11 minute read
COMPENDIUM
COMPENDIUM: HOW OUTSIDERS VIEW DETROIT
TOO MUCH NEW, DAMAGED FURNITURE GETS THROWN OUT. THIS COMPANY PROVES THERE’S A BETTER APPROACH.
FAST COMPANY FEB. 24, 2022 BY MARK WILSON Go to almost any big furniture store, and there’s a room in the back with scratched tables and returned couches. These damaged goods are sold at a discount, offering a project to someone who is handy, or imperfect but-functional furniture to someone on a budget.
However, as online furniture sales have exploded in recent years — it’s now around a $58 billion market in the U.S. — that discount room has ostensibly disappeared. If your coffee table arrives at your house scratched, and you return it for a refund, chances are good that it’s simply sent to the landfill, or you’re asked to dispose of it yourself. Because that’s how retailers handle all sorts of home goods, even goods that are still in perfect shape.
But the Detroit-based furniture company Floyd is proving that another model can work. Their program, Full Cycle, takes back items damaged in transit, which is under 2 percent of their total orders. Then it mixes and matches parts, like table legs, as necessary to make fully functional (if aesthetically flawed) kits. Floyd resells these items online at a discount.
The model doesn’t sound all that complicated, but it’s also a rarity in the industry — a rarity that’s already working out pretty well for everyone. Now a year into the program, the company has revealed just how well Full Cycle is going...
AT 85 YEARS OLD, LONGTIME DETROIT ARTIST GETS A SHOW OF HER OWN
SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE MARCH 4, 2022 BY NORA MCGREEVY Artist Shirley Woodson has seen Detroit through it all. In 1936, her family moved to the city’s north side when Woodson was just three months old. She earned art degrees at Wayne State University in Midtown and, over her six-decades-long career as a professional artist and arts educator in the city, steadily championed Detroit’s thriving Black arts scene, her colleagues say.
Now, at 85, Woodson has put on a major solo exhibition of her works at the Detroit Institute of Arts. On view through June 12, “Shirley Woodson: Shield of the Nile Reflections” showcases 11 of the artist’s colorful canvases rich in Afrocentric symbolism, according to a museum statement.
“Shirley’s art exemplifies her quiet determination to creatively express what she has learned about herself and the world she inhabits during the course of her life and career,” said Valerie Mercer, exhibition curator and department head of the DIA’s Center for African American Art, in the statement. “Through her skillful drawing combined with her exuberant palette, she lets us know that it’s always a balancing act to assert the complexities of her existence as a Black female artist, a wife, a mother, a mentor, a friend, and a human being.”
As a part-time gallery owner, art historian, and educator, Woodson made a point throughout her career to nurture the careers of young Black artists. Several artists from Detroit, including nationally recognized fiber artist Sonya Clark, credit Woodson as a mentor, as Maureen Feighan reported for The Detroit News in October 2021.
Even as an octogenarian, Woodson’s career isn’t slowing down: in 2021, she was named a Kresge Eminent Artist, a prestigious Detroit-based distinction… Cherokee Trackhawk, were stolen from the Stellantis Jefferson North Assembly Plant a few weeks ago and then, in an unusual twist, the thieves used the Trackhawk to go back to the lot and steal a Dodge Challenger Hellcat a few days later.
It might be easier to steal these new vehicles than outsiders assume, according to a report by Detroit’s WDIV-TV that notes that Stellantis and its partners do use prominent security guards at these locations. But the automaker could possibly change a policy to make these new vehicles more difficult to steal.
“Insiders tell us it’s really no secret that keys are put in these brand-new, high-dollar trucks and thieves sneak onto the property, somehow undetected, get into the trucks, and wait for the key moment to drive off,” Click On Detroit reporter Shawn Ley said in a video report.
Thieves have targeted Detroit-area car factories as easy targets in the past. In 2018, for example, as The Detroit Bureau reported at the time, a group of thieves first stole a 2003 Ram truck, then used that truck to approach the Fiat Chrysler plant in Warren, Michigan, in the middle of the night. From there, they cut a hole through the fence and then drove away with eight new trucks that had recently come off the production line. At the time, there were questions about why the thieves could so easily steal those trucks and it was assumed that the keys were kept in the vehicles. Fiat Chrysler declined to comment on that policy. …
DETROIT CAR THIEVES TARGET AUTOMAKERS’ OWN STOCK
CAR AND DRIVER • MARCH 20, 2022 • BY SEBASTIAN BLANCO Brand-new trucks are disappearing out of the parking lots outside Detroit-area assembly plants in a new twist on car theft — so brand-new, they are still in the custody of the manufacturer.
Truck thieves have targeted at least three locations full of new vehicles in the metro Detroit area recently. The details of these thefts are under investigation, but the general plan seems to be that the thieves break into the lot somehow and then drive the new trucks away, maybe by smashing a gate or fence on the way out.
A Stellantis spokesperson responded to Car and Driver’s inquiry about these news reports with a short statement on the situation. The statement said Stellantis is working with the Sterling Heights Police Department on the theft of several vehicles from a shipping yard that services the Sterling Heights Assembly Plant managed by a third party.
“As this is an open investigation, the company is not commenting any further on what vehicles were stolen or how they were stolen,” the spokesperson said.
According to an Instagram post by themetrodetroitnews.com, however, at least 15 vehicles have been stolen in the past month, including new Ram trucks, a Jeep Wagoneer, Charger Hellcats, and a Jeep Trackhawk. Stellantis locations that have claimed to have vehicles stolen recently include a lot in Shelby Township, the Chrysler plant in Auburn Hills, and the Jefferson Assembly plant in Detroit. At least four trucks were stolen from one location in a single night, including a Ram TRX worth more than $100,000. The thief driving one of the trucks quickly crashed the new car into a nearby semi-truck before being picked up by a thief in a different stolen truck.
Themetrodetroitnews.com said it can’t confirm if all of these thefts are connected, but there are definite connections between some of them. They claim that two high-end vehicles, including a $90,000 Jeep Grand
IN DETROIT, A BET THAT HEALTHY RESTAURANTS CAN HELP THE CITY
THE NEW YORK TIMES • MARCH 1, 2022 • BY BRETT ANDERSON
April Anderson built Good Cakes and Bakes, her bakery on this city’s west side, by attracting customers to linger over cupcakes and cookies inside a 70-seat storefront on Livernois Avenue.
“It worked for us,” she said, “until we had to close the doors on March 17, 2020.”
But when it came to facing the difficult new reality the pandemic imposed on restaurants, Ms. Anderson held an edge: the experience with hardship that she and other Detroiters share.
Ms. Anderson, 49, belongs to a generation of business owners bringing vitality back to neighborhoods after decades of economic decline. Many have received help from a network of philanthropists, activists and civil servants united in their belief that locally owned restaurants and food businesses are critical to reviving Detroit’s economy and that Black, immigrant and women entrepreneurs are a valuable resource historically neglected by investors.
Those efforts, which began more than a decade ago, have helped diversify dining options and create jobs and wealth. The pandemic has both stress-tested and reinforced these accomplishments.
Today, Ms. Anderson is looking ahead to the fall opening of a second kitchen near Good Cakes to fulfill online orders that have snowballed since the COVID-19 shutdowns.
“We’ve got three freezers now, but we don’t have any more space,” she said. “I’ve got people ordering cakes on Goldbelly from Idaho and South Dakota.”
The city’s economic troubles — its current population of roughly 640,000 is less than a third of what it was in 1950 — are extreme and persistent. In a January survey by the Michigan Restaurant & Lodging Association, more than three-quarters of the state’s restaurant operators said their businesses were less profitable than before the pandemic, and that conditions were worse than three months ago.
But as cooperation among the public, private and nonprofit sectors becomes more common across the country as the restaurant industry struggles to recover from the pandemic, Detroit provides an example of the results that communities can expect where entrepreneurship and activism converge.
To keep Good Cakes alive during the pandemic, Ms. Anderson, along with her wife and business partner, Michelle Anderson, turned to the network of public and private agencies that provide support, including grant money, to small businesses in Detroit. This coalition ... was forged in the Great Recession of 2007 to 2009…
‘A REALLY BAD DEAL’: MICHIGAN AWARDS GM $1B IN INCENTIVES FOR NEW ELECTRIC CARS
THE GUARDIAN FEB. 25, 2022 BY TOM PERKINS In September, Ford stunned Michigan when it announced plans to build two massive electric vehicle (EV) plants in the nation’s southeast instead of its midwestern back yard. Fearing the future of the automotive industry was leaving Detroit, the state’s political class swung into action.
Four months later, lawmakers responded by handing a staggering new subsidy deal to GM that they claimed would fortify the Motor City’s standing as the world’s auto capitol during industry electrification: In exchange for $1 billion in tax incentives, the Detroit-based automaker promised $7 billion in investment for new battery and EV plants that could create 4,000 new jobs.
“This news is great for us and for Michigan, the epicenter of where we’re developing EVs,” GM president Mark Reuss said during the announcement.
But what’s good for GM may make less sense for state taxpayers, a Guardian analysis of the deal finds. Once again large corporate subsidies — paid for by taxpayers — look set to benefit the corporations while leaving taxpayers out of pocket.
Michigan has effectively agreed to compensate GM more than $310,000 for each job created, but during the next 20 years, the positions are unlikely to generate more than $100,000 in tax revenue in the very best-case scenarios.
Collectively, the plants’ jobs will probably return less than $300M of the state’s $1B investment when contributions to state income, sales, property, and other taxes are factored in.
The state also claimed the direct and indirect jobs created by the project will generate $29B in new income over 20 years, or the equivalent of 29,000 jobs paying $50,000 annually. Economists from across the ideological spectrum who reviewed the analysis said that level of job creation is highly unlikely and pointed to a U.S. Commerce Department report that labels such claims “suspicious.”
Moreover, a state memo shows GM agreed to create only 3,200 positions…
SUZANNE SHANK IS PAVING A PATH FOR COMPANIES TO PUT WOMEN AND PEOPLE OF COLOR IN POWER
MARKET WATCH • MARCH 8, 2022 • BY JOY WILTERMUTH Suzanne Shank says she didn’t set out to change Wall Street.
But as a Black woman and a powerful investment banker, she has been doing exactly that...
After an unconventional start designing nuclear submarines, Shank spent nearly a decade working her way up on Wall Street. Ultimately, she set her sights on building Siebert Williams Shank — not as a place for women and people of color to have a peripheral seat in the world of high finance, but for them to start calling the shots.
“I felt if we didn’t do it, who would?” she said.
Shank, the firm’s chief executive and president, recently talked with Market Watch for The Value Gap about her journey to the top of Wall Street, including her recent work helping Fortune 500 companies look inward at injustices that can act as a barrier to financial, social and career success, and ensure their workplaces are diverse, equitable and inclusive.
“It really starts with a CEO,” Shank said. “The CEO has to set the tone and then everybody from the bottom up has to be accountable.”
Market Watch: I was interested to see in your engineering background with General Dynamics GD, -1.29% that you helped build nuclear submarines for the U.S. Navy. How did you go from there to co-founding a broker-dealer with Muriel Siebert, the first woman to ever hold a seat on the New York Stock Exchange?
Shank: It’s not the normal career path to Wall Street. I attended Georgia Tech. I am very proud to be a graduate of their engineering program, which is very rigorous. I ended up working with General Dynamics on the electric boat division, which is the one that designed submarines, the Trident in particular. I had the fortune of going to Groton, Conn., and actually walking on submarines a few times, which was quite interesting. …
05-06.22
THE TICKER
NICK HAGEN
34
MEMORY LANE
Dearborn Music, in Dearborn, has survived market trends detrimental to music stores and is thriving, due in no small part to the fact that the company’s buyers work the shop’s floor and know what customers want.
