Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Miriam Pranschke. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Miriam, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?
growing up, my family was never ~that~ well off, so we would shop at thrift stores generally. i imagine for both economic and environmental reasons. in middle school and into high school, shopping at thrift stores aka thrifting, became more of a hobby and choice rather than a necessity. thrifting allowed me to try out wild (ask my mom) styles while living off of a part-time old country buffet paycheck. i quickly became interested in learning about the labels and makers behind the things i would find and definitely sought out particular designers, at the time.
i needed to work while getting my undergrad degree. an instructor (turned bff) told me about a consignment shop her friend had opened and that she sometimes helped out at. at the time, i was not familiar with consignment resale stores. the owner of the shop hired me, probably because of my passion for things thrifted. when i reflect on these college, i, for better or worse, remember and resonate most with my experiences at the shop. i certainly enjoyed my college educational experience and am happy i studied history and art history but didn’t have the stamina to get a masters let alone a phd which was necessary for both degrees.
i moved back to my mom’s house for a bit after college in 2013, pretty unsure of what i wanted to do! i moved to detroit. i wanted to be close to my family but in a city, rather than the suburbs. i was interning at the detroit institute of arts, volunteering at mocad, our contemporary art musseum, and got a job at a local running shop. again, i was fortunate to be able to learn even more about business from the running shop, albeit a different retail focus. i started to get more and more pulled to the idea of opening my own business after these two small business work experiences. i gave up on the art / museum direction and started saving money to open up a store.
my partner breck was in architecture school and in 2015 was given the opportunity to study abroad in lisbon, portugal for 3 months. i got invited to tag along, and since i hadn’t studied abroad in college, i decided to go with breck and his classmates. i wasn’t in school, but everyone had to have a project, so i decided to research what thrifting / resale / consignment looked like in lisbon. at the end of the 3 months, we hosted a gallery opening with all of our work. this was my first pop up :) while my “research” in lisbon wasn’t super innovative or eye-opening, my time spent there really inspired me to do something for myself. most importantly, i figured out the name! one of the first museums we went to was a design museum downtown lisbon. we stumbled upon one floor of the museum that was very dark and had hanging robe-like tattered garments hanging everywhere. i was intrigued and started reading about this exhibition on BORO. i hadn’t heard the term but understood the concept. rural folk in japan, especially in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, lived frugally and didn’t have much income so instead of buying new garments, they would mend and patch together worn out pieces into “new” usable garments. this process was / is called BORO. these pieces were necessary for these families at the time but eventually outsiders saw the pieces and process as beautiful. originally, i was calling my idea “The Borrow” to allude to the reuse and cycle of the clothing through the shop but once i learned about BORO, i decided to name the shop in honor of this beautiful process!
once we got back from lisbon, my partner and i got the opportunity to live in a cool old factory building in eastern market starting that was being used as live work art studios / loft spaces. we were given an open empty floor to live in. my partner was studying to be an architect so this was definitely a once-in-a-lifetime kind of opportunity. we set to work building our apartment on this floor, while i still worked at the running shop and was saving money to open shop.
the manager of the loft building was an interesting and kind guy who breck and i befriended. he learned about our goals, and suggested we build out one of the first floor spaces for my shop to go into.
2015-2017 was pretty much spent working and building! oh and we got married in 2016 :)
BORO opened may 2017.
i honestly didn’t do super comprehensive “market research” but kind of was going off of feelings about my time living in detroit thus far. i knew that there weren’t ~that~ many shops doing what i was doing in the city, at that particular time, so i figured it would be a good thing to do, plus it was (and is) something i felt “should” exist. BORO is a way for us to value what is already here, what has already been made, as an alternative to fast fashion, as a form of expression.
Miriam, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
i think i answered some of this in the last one but can elaborate on some points!
BORO is a higher end resale store. we are not a thrift store–we don’t (and can’t!) take everything that comes through our doors. we curate our selection to showcase brands we like: brands that are perhaps more sustainable, smaller, woman-owned, family-owned but still design and fashion-forward. we also take in vintage pieces as well as some staple, better quality recognizable mall brands. we get our inventory from the public! anyone can make an appointment to consign with us. we go through the items during your appointment and decide if we can take some in. we offer a 60-day term and consignors earn 40% of the selling price. so, in a way, we offer both products and services–lots of work!
things i’m proud of: our inventory, work-life balance, fostering these customer and consignor relationships over the past 6 years, to name a few!
we are a small team with big output via our in-store presence and social media. we really encourage customers/followers/fans to come to our shop, in person, to experience the shop and get a feel literally for our selection. i would say that our curated selection is what most people comment on! also how organized and “pleasant” the shop feels :)
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
in the beginning of the pandemic 2020, we obviously had to shut down our brick-and-mortar store for several months. we didn’t have ecommerce at the time, so things were really scary for awhile. we sold through our instagram but saw upwards of 70% revenue loss over many of those early months. during this time, i decided to create an online shop. i got into a free program that guided me through the process to build an online store and got it up and running within 2-3 months. i wasn’t strongly opposed to doing ecommerce but i am a big advocate for brick-and-mortar irl businesses. i’m worried about where we’re headed with technology and losing that face-to-face in person experience. ecommerce is a helpful tool for sure and i am happy to send things off to chicago, san francisco, nyc and even internationally! we just shipped a package to portugal :) we intentionally limit what we put on our site–less than 10% of our inventory goes online, the rest is available in shop!
Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?
i’d say consistency. we’ve essentially had the same procedures since we opened 6 years ago. we’ve gotten more lax in certain things, but overall our image, consignment procedures and vibe have stayed pretty consistent.
having the curated selection we do has definitely helped us. that’s the cool thing about locally owned resale shops–everyone will curate it a bit different and even more incentive to have lots of shops and to frequent them!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.borodetroit.com
- Instagram: @borodetroit
- Facebook: Boro Detroit
- Yelp: Boro
Image Credits
Sydney Jordan Alyssa Usewick Rachel Sultana Miriam Pranschke