that 3-digit number and barely had any savings. So, to break into the fashion world I took a hobby of mine, thrifting and turned it into my gateway into the fashion world.

Detroit Clothing Circle started off as a resale and vintage shop where I curated a highly sought out selection of resale and vintage items. I ran the business with my partner, now spouse, while she got her MBA. It was our philosophy to be fair and considerate, to provide affordable fashion for our neighborhood and city. It started as a roaming pop up. We would pop up anywhere we could, anyone that would say yes because we needed sales data to be taken seriously.

It ended up being like three years of pop ups and other events, while preparing for banks, working full time jobs, and accumulating massive amounts of clothing stacked in our house in every room and every corner I could find. Eventually we had enough saved, and it was time to take the leap or quit. I called and called, emailed, and posted, to anyone and any place to get a building and from the weirdest place our first location came. A random Facebook friend had a friend who was looking for a tenant. Our first location was in an old Victorian house that was turned into a multi-use building. I designed the entire store to be a shopping experience with 100-year-old barn beams and wood, and industrial piping where local artists could show their art alongside our curated racks of clothing. And thus, Detroit Clothing Circle became a brick-and-mortar in Detroit as I had dreamed.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

I was born in Macomb Michigan in 1984 and grew up in the suburbs. I grew up loving clothes, style, and fashion. Along with sports, rap and hip hop, skateboarding and snowboarding. I grew up somewhat privileged, yet it took years to actually realize it. By then I was out of the house trying to explore the world on my own. I moved to Detroit in the early 2000’s and fell in love with life all over again.

I have had to navigate life being bi-polar which is a roller coaster in of itself. It took a long time to learn to accept myself for who I was and to love myself for what I was. I say this because, beside of years of therapy, I owe the city of Detroit. Without the city I don’t think I would have grown into the person I am today, the version I want to be. It took becoming part of a diverse community to understand how I fit in the world, and that I was not alone in facing adversity. Through the shop I have a platform to advocate for mental illness awareness, understanding, and acceptance.

At Detroit Clothing Circle we offer our clients an array of curated clothing from retail brands, sought after streetwear brands, and we have a local designer showroom where we work with 12 designers from Detroit. Most of the local designers are people of color, women, and part of the LGBTQ community. This is something that is very important to us as individuals, but as a brand as well. We want to have a real representation of talent within the city we set up shop in and call home.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

The biggest and most important part of building our reputation is community, without our community we wouldn’t be shit. We have a strong core relationship with local artists, designers, and creatives. It is something we wanted to build. Our community is what makes us more than a store. It’s a hub for creatives, a chill spot, a place to come get away from the day for the moment, it’s a refuge for some and we love all of that.

The shop was and is not just mine. It’s for all our customers, the regulars and those that have yet to come in. It’s for my wife and son, to hopefully one day provide and honest living for them through my love and passion for clothing. It’s also for all the people that didn’t believe me or laughed it off. It’s for the kid who has a dream that needs the courage to take the leap.

This reputation for being part of the community is something we built intentionally. Through our hiring decisions, the designers we work with, and the customers we choose to serve. We are not here to contribute to the gentrification of Midtown, by being another store that caters to white suburban customers. We serve Detroiters by providing fair and honest pricing, we aren’t out here to get rich, we’re here to provide fashion at an affordable price to cool kids who still want to go out and be seen.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

I started working with a business consultant and investor, he was a well-meaning boomer who really wanted to help the community grow. I owe him a lot and he helped me secure necessary funding and was an excellent mentor. However, he was coming from a corporate growth mindset, and I really just needed to learn how to run a small business well. Hey, sometimes it’s ok to just be good at what you do and not get bigger.

Change and growth have to come naturally, if they don’t your clientele, or at least ours, will drop you like a bad habit. It’s totally cool to move at your own pace in this industry now. Maybe we owe the internet something for that. The customers want to be deeply involved in your business, and to know that they are supporting something meaningful, not just a profit making machine.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.thedetroitclothingcircle.com
• Instagram: @detroitclothingcircle
• Facebook: @detroitclothingcircle