DBusiness | July/August 2022 by Hour Media

INSIDE: SECRET STASH | RETAIL CHURN | POWERED BY WOMEN

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CONTENTS

07-08.22

LINDA APSEY, ITC Holdings Corp. ALICIA DAVIS, Lear Corp. CHRISTINE FEUELL, Stellantis CARLEEN GRAY, GroupeSTAHL ANNA MANS MOTSCHALL, Mans Lumber and Millwork ANNETTE TOMINA, Aqua-Tots Swim Schools SHANNON WASHBURN, Shinola KATHY WEAVER, Aon

Lost in Space

FOCUS: How management of the world’s

two largest retailers in the last century, Sears and Kmart, lost their way by acquiring non-core businesses and failing to make technological advances. By Tom Beaman

Secret Stash PERSPECTIVES: Retired photographer Jim Secreto’s trove of automotive advertising art may be second to none. Now the question arises: What will become of it? By Ronald Ahrens

Flower Power Cannabis sales in Michigan are expected to reach $2 billion this year, making it one of the top markets in the country. But only the most business-savvy operations may survive. By Dale Buss

50 50

EMILY CROMBEZ

Powered by Women Please join us in celebrating — and learning from — the 2022 class of Powered by Women, as selected from reader nominations. By Tim Keenan, Calli Townsend, and Gary Witzenburg

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07-08.22

CONTENTS

Foreword 12

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

READERS' LETTERS

CONTRIBUTORS

Commentary 18 HYDROGEN ECONOMY As the auto industry strives to build more electric vehicles to meet government mandates for fuel economy, it’s clear the market isn’t ready for prime time. 18 SHORTAGE FICTION Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s education budget assertions don’t hold water. The overall birth rate has been declining for years and took a nosedive during the 2008 global financial crisis.

20 COMPENDIUM How outsiders view Detroit.

The Ticker 24 RARE GROWTH Jocelyn Ho has become a go-to source around the world for exotic plants. By Jake Bekemeyer 25 STANDING ORDER Cathy and Jerry Sitek developed the StandRite-Pro to help more than 90 million workers who stand all day. By Tim Keenan 25 SOPHIE’S CHOICE Lawrence Technological University and the Stefanini Group are partnering to teach a computer how to run a factory. By Tim Keenan

NICK HAGEN

18 SURVIVAL OF THE SMARTEST Slower economic growth has companies scrambling to drive profits during a time of lower labor participation, supply chain delays, and cybersecurity fears.

Exec Life 26 SWEET DREAMS At age 17, Clare McManus has already started to recognize the level of commitment it takes to turn a passion into a business. By Jake Bekemeyer 26 PDA Q&A Soon Hagerty, senior vice president of brand, Hagerty, Traverse City. By R.J. King 28 EARN AND LEARN College athletes are now able to make money from endorsements, but there’s still no pay to play. By Jake Bekemeyer 28 FARM FRESH Hydroponically grown produce, cultivated indoors in a controlled environment in a shorter length of time, is making inroads in local grocery stores. By Tim Keenan

ON THE COVER Illustration by Jason Raisch

62 MAIN EVENT From a converted garage at M1 Concourse in Pontiac, men and women learn the fundamentals of boxing, and reap the benefits of training the body and mind. By Dan Calabrese and Michelle Cohl 66 RETURN ON INVESTMENT Hippie Capitalist: Serial entrepreneur Sarah Endline creates, innovates, disrupts, and repeats — all while embracing a social mission. By Tom Murray 68 PRODUCTION RUN Spiritual Notes: Grammy award-winning artist Neil Giraldo developed a line of premium bourbon and rye whiskeys in Chelsea. By R.J. King 70 PATENTS AND INVENTIONS Civil Lady: Clarissa Britain navigated around the Civil War on a journey to Michigan, where she patented seven inventions including a sheltered ambulance, cooking pots, a floor warmer, and, for miners, a lantern-powered dinner pail. By Norm Sinclair

72 OPINION Up in Smoke: Michigan’s recreational cannabis sector has reached nearly $2 billion in annual sales in less than three years, but prices are dropping amid rising competition. By Marco Eadie 74 THE CIRCUIT Our party pics from exclusive events.

Et Cetera 80 FROM THE TOP Largest Accounting Firms, Largest Banks and Thrifts, Largest Credit Unions, Top Regional Airports. 98 CLOSING BELL Brain Surgery: Dr. Alexa Canady was the nation’s first Black female neurosurgeon. By Ronald Ahrens

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OUR “SQUARE MILE”

COMMUNITY GROWTH AND SUSTAINABILITY THROUGH EDUCATION

The Hantz Foundation is a community-based organization focusing on Detroit’s southeastern corridor. The coined term “Square Mile” reflects our strategy of concentrating resources to sustain one neighborhood at a time. Through efforts within three schools (Detroit Southeastern High School, Hutchinson Elementary-Middle School, Detroit Enterprise Academy) we strive to create educational pathways to build success and future opportunities within the neighborhood. The Square Mile approach is about taking personal ownership of outcomes. We believe this will impact the community in a hands-on way—one that is sustainable, engaging, and truly stunning. Please follow our work at www.hantzfoundation.org and donate to our continued efforts to elevate the Square Mile.

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Letters

Home Appeal

nyone looking to buy a home these days is in for sticker shock, eespecially specially those entering the market for the first time. Across the country, home prices rose 18.7 percent on average during the first quar quarter of 2022, based on data from the Federal Housing Finance Agency House Price Index report. While that’s great news for sellers, people looking to purchase their first home are facing multiple head headwinds that limit their prospects. That spells trouble for the over overR.J. KING all housing sector and the national economy, as one basic tenet of advancing consumer markets comes from drawing new customers. A recent report from the Mortgage Bankers Association showed a steep drop in mortgage applications has pushed the future housing market index down to its lowest level in 22 years. But there’s a local silver lining amid the roadblocks; namely, urban markets like Detroit are still relatively affordable compared to other parts of the country. Outlying communities also are drawing younger buyers, but there’s a limit to the growth due to the high cost of adding new infrastructure like roads and sewer lines, longer commute times, and skyrocketing gas prices. In fact, inflation — largely caused by too much government spending by the Biden administration — has made basic items like food, energy, and consumer goods more expensive. A barricade against economic growth, inflation is limiting the likelihood first-time homebuyers can afford to live in desirable communities like Boston or Miami. As a work-around to the steep runup in prices, local developers are tapping into pent-up demand among first-time buyers for affordable residences

in urban neighborhoods. For example, a mixture of incentives, existing infrastructure, and close proximity to employers has been driving demand for renovated homes across multiple areas in Detroit like East English Village, the North End, Delray, and Brightmoor. Expect the trend to continue as mortgage rates are estimated to average around 5.7 percent by the end of the year, up from 2.6 percent at the start of 2022. Higher borrowing costs will eventually tighten the home market even further — Fannie Mae projects home prices will rise this year by 10.8 percent; next year the forecast is that prices will climb by 3.2 percent. Because Detroit was a city that, in the early 1950s, had more than 1.8 million people, there’s plenty of room to grow amid its 139 square miles. According to figures from the most recent U.S. census, the Motor City had a population of 639,000 people in 2020. The city is primed to grow its population if it can continue to work with developers to provide affordable homes, maintain and enhance basic services, and draw large employers, including manufacturing and logistics operations on brownfield sites. According to a recent report from ATTOM Data Solutions, Detroit was ranked fifth in the country for affordable housing. If ever there was a bellwether sign to boost the city and state population, this is it. To get there, adjust the Pure Michigan advertising campaign to draw employers as well as first-time homebuyers from across the country and around the world. By adding jobs and residents, the state economy can grow faster than the 2 percent population gain from 2010 to 2020. And while it won’t be easy — Florida saw its population jump 14.6 percent during the same period — doing the same thing over and over again isn’t much of an option.

R.J. King rjking@dbusiness.com

EMAIL US AT: editorial@dbusiness.com SEND MAIL TO: Letters, DBusiness magazine, 5750 New King Drive, Ste. 100, Troy, MI 48098 Please include your city of residence and daytime phone number. We reserve the right to edit letters for length and content.

OAKLAND HILLS FIRE

Thanks to DBusiness for the full story on the past, present, and future of Oakland Hills Country Club and its outstanding report on the fire that destroyed the clubhouse at the legendary golf course in Oakland County earlier this year. As the story notes, Oakland Hills is a “huge part of our golf history.” Tim Keenan’s wellresearched article provides a wealth of information on the interesting people and events in narrating the remarkable story of the club’s past — and its grand plans for the future.

Eric Hood Shelby Township

FASHION MEDIA SUMMIT

On behalf of the entire Michigan Fashion Media Summit team, I wanted to reach out and thank you for your coverage. We greatly appreciate the time and effort you put into covering our organization; each article helps us spread awareness.

Alexandra Cooperman Ann Arbor

DISTRICT DETROIT

Your article on the new development being planned in The District Detroit by Stephen Ross and Ilitch Holdings Inc. was by far the best-written and most informative (story I’ve seen on the project). It was clear, more in-depth, and placed the renderings in context geographically and from a development perspective.

Paul Travalini Northville

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Contributors

CONTRIBUTORS DETROIT’S PREMIER BUSINESS JOURNAL

VOLUME 17 • ISSUE 4 PUBLISHER Jason Hosko

TOM BEAMAN

Tom Beaman has written for DBusiness since 2007, covering topics ranging from aviation to the dairy industry to Michigan’s Native American community. He worked as a news anchor and a reporter at WDET and WOSU in Columbus, Ohio, and has contributed stories to NPR’s “All Things Considered.” Beaman also worked as a science writer at the General Motors Research Laboratories and as manager of product communications for Pontiac, Saab, and Vauxhall Motors Ltd. A proud Buckeye, he also mentors journalism and public relations students at his alma mater, Ohio State University. In this issue, Beaman explores the decline of former retail giants Sears and Kmart. CONTRIBUTION: Writer, Focus “Lost In Space” | SEE IT HERE: Page 30

GIACOMINA FABIANO

Giacomina Fabiano is an editorial intern for DBusiness, where she writes and conducts research for the magazine, DBusiness Daily News, and DBusiness Tech and Mobility News. She grew up in Midland and studied at the University of Notre Dame, earning her bachelor’s degree in English and psychology. While in college, she worked for the writing center and her prose was accepted in the English department’s annual journal. She’s the published author of a book of poetry, “Midnight Lyrics,” and spends her free time writing fiction. She loves reading, playing tennis with her friends, and spending summer days by the lake. CONTRIBUTION: Intern

EDITORIAL EDITOR R.J. King MANAGING EDITOR Tim Keenan ASSOCIATE EDITOR Jake Bekemeyer COPY EDITOR Anne Berry Daugherty EDITORIAL INTERN: Giacomina Fabiano DESIGN ART DIRECTOR Justin Stenson JUNIOR DESIGNER Steven Prokuda ADVERTISING SALES ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES Cynthia Barnhart, Regan Blissett, Karli Brown, Maya Gossett, Donna Kassab, Lisa LaBelle, Mary Pantely and Associates OUTREACH SPECIALISTS Paige Fritts, Alice Zimmer PRODUCTION PRODUCTION DIRECTOR Jenine Knox SENIOR PRODUCTION ARTISTS Stephanie Daniel, Robert Gorczyca SENIOR PRODUCTION COORDINATOR Jill Berry GRAPHIC ARTISTS Jim Bibart, Colin McKinney WEB DIGITAL DIRECTOR Nick Britsky DIGITAL DEVELOPMENT MANAGER Matt Cappo DIGITAL DEVELOPMENT SPECIALISTS Mariah Knott, Luanne Lim, Kevin Pell, Bart Woinski VIDEO PRODUCER Ken Bowery VIDEO EDITOR Taylor Lutz DIGITAL COORDINATOR Travis Cleveland IT IT DIRECTOR Jeremy Leland CIRCULATION CIRCULATION MANAGER Riley Meyers CIRCULATION COORDINATORS David Benvenuto, Jaz’myne Jones, Cathy Krajenke, Rachel Moulden, Lisa Sawyer MARKETING AND EVENTS MARKETING AND EVENTS MANAGER Jodie Svagr MARKETING AND EVENTS COORDINATORS Kelsey Cocke, Drake Lambright MARKETING AND PUBLIC RELATIONS LEAD Asia Jones

BECKY SIMONOV

Becky Simonov is a Detroit-based food and lifestyle photographer. With a background in cooking and recipe development, she specializes in creating food and lifestyle imagery that tells a story and is visually striking. Her work emphasizes light, atmosphere, and stillness within a rapidly moving world. She prides herself on her attention to detail and her ability to collaborate with clients to create photos that highlight their image, message, and community. When not behind a camera, she’s most likely developing recipes or trying to pick up new niche hobbies. In this issue of DBusiness, Simonov photographed Clare’s Creative Cakes for Powered by Youth and Jim Secreto’s Secret Stash.

MARKET RESEARCH MARKETING RESEARCH MANAGER Ana Potter MARKETING RESEARCH COORDINATOR Georgia Iden MARKETING RESEARCH ASSISTANT Alexandra Thompson PRS GRAPHIC DESIGNER Alexa Dyer BUSINESS CEO Stefan Wanczyk PRESIDENT John Balardo DIRECTOR OF BUSINESS OPERATIONS Kathie Gorecki PUBLISHING AND SALES COORDINATOR Kristin Mingo ASSISTANT OFFICE MANAGER Natasha Bajju SENIOR ACCOUNTING ASSOCIATE Andrew Kotzian ACCOUNTING ASSOCIATE Sammi Dick DISTRIBUTION Target Distribution, Troy

CONTRIBUTION: Photographer | SEE IT HERE: Pages 26 and 36

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Ronald Ahrens, Tom Beaman, Dale Buss, Dan Calabrese, Marco Eadie, Tom Murray, Calli Newberry, Norm Sinclair, Gary Witzenburg CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS Nic Antaya, Emily Crombez, Patrick Gloria, Nick Hagen, Christine MJ Hathaway, Matt Lavere, Taleen Markarian, Jason Raisch, Becky Simonov, James Yang

Postmaster: Send address changes to DBusiness, 5750 New King Drive, Ste. 100, Troy, MI 48098 For advertising inquiries: 248-691-1800, ext. 126 To sell DBusiness magazine or for subscription inquiries: 248-588-1851 DBusiness is published by Hour Media. Copyright © 2022 Hour Media. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited. DBusiness is a registered trademark of Hour Media.

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JAMES YANG

07-08.22

COMMENTARY

18 GOVERNMENTS NEED TO TAKE RAPID ACTIONS TO LOWER BARRIERS THAT ARE HOLDING LOW-CARBON HYDROGEN BACK FROM FASTER GROWTH.”

p. 18

p. 20

Hydrogen Economy

Compendium

Shortage Fiction Survival of the Smartest

— FATIH BIROL, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, INTERNATIONAL ENERGY AGENCY JULY - AUGUST 2022 || DBUSINESS.COM 17

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Commentary

ENERGY

Hydrogen Economy

INSIDE THE NUMBERS BILLION

Global public investment to develop and deploy hydrogen technologies

BILLION

307

Global private sector investment in hydrogen technologies

TRILLION

1.2

Investment in hydrogen technologies needed by 2030 to meet global net zero emissions by 2050

Source: International Energy Agency

s the auto industry strives to build more electric vehicles to meet government mandates for fuel economy, it’s clear the market isn’t ready for prime time. Major challenges remain to be addressed, if not solved, before EVs become more than a blip of annual sales — namely range anxiety, too few charging stations, shortcomings with the electric grid, child labor sourcing of raw materials, recycling concerns, costs, and more. Compounding the situation is a recent spate of supply chain delays for key battery materials, along with inflation. But there’s another alternative that’s cleaner than electric propulsion. Hydrogen is making inroads into the commercial marketplace as major companies center their research efforts on bringing the clean energy alternative forward. Most recently, German auto supplier Bosch, which has its North American headquarters in Farmington Hills, said it will invest up to $591 million on hydrogen technology by 2030. In turn, Cummins, a large manufacturer of diesel-powered engines, introduced a 15-liter, hydrogen-powered motor earlier this year that can run on different fuel types. The company, which operates several sales and research facilities in Michigan, produces a range of diesel engines for trucks, motorhomes, agricultural equipment, and school buses. The new powerplant, Cummins states, can be fueled “at a lower initial price of a fuel cell or battery electric vehicle,” and converting vehicles to hydrogen fuel requires minimal modification. To bring the concept forward, Cummins and Daimler Truck in North America are modifying Freightliner Cascadia trucks with a hydrogen fuel cell engine, with sales to begin in 2024. In other developments, North Carolina State University reports its researchers have found a way to extract hydrogen gas from liquid carriers that’s less expensive and more energy-efficient than traditional systems. On a related front, Washington State University scientists can now produce pure compressed hydrogen using ethanol, water, and electricity, which eliminates the need to transport the high-pressure gas. Closer to home, in May, Noble Gas Systems Inc., a developer and manufacturer of conformable high-pressure hydrogen gas storage tanks in Novi, raised $3.5 million in Series A funding to build out its high-pressure, lightweight storage and delivery system that can accommodate compressed gases including hydrogen, natural gas, air, oxygen, and nitrogen. It features a tank comprised of a polymer liner, woven reinforcement, and a protective outer shell. Automakers aren’t the only ones exploring hydrogen. Airbus, the European multinational aerospace corporation, announced in May that its ZeroE program will develop a hydrogen-powered, narrowbody-class aircraft that it plans to introduce in 2035. Other aircraft manufacturers are exploring hydrogen propulsion, as well. Going forward, it’s difficult to imagine Americans will all be driving EVs in the next few years, given the limitations; sales have been incentivized for more than a decade and still haven’t taken off. If politicians were truly eager to prevent pollution, they would promote different clean alternatives like hydrogen or nuclear energy, rather than pursuing a one-size-fits-all course of action.

EDUCATION

SHORTAGE FICTION

GOV. GRETCHEN WHITMER has proposed $2.3 billion in retention bonuses for every schoolteacher, custodian, bus driver, administrator, aide, and paraprofessional as part of her 2023 fiscal year budget. Whitmer claims the $2,000 bonus for every school worker, a key campaign promise, along with another $2,000 for each employee who comes back to work at a school, is needed to offset staffing shortages. But her budget assertions don’t hold water. The overall birth rate has been declining for years and took a nosedive during the 2008 global financial crisis. Although there are fewer children in school — many colleges are already reporting declining enrollment — Whitmer states teachers are working harder than ever, and more instructors are needed. According to the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a nonpolitical think tank in Midland, “there are 8.4 percent more public-school employees in 2021-22 than in 2016-17, when claims of a statewide teacher shortage surfaced. There were 192,881 full-time equivalent positions in 2016-17. That increased to 209,003 in 2021-22. Student enrollment, by contrast, dropped 5.8 percent over that span.” At the same time, even with added personnel, public schools in Michigan continue to fail students. The state ranks 32nd in the nation for fourth-grade reading outcomes. Among Black students in the fourth grade, Michigan is among the 10 worst states for reading performance. Rather than reward select allies over other workers in the state, the governor should follow up on her campaign pledge to improve student outcomes. ECONOMY

SURVIVAL OF THE SMARTEST As businesses and consumers adapt to high inflation caused by too much government spending and regulations, other warning lights are going off. Slower economic growth, if not the likelihood of an outright recession by 2024, has companies scrambling to drive profits during a time of lower labor participation, supply chain delays, and cybersecurity fears. According to data from Gartner Inc., 37 million people will leave their jobs this year, part of the Great Reshuffling that began in 2021. To attract and retain workers, businesses have been boosting their workspace culture, offering higher pay, and providing more flexible schedules. To offset such challenges, businesses have embraced digital tools like never before. Consider smart manufacturing adoption rates jumped 50 percent over the last year, and more than two-thirds of equipment makers have integrated some aspects of the digital transformation known as Industry 4.0. Expect the digital revolution to continue, as data from Statista shows the market for industrial robots is estimated to reach $100 billion this year, while the global smart manufacturing market will jump to $500 million in 2022, more than triple the results from 2017. Given all the challenges today, the takeaways for businesses are to focus more than ever on the bottom line, reward talent, and continue to boost productivity.

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What’s your

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Commentary

COMPENDIUM: HOW OUTSIDERS VIEW DETROIT DETROIT AUTOMAKERS AREN’T LETTING UP ON A LONGSTANDING RIVALRY CNBC MAY 1, 2022 MICHAEL WAYLAND

Even as the Detroit automakers change and adapt to compete with electric vehicle leader Tesla, some things in the Motor City stay the same. General Motors Co., Ford Motor Co., and Stellantis (formerly Fiat Chrysler) are all steering toward electric vehicles, seeking to catch Elon Musk’s car company in sales. Yet the long-standing rivalry between the three U.S. automakers remains alive and well. That’s especially true in the hotly contested full-size pickup truck market, which is a major profit driver for them. Take, for example, events in late April: As Ford prepared to celebrate the launch of its F-150 Lightning Tuesday at a plant in Dearborn, both GM and Stellantis sought to steal the limelight from their archrival and its highly anticipated electric pickup. A day before the event, amid a blitz of stories on the F-150 Lightning, GM seemingly out of nowhere confirmed the Chevrolet Corvette will be offered in both hybrid and all-electric models in future years. The announcement, which industry onlookers had been expecting for some

time, was light on details, but it got GM in the Lightning’s news cycle. Stellantis’ Ram Trucks brand was more transparent about its intentions when the brand released a teaser video on social media of its upcoming electric pickup, saying, “Time to steal some thunder.” Ford said it’s no surprise its competitors are trying to troll the F-150 Lightning. ... “The F-150 Lightning is one of those rare product launches that transcends the auto world and becomes a cultural moment, and it’s been called a tipping point for America’s transition to electric cars. Of course, others are going to try to get in that slipstream,” Ford chief communications officer Mark Truby said in a statement to CNBC. ...

IN THIS MICHIGAN COUNTY, PANDEMIC STIMULUS FUNDS ARE REMAKING PUBLIC HEALTH PROGRAMS THE NEW YORK TIMES APRIL 9, 2022 NOAH WEILAND

In an underserved neighborhood of Michigan’s capital city, a health clinic is being built with nearly $900,000 in federal pandemic relief funds, a project that could transform the community’s access to care. Wedged among new

affordable apartments and a community center, the clinic is a symbol of the rapid effect the funds have had on many local public health programs. In Michigan and some other states, stimulus aid for cities and counties has been put to use more quickly than billions in state-designated funds, some of which remain tied up in legislatures deadlocked over how to spend them. And while much of the local aid is going to other priorities, many cities and counties say the rescue funds have provided an opening to improve chronically underfunded public health systems as they recover from the pandemic, addressing entrenched health disparities that COVID-19 has made worse. Here in mid-Michigan, where officials have warned of soaring rates of violence, drug addiction and delayed care during the pandemic, the local aid from last year’s stimulus bill, the American Rescue Plan, has rewritten the economic fortunes of Ingham County and its public health programs — at least for now. Of the $350 billion for states and localities in the rescue plan, $195 billion went to state governments, with another $130 billion steered to cities, counties and other local governments. ...

THE PLAN TO MAKE MICHIGAN THE NEXT SPACE STATE THE NEW YORKER • APRIL 24, 2022 • DAVID ROMPF

One of the largest log cabins in the world can be found in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, on the edge of Lake Superior. The property, called Granot Loma, is 26,000 square feet, and it belongs to Tom Baldwin, a 65-year-old former bond and commodities trader. Baldwin made his fortune in the Treasury-bond pit at the Chicago Board of Trade, where his colleagues referred to him as the King. He was known for trading $2 billion worth of bonds in a single day. Last fall, I drove to see him at Granot Loma, in Powell Township, 17 miles north of the city of Marquette. He gave me directions over the phone, telling me to turn off the main road and onto County Road KE. “Essentially, it’s my driveway,” he said. He wasn’t exaggerating. I continued down the road for more than a mile until I reached a locked gate, which opened a few seconds after I arrived. … I had come to visit Baldwin because Granot Loma had been selected as the location for a proposed rocket-launch site, as part of a plan called the Michigan Launch Initiative. If built, the site, along with two other facilities, would constitute the first spaceport in the Midwest. The site planned for Granot Loma would host vertical launches, through which rockets carrying satellites and other payloads — not human passengers — would be sent into low-Earth orbit. The second facility is a horizontal-launch site at the Oscoda-Wurtsmith Airport, about 200 miles north of Detroit, where aircraft carrying satellites would take off from runways. Operations for both sites would be supported by the third facility, a command-and-control center, which would be situated in the Upper Peninsula, in Chippewa County, east of Marquette.

The spaceport plan is the brainchild of the Michigan Aerospace Manufacturers Association (MAMA), a trade association founded in 2007. MAMA estimates that the command-and-control center will be operational by 2023, and that all three sites of the spaceport will be up and running by 2026. Their initiative has been polarizing: some locals believe that the spaceport will benefit the economy and attract more talent to the state, while others, particularly those who live close to Granot Loma, worry about the potential disruption of having rocket launches in their back yards. Many are also distressed about the potential environmental risks, given that the rockets for the vertical site would launch near the shoreline and likely fly over Lake Superior. … Baldwin said that he began communicating with MAMA in 2019. Earlier that year, the organization had received a $2 million, taxpayer-funded grant from the State of Michigan, in order to conduct a series of feasibility studies for a possible spaceport. One of those studies involved vetting several potential launch-site locations throughout the state, and MAMA hired consultants who scored the sites in categories ranging from “environment” and “safety” to “business.” By the end of the process, the consultants had identified Baldwin’s land as the ideal vertical-launch spot. …

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Commentary

ROGER PENSKE FINALLY GETS THE INDIANAPOLIS 500 HE’S DREAMED OF FORBES • MAY 25, 2022• BRUCE MARTIN

Editor’s Note: This article was published before the May 29 Indianapolis 500. After three long years, Roger Penske will finally get to host the Indianapolis 500 in all of its red-white-and-blue, star-spangled banner, celebrity-watching, military-honoring Memorial Day Weekend, “Back Home Again in Indiana,” full-capacity glory. With a record 18 wins in the Indianapolis 500 as a team owner, it had been said that Penske owned the Indianapolis Motor Speedway long before he actually purchased it in late 2019, along with the Indianapolis 500 and the IndyCar Series, from the Hulman-George Family. The union is what the legendary race team owner and successful businessman would call “Penske Perfect.” I had an exclusive interview with Penske inside his mobile office motorhome known as “RP-1.” He discussed the efforts that it took to keep IndyCar, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, and the Indianapolis 500 on track. “Obviously, when we signed the paper and gave them our check back in January of 2020, we had a business plan that had well in excess of 250,000 people and that didn’t happen,” Penske explained. “It meant we were going to have to provide credits to certain customers that weren’t going to be able to make it and then hunker down and look at expenses from the standpoint of where they were and where we could optimize the people we had in our overall holding company to run the track. “We never stopped. We invested another $20 million in guest experience in the track and that showed our personal and company commitment moving forward. It was a matter of continuing to invest. I think it has paid off. “With COVID moving on, we are really anxiously awaiting to see what the outcome is in 2022.” Penske used the delay of the Indianapolis 500 in 2020 from May to August as a chance to actually get more work completed at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. He

continued the capital improvement project, which would have been paused in May of that year if the Indy 500 had been run on schedule. “We knew there were things we had to do,” Penske said. “We really took advantage of the shutdown in order to complete things we might not have had on our list. The primary reason we moved on — without the series, we don’t have the speedway, without the speedway, we don’t have a series. The investment we made to the speedway was obviously critical for the series. “To me, to have the race even without fans and be able to support the other promoters for two years was important. We had to give some money back from the standpoint of sanction fees, some of the payout for the teams was less, but everybody worked as a team for the outcome.” Throughout the early days of the pandemic, Penske went to work. …

WHY ELECTRICITY BLACKOUTS ARE COMING TO MICHIGAN THE WALL STREET JOURNAL MAY 27, 2022 JASON HAYES

Whatever hopes people might have had for saving Michigan’s Palisades Nuclear Generating Station, it’s too late. On May 20, the plant shut down, taking with it 6.5 percent of the state’s electricity and 15 percent of the state’s clean energy. This leaves Michiganders with less reliable electricity and higher prices. In one sense the plant’s closing was no surprise. It had been scheduled for more than five years. The plot twist? Last month

Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer came out in favor of keeping it open. Ms. Whitmer sent an initial request on April 20 to a Biden administration funding program designed to extend the life of imperiled nuclear power plants. Her request was more show than substance — it came after nearly four years of silence on nuclear power generally and Palisades in particular. Even her recently published climate plan only mentioned nuclear in passing and focused instead on building ever more weather-dependent renewable energy. Ms. Whitmer knew that keeping the plant open would require difficult to obtain, long-term commitments, yet she still held off on her announcement until the plant had a few short weeks left. She also knew that the plant’s operator, Entergy, had said for years it wanted out of the merchant nuclear-power generation business. With no buyers expressing interest in operating the plant, the company remained unequivocally committed to closing Palisades regardless of what schemes Lansing or Washington devised. It’s possible Ms. Whitmer waited because there was no political downside to supporting the doomed plant so late in the game. Her environmental allies in the Sierra Club and elsewhere knew that no matter what her news releases might say, the plant’s closing was assured. But statements of support for the plant did get valuable headlines, giving Michiganders the impression that their governor mounted a brave campaign to the bitter end. That’s an especially important message for the union members who broadly support nuclear energy. ...

MICHIGAN’S COOLEST NEW LUXURY HOTEL IS IN A CITY YOU’VE NEVER HEARD OF TRAVEL + LEISURE • MAY 24, 2022 • KATIE CHANG

Unless you live in the Detroit area, chances are you haven’t heard of Birmingham. A 30-minute drive north of the Motor City, the charming city has a modest population of around 21,000 residents, but it brims with urban perks like world-class shopping, a pedestrian-friendly downtown, and cultural offerings belying its small size. As it turns out, everything that makes Birmingham so livable also makes it a terrific place to visit. It’s no wonder why longtime resident and entrepreneur Mark Mitchell decided to venture into hospitality and open the Daxton Hotel in spring 2021. Located on Old Woodward Avenue, which is lined with historic businesses like the Birmingham 8 (a 1920s movie theater) and Harp’s Lingerie (a shop that opened in 1947), the 151-room boutique property embraces a new type of luxury — one that prioritizes forward-thinking design and full-sensory experiences. It’s the diverse 400-piece art collection curated by Saatchi Art that’ll first catch your eye. Doubling as a gallery, the lobby displays thought-provoking works, including Adrian Landon’s gold-plated “Golden Mechanical Horse,” which was commissioned by the hotel and can be set in motion with a tap of a button, as well as splashy, abstract paintings by Mitchell’s friend and Australian artist Stephen Rowe. Even the oversized geodesic structure cocooning the hotel’s bar is a visual stunner meticulously crafted by Michigan-based master welder Andy Dafski. The highly curated aesthetic extends to the accommodations, too. The guest rooms and suites are bold and elegant, with all featuring original pieces from artists representing more than 80 countries. Other notable details include recessed beds draped with lush floral scrims by local painter Louise Chen (also known as “Ouizi”), arched doorways, and bookshelves. To make staying here even more unforgettable, each floor has a pantry stocked with complimentary beverages and freshly baked treats. …

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BECKY SIMONOV

07-08.22

THE TICKER

26 BAKING POWER Clare McManus, 17, is DBusiness magazine’s Young CEO of the Year. The junior at Ferndale High School launched Clare’s Creative Cakes online, and plans to one day establish several brick-and-mortar locations.

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Rare Growth

Sweet Dreams

Earn and Learn

Sophie’s Choice

PDA Q&A

Farm Fresh

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Rare Growth

Jocelyn Ho has become a go-to source around the world for exotic plants. BY JAKE BEKEMEYER

far cry from the vehicles Standard Motor Truck Co. rolled off the assembly line in Detroit’s 106-year-old Belt Line Center — designed by legendary architect Albert Kahn — the rare and exotic plant sanctuary Jocelyn Ho created on the complex’s first floor has rooted itself firmly in the collector community. Ho spent years as an avid collector herself, propagating more plants on her own before switching sides in April 2020 and opening Rare Plant Fairy. “I grew them in these cabinets. These are the same cabinets from my living room — 1,000 square feet — so it wasn’t much,” she says, gesturing to four small glass cabinets from Ikea. “I had to be very efficient.” A little over two years later, the business is one of 14 in the world that’s been invited to be a vendor at the

DBUSINESS DIRECT

Lear to Acquire German Seat Climate Control Supplier Lear Corp. in Southfield plans to purchase Germany’s I.G. Bauerhin, a supplier of auto seat heating, ventilation, active cooling, steering wheel heating, seat sensors, and electronic control modules for $149.96 million.

GLOBAL MARKET Although many plants are affordable to a variety of collectors, Ho says some one-of-a-kind plants can surpass five digits in price.

Piston Automotive and Our Next Energy Producing EV Batteries Piston Automotive, a member of Southfield’s Piston Group of companies, is partnering with energy storage technology developer Our Next Energy Inc. in Novi to manufacture EV batteries at a Piston facility in Van Buren Township.

45th annual International Aroid Society Show and Sale on Sept. 24-25 in Miami. The company now offers wholesale, too, which it began rolling out in February and fully opened in March and April, which are better months for shipping plants. The warehouse shelving is full of plants. So full, in fact, the company is adding a large adjacent space in the building to house its increasingly complex operations that include planting tissue cultures shipped from a cloning lab in Thailand that’s operated by Ho’s cousin, a staff kitchen, and offices. Ho started by herself, but has hired her first five employees this year. In addition, her husband has come on board to help with paperwork and other business tasks like payroll. In spite of the growth and the accompanying activity, the plants have never shifted from the spotlight. Ranging from household names like monstera and philodendron to lesser-known genus’ like aglaonema and hoya, they can be one-of-akind or well-known collectors’ plants. “We’re leaders in terms of rare plants. There are plants that are untested in the market — I only have one or two of them — and those are the ones I would put in my retail shop,” Ho says. “Other places are looking for more common rare plants because they don’t know what they have if (a plant) is the only one in the world.” Ho says the business does its best to be eco-conscious. She enrolled in DTE’s MIGreenPower program and focuses on sustainable shipping practices like combining orders whenever possible and reusing packaging while maintaining a professional look. “It’s about having the reputation of the Rare Plant Fairy. About being the person you go to for the most exotic plants you’ve never seen before,” she says.

Consumers Energy Commits $100M to Improve Grid Reliability Consumers Energy in Jackson announced plans for $100 million of investment in 2022 to reduce both the number and length of power outages and increase reliability by upgrading its high voltage distribution system.

U-M Professor Invents Software That Doubles 3-D Printing Speed Chinedum Okwudire, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, has invented software that may enable 3-D printers to work at much higher speeds without vibrations.

PHOTOS COURTESY ROBIN SCHWARTZ

The Ticker

Olympia Development Unveils New Vision for District Detroit Olympia Development and Related Cos. unveiled a new vision for The District Detroit that will include affordable and market-rate housing, as well as sustainable green spaces, commercial office spaces, retail, and restaurants.

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The Ticker

SOPHIE’S CHOICE

PHOTOS COURTESY CATHY SITEK

LAWRENCE TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY and the

Stefanini Group are partnering to teach Sophie how to run a factory. Sophie is a virtual artificial intelligence assistant developed by Stefanini, a $1-billion global technology company specializing in digital solutions with a large office in Southfield. LTU students and faculty are helping Stefanini teach Sophie how to integrate into smart manufacturing environments on LTU’s Southfield campus with self-adaptation and contextual automation, which is made possible by Stefanini partner Rockwell Automation. This project bridges the gap in student understanding between theoretical and real-world AI implementation. From building architectural design and codes to analyzing Sophie’s mind map flow chart and more, students are interacting with AI implementation in every step of the process, from A to Z. Designed with an original set of artificial intelligence algorithms and replacing script-based human service with automation, Sophie is trained in voice processing, text interpretation, and self-learning initiation — and is easy to train staff on and implement into a business. — By Tim Keenan

David Whitney Building in Detroit to Undergo Major Renovation The historic David Whitney Building in downtown Detroit will undergo a major renovation, including a new and expanded Autograph Collection hotel, along with new food and beverage venues for diners and guests.

Standing Order Cathy and Jerry Sitek developed the StandRite-Pro to help more than 90 million workers who stand all day. BY TIM KEENAN

aster toolmaker Cathy Sitek was ready to retire from her job as a machinist in 2015 due to the pain in her body that resulted from standing all day at a machine for years. Then she got an idea that has the potential to help millions of workers. “I was getting sick from MSDs (musculoskeletal disorders) caused by standing incorrectly, when you lock your hips and your knees,” Sitek explains. “I tried standing with my shins against a shower stool, and that’s when I had my ‘aha’ moment.” According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, MSDs are injuries or disorders of the muscles, nerves, tendons, joints, cartilage, and spinal discs. When it comes to work-related MSDs, the job environment and performing multiple tasks are factors that contribute significantly to the condition. After her experience with the shower stool, Sitek and her husband, Jerry, designed a sturdier version of the product and named it the StandRite-Pro. They submitted a provisional patent application in November 2015, followed by a utility patent application in 2016. The couple completed validation and prototyping in 2018 and were granted a utility patent the next year. The result is a metal base with a padded foot mat and an upright cushion that people can lean their shins against while they work. “We create an engaged forward stance, like athletes use,” Jerry Sitek explains. “We flex the knees to unlock the hips, reducing the force that builds in your lower back.” Seven variations of the product, which is built in Holland with components from Minnesota and Texas, sell for between $295 and $495. With an estimated 90 million Americans standing on the job all day, the market for the StandRite-Pro could be enormous. There currently are about 140 StandRite-Pros in use, and about half were furnished by the Siteks for trial purposes. The other half were purchased. Linamar Gear, a global automotive supplier in Guelph, Ontario, Canada, is one company that completed a trial and plans to provide the StandRite-Pro to all of its standing workforce. Eden Valley Poultry in Nova Scotia tested the product for a year, got approval from the Canadian government, and now is equipping its team with StandRite-Pros. Ryan Moffatt, safety and wellness officer at Eden Valley, reports that one of his employees using the StandRite-Pro is down to one Tylenol a day. That was welcome but not surprising news to Sitek. “It actually heals your body by building your muscles back up,” she says. “Now, I’m the healthiest I’ve ever been.” With overexertion injuries costing employers $13.4 billion every year, according to Liberty Mutual, purchasing a low-tech device like the StandRite-Pro could be a worthwhile investment for companies of all sizes.

Strategic Staffing Solutions Expands Globally Strategic Staffing Solutions in Detroit, a global IT consulting business, has opened new offices in Poland and Argentina, and will begin servicing customers in new locations in Singapore, the Philippines, and Australia.

Lineage Logistics Acquires Longtime Partner Turvo Lineage Logistics in Novi, a global temperature-controlled REIT and logistics solution provider, announced it has acquired Turvo Inc., a provider of supply chain management, collaboration, and visibility software in the food sector.

J.D. Power Purchases Predictive Analytics Business of UK Firm J.D. Power, a data analytics and customer intelligence company in Troy, has acquired the data and predictive analytics business of We Predict, a provider of automobile service and warranty analytics.

PROPER POSTURE Cathy and Jerry Sitek (above) designed the StandRite-Pro (below) to prevent the root cause of musculoskeletal disorders in workers.

Henry Ford Health First in Using New Radiation Therapy Henry Ford Health in Detroit’s Midtown has announced it is the first in the world to complete a full course of patient treatments using the latest advancement in magnetic resonance (MR)-guided radiation therapy.

For full stories and more, visit dbusiness.com/daily-news to get daily news sent directly to your email.

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The Ticker

Sweet Dreams

Clare McManus, our Young CEO of the Year, looks to take her baking business to the next level. JAKE BEKEMEYER |

BECKY SIMONOV

t a young age, Clare McManus has already started to recognize the level of commitment it takes to turn a passion into a business. The 17-year-old junior at Ferndale High School recounts preparing and baking more than 300 cupcakes from scratch in the wee hours of the morning, with help from a friend, for a garage and bake sale in Pleasant Ridge following a night shift at her job at Dairy Queen. “We stayed up making signs, baking, frosting. I (was) covered in frosting at that point, but I made $100 in profits that day. My dad said, ‘You have to make sure you get a profit,’ ” McManus says. That night was a far cry from her start in baking, when she made standard box mix recipes with her parents as a child, but it’s closer to her final goal of owning a brick-and-mortar business called Clare’s Creative Cakes. In the future, she envisions multiple locations, each featuring her signature cupcakes, cakes, cake pops, chocolate-covered strawberries, and more. Although there are some steps and some years between now and then, McManus has a plan. She’s researching which baking and pastry arts program she will attend after graduating from high school — the Auguste Escoffier School of Culinary Arts in Boulder, Colo., and Schoolcraft College in Livonia are two leading options — and setting aside money to open her first shop. Meanwhile, she’s putting in the elbow grease to get there by baking for

EASY BAKE OVEN Clare McManus has been doing a brisk business selling cakes and other confections. She can design almost anything, including Rice Krispies Treats and chocolate-covered fruit.

garage sales, birthdays, charity events, baby showers, and whatever other opportunities come along. “I don’t have anyone working for me,” she says, “but my mom stays up until 2 a.m. to help decorate.” One element of the process stands above all others to McManus. “The decorating is my life. I love decorating. When I was little, my friend taught me to put the frosting in a Ziploc bag and cut the tip out. So I’d always pipe with a plastic bag,” she says. Unafraid to tackle any flavor, style, or decoration, her cupcake repertoire already includes funfetti, carrot cake, red velvet, chocolate, Oreo, sea salt caramel,

peppermint, and Oreo peppermint, with flavors like marshmallow in the works. Her decorations can be anything from Hawaiian-themed cupcakes with edible flowers to a gingerbread forest-themed cake. Always seeking out new inspirations, she now has her eyes set on mastering a wedding-themed covered strawberry, where the chocolate coating resembles a tuxedo. “I recently got a comment on a post saying: ‘These were the best cupcakes ever, they’re amazing.’ And it just made me smile. I’m glad they enjoyed it, because it’s my work that they’re enjoying.”

PDA Q&A: THE E-INTERVIEW DB: Where are you?

SOON HAGERTY

Senior Vice President of Brand Hagerty, Traverse City

SH: At a lovely boutique hotel in Greenwich, Conn., for the Greenwich Concours d’Elegance. We (Hagerty) took over the show two years ago. On Sunday, for the main event, there will be 142 classic vehicles on display, along with other activities. DB: How long have you been with Hagerty?

SH: I’ve been a consultant for 20 years with Hagerty. I started a public relations agency when I was 23 years old called Luxe Communications, and through that company and other activities we represented high-end clients. Eleven years ago, I joined Hagerty full time. DB: How have you evolved Hagerty’s branding?

SH: When I first started consulting, we wanted to expand Hagerty’s niche beyond insurance to build value around data and become a lifestyle brand. Today, we focus on the ownership of collector cars, and that it’s really fun. DB: How is the Detroit Concours d’Elegance coming along?

LH: We knew the minute

we acquired (the event) we wanted to move it to Detroit, and we were very purposeful in how we did that. Detroit built America, and we want to help tell that story through classic cars. It won’t be just one location (the Detroit Institute of Arts, Sept. 16-18). For example, on that Saturday (Sept. 17), we’ll be using Comerica Park for a

Cars and Coffee event.

DB: How’s the restaurant doing?

LH: We’re celebrating the fourth anniversary of The Good Bowl in Traverse City. I love Vietnamese food, so I created a business plan for a restaurant where we would donate $1 for every bowl we served. Through my lawyer, we found Chef Tony Vu. — R.J. King

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Big things are happening at MarxModa. We’re thrilled to announce the addition of Knoll alongside Herman Miller as we continue our work as Michigan’s Certified Dealer.

Scan the QR code to learn more. marxmoda.com

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As of this Spring, MarxModa represents the full product portfolio of Knoll and Herman Miller. We’re eager to continue making a difference with more creative solutions than ever. 5/24/22 3:23 PM

The Ticker

FARM FRESH

HYDROPONICALLY-GROWN PRODUCE cultivated

Earn and Learn

College athletes are now able to make money from endorsements, but there’s still no pay-for-play. BY JAKE BEKEMEYER

ince the NCAA passed legislation in July 2021 to open opportunities for collegiate athletes to earn money from their name, image, and likeness (NIL), the landscape of college athletics has changed radically. The rules still prohibit athletes from being paid to attend or compete at a college or a university, but endorsement deals are now allowed — and that’s an important distinction. Still, the fledgling industry is largely undefined. Michael D. Stein, a business transactional attorney in Bloomfield Hills who represents Will Johnson, a Grosse Pointe native and five-star defensive back for U-M’s football team, says “there’s no conventional wisdom yet.” Johnson, with Stein’s guidance, earlier this year signed an NIL deal with The Morrie, which has restaurants in Birmingham and Royal Oak. According to Stein, one thing is non-negotiable: “It can’t be inducement,” he says. It is permissible for athletes to enter deals with school boosters if there isn’t an incentive to attend or play at that specific university, but not all cases are clear-cut. “Some of the things you see will look like inducement,” Stein says. “There are interpretations (of the NCAA guidelines).” In May, the NCAA provided more clarity by issuing a definition of boosters as “any third-party entity that promotes an athletics program, assists with

recruiting, or assists with providing benefits to recruits, enrolled student-athletes, or their families” to attempt to limit pay-for-play scenarios. The jury is still out on how this will affect future agreements. Most deals come in the form of athletes promoting a brand on social media or making public appearances in exchange for money, merchandise, branding opportunities, and other forms of compensation. Stein distinguished two types of deals. One is a true business deal, and an example is the Barstool Athletes program from Barstool Sports, which U-M softball players Audrey LeClair and Lexie Blair have joined. Under the arrangement, athletes receive Barstool apparel in exchange for social media promotion. Stein describes the second type of arrangement as a “booster deal.” As an example, Mat Ishbia, president and CEO of Pontiac’s United Wholesale Mortgage, is committing $500 per month to football and men’s basketball players at Michigan State University in East Lansing for the duration of their playing careers, in exchange for social media promotion. With a donation like this, the money can be spread among different sports and athletic department projects. With NIL deals, the money goes toward supporting the specific interest of the booster. “It’s unprecedented,” Stein says. As the NIL industry unfolds, look for more creative deals that will compensate athletes or benefit entire athletic departments.

PLAY BALL Former University of Michigan relief pitcher Alex Storako (8) was one of the first athletes to enter the Barstool Athletes program.

ROMEO GUZMAN/CSM VIA ZUMA PRESS WIRE

indoors in a controlled environment in a shorter length of time, is making inroads in local grocery stores. Lakeland Fresh Farms in Chesterfield Township is supplying hydroponically-grown romaine and leaf lettuce and basil to several metro Detroit grocery stores and restaurants. “I invite shoppers to taste the difference with Lakeland’s products,” says Joe Corace, president and CEO of Lakeland Fresh Farms. “I believe when you practice business ethically and sustainably, it will foster growth and profitability in the best way while creating benefits for your community and surrounding ecosystem.” Lakeland’s process employs hundreds of LED grow lights and a computer-controlled indoor weather system that uses 90 percent less water than open field-growing and allows for hands-free automation, which eliminates the risk of bacterial contamination. It also removes the need for chemical pesticides or herbicides, so there’s no chemical run-off or contamination of Macomb County’s freshwater lakes and rivers. The indoor agricultural facility enables Lakeland to harvest leafy greens in just 18 days — lettuce takes three months to grow outdoors in soil. Corace says Lakeland hopes to continue growing its product line by adding more herbs and green mixes in the near future. —Tim Keenan

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Focus

Lo L Los os o ost st in Space st How management of the world’s two largest retailers in the last century, Sears and Kmart, lost their way by acquiring non-core businesses, failing to stay ahead of technological advances, and insulating themselves from criticism.

wo entrepreneurs, Sebastian S. Kresge and Richard W. Sears, each established storefronts and built them into the twin titans of retail during the last century. But today the merchants represent a sliver of their once immense size, having closed thousands of stores and leaving only a handful of locations scattered around the country. In fact, what became Sears, Roebuck and Co. and The Kresge Co. could be considered the retail innovators of the late 19th century, with both Sears and Kresge seen as that era’s Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. The lesson for today’s high-fliers is that as invincible as they appear, a lack of innovation, flawed customer insights, and arrogance can conspire to bring the greatest companies to their knees. Sears’ business began to decline in the late 1980s when the company went on an acquisition spree, believing it could entice its millions of customers into other revenue-bearing services by leveraging brand affinity. The retailer acquired Allstate Insurance, Dean Witter Investment Services, and Coldwell Banker Real Estate, and launched the Discover Card. “They poured billions of dollars into these disparate businesses, which required an enormous amount of capital,” says Mark Cohen, director of retail studies and adjunct professor at the Columbia University Business School and former chairman and CEO of Sears Canada Inc. “The money came from the cash flow that they were harvesting from the retail business. While this diversion of energy, effort, and funds took place over a period of years, the stores received less investment and became less focused.” From 1984 through 1992, Kmart also caught the acquisition bug, purchasing Waldenbooks, Builder’s Square, Pace Membership Warehouse, Sports Authority, and Border’s Books and Music. Industry observers say Kmart shoppers were confused by the mixed signals: While Kmart was supposed to be a discounter, it had deals with glitzy names like designer Ralph Lauren and model Kathy Ireland. In addition, instead of running television spots, Kmart continued with Sunday supplements in major metropolitan newspapers despite declining circulation. Kmart was hobbled by its reluctance to invest in technology, as well.

CLOSEOUT Sears, Roebuck and Co. dominated the last century, and moved fairly quickly when retail demand shifted to emerging suburbs around the country. But by the mid-1980s, Sears became insulated and failed to keep up with fashion trends, while its store layouts failed to match newcomers like Target.

“Even though (Walmart founder) Sam Walton didn’t like computers, he liked what computers could do,” says Erik Gordon, clinical assistant professor at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business in Ann Arbor. “Walmart built this tremendous computer system that was designed to take costs out of the logistics process and to assure that stores had needed inventory. Kmart didn’t, believing a discount store couldn’t spend that kind of money on computers.” The benefit of Walmart’s investment in technology is borne out by the numbers. “In the 1980s, Kmart had a 20 percent gross margin on sales and Walmart, with its policy of everyday low prices, had a 10 percent gross margin on sales,” says Ivan Feinseth, chief investment officer at Tigress Financial Partners in New York. “However, Kmart did $75 a square foot in sales while Walmart was doing $175 a square foot in sales. Do the math; 20 percent times 75 is $15, 10 percent times 175 is $17.50. Walmart could turn inventory better.” In 2018, when both retailers were fading into obscurity, a report from Susquehanna International Group revealed that capital spending on store remodeling and e-commerce by Sears and Kmart in 2017 totaled 91 cents per square foot, compared to $8.12 at Kohl’s and $15.36 at Best Buy. To appreciate how far the companies fell, and why, lessons can be gleaned from their respective origins and the subsequent succession to the next generation of leadership teams.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

BY TOM BEAMAN

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NICK MARTINES, THOMAS HELICOPTER

“Every time a Black southerner went to the local store, they were confronted with forced deference to white customers who would be served first,” Professor Louis Hyman, of Cornell University’s Institute of Workplace Studies, tweeted in 2018. “The catalog undid the power of the storekeeper. Black families could buy without asking permission.” Sears opened its first department store in Chicago in 1925, and three years later entered the Michigan market with a location on Detroit’s west side at Grand River Avenue and Oakmont Boulevard. In the 1940s and 1950s, more stores appeared in Detroit, Wyandotte, Pontiac, and Grosse Pointe Woods. The company eventually had 17 stores throughout southeast Michigan. In 1969, Sears’ sales accounted for 1 percent of the entire U.S. economy, and as recently as 2010 the company had 3,600 stores. Meanwhile, Sebastian S. Kresge was born in 1867 on a farm near Wilkes-Barre, Pa., the son of Pennsylvania Dutch farmers who emigrated from Switzerland in the mid-1700s. He began doing farm chores at the age of 5 but eventually chose to pursue a business career. Kresge financed his education by working as a grocery store clerk, a teacher, a salesman, a bookkeeper, and a beekeeper. In his 1966 obituary in The New York Times, Kresge was quoted as saying, “My bees … always reminded me that hard work, thrift, sobriety, and an earnest struggle to live an upright Christian life are the first rungs of the ladder of success.”

To supplement his income as a station agent of the Minneapolis & St. Louis Railway Co. in North Redwood, Minn., Richard Sears sold lumber and coal to his neighbors. In 1886, when Sears received a shipment of gold watches from Chicago that a nearby jeweler had refused, he purchased them, sold them to railway agents up and down the line, and ordered more. Later that year, Sears founded R.W. Sears Watch Co. in Minneapolis. Sears moved his business to Chicago in 1887 and bought a classified ad in the Chicago Daily News. A young man from Indiana named Alvah C. Roebuck answered the ad and was hired, and the firm’s corporate name became Sears, Roebuck and Co. in 1893. Thanks to volume buying, distribution via railroad, rural free delivery, and the post office, the new mail order company prospered by offering farmers an alternative to high-priced rural general stores. By 1895, Sears was producing a 532-page catalog that offered hundreds of items ranging from baby carriages to firearms. To treat coughs, breathing disorders, and morphine addiction, one could order a syringe, two needles, and two vials of heroin for $1.50. From 1951 to 1954, Sears sold four- or six-cylinder Allstate Deluxe automobiles which were re-badged Kaiser Henry Js, built at Kaiser’s Willow Run plant in Ypsilanti. The Sears catalog not only opened new shopping horizons for rural populations, but it also played a significant role in enabling minority communities to shop without being hassled or ignored.

DESIGN FLAWS Kmart’s now-vacant headquarters in Troy may have seemed like a good idea when built, but the layout of offices among 23 pods connected by circular elevator towers proved cumbersome. Getting from one end to the other took 10 minutes.

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RICHARD WARREN SEARS The founder of what became Sears, Roebuck and Co. sold lumber and coal in the mid-1880s. After he began selling gold watches, he established a retail giant.

FIVE AND DIME Early Kresge stores, located predominantly on main streets across the country, were popular among city and rural dwellers. In the 1960s, the company transformed its operations into Kmart Corp. and opened stores mostly in suburban communities.

SEBASTIAN SPERING KRESGE A mass merchandising pioneer, Kresge set up stores in urban markets during the first half of the last century before focusing on suburban locations.

EDDIE LAMPERT A corporate raider, Lampert folded Sears and Kmart together to save money. Over time, he began selling coveted locations and pocketed the proceeds.

ASSOCIATED PRESS, WALTER P. REUTHER LIBRARY, WIKIPEDIA COMMONS

The seeds of today’s dollar stores were planted in 1897 when Kresge purchased a half interest in a store in Memphis, Tenn., where everything on the shelves was sold for 5 cents or 10 cents an item. Kresge and his partner opened a second store in 1898 on Woodward Avenue near Shelby Street in downtown Detroit. The business grew to eight stores in 1905 and to 85 in 1912, with annual sales of $10 million. The S.S. Kresge Co. became a publicly traded company in 1918 and was listed on the New York Stock Exchange. In 1962, Kresge entered the large-scale discount retail market with the first 80,000-square-foot Kmart store in Garden City. Seventeen other stores followed the same year, and the number of locations increased at an average of 85 per year over the following 20 years throughout the U.S. and Canada. At its peak in 1994, Kmart operated 2,486 stores worldwide. One innovation, “Blue Light Specials,” launched in 1965, were in-store “pop up” promotions that signaled special deals, often lasting no longer than 15 minutes. In 1975, the company phased out its own revolving credit program and began accepting bank credit cards. The following year, the Kresge Co., having moved its main Detroit office to a sprawling, poorly designed headquarters in Troy, became the second largest nonfood retailer based in the U.S., with fiscal year sales of $8.4 billion. The fall from grace at Sears and Kmart involved more than operational stumbles — there were human factors, as well, including the hubris that often accompanies success. Columbia’s Cohen recalls a job interview he had with former Kmart CEO Joseph Antonini, who was fond of wearing tailored suits, French cuffed shirts with cufflinks, and Italian dress shoes — none of which were available for sale inside Kmart stores. “I went to Troy to meet with Antonini, whom I had never met before,” Cohen says. “He was sitting in this office behind a very large desk on a raised platform. He spent about 60 minutes to 90 minutes pontificating about himself and about how wonderful Kmart was, spending very little time asking questions about me or my qualifications. He was exhibiting extraordinary incompetence in failing to 32 DBUSINESS || JULY - AUGUST 2022

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KRESGE FOUNDATION

GOOD EARTH The Kresge Foundation has its headquarters on a former farm along W. Big Beaver Road in Troy, directly across from Kmart’s former central office. Today, the foundation has a $4.5-billion endowment and has invested in numerous projects that have benefited metro Detroit and the state.

acknowledge that Kmart was going to be clobbered, which is exactly what happened.” Gordon relays a similar experience of a retail consultant who traveled to Chicago to meet with former Sears CEO Edward Brennan. According to Gordon, Brennan told the consultant, “When you’ve been CEO of a retail company as large as Sears for as long as I have, come back and I’ll listen to you.” Sears’ identity crisis accelerated in the early 1990s as the company that was known for Craftsman tools and Kenmore appliances seemingly lost focus and introduced “The Softer Side of Sears” ad campaign to attract more female customers. Former Saks Fifth Avenue CEO Arthur Martinez was installed as Sears’ CEO and mounted what has been recognized as a “heroic” turnaround in 1992 that faltered in 1996. The company fought back from 1998 to 2000, but it was too late. “We had made embarrassing mistakes,” Martinez wrote in his 2001 book, “The Harder Road to the Softer Side.” Kmart declared bankruptcy in 2002 and exited Chapter 11 in 2005 after hedge fund manager Eddie Lampert bought the company for $5.2 billion and took control of the bankruptcy proceedings. Lampert, who fancied himself a financial engineer and not a merchant, then began hiving off dozens of Kmart stores, including more than 50 to Sears Roebuck, then led by Alan Lacy, to support the shortlived Sears Grand concept. Lampert also sold 15 stores to former Home Depot and not-yet Chrysler CEO Bob Nardelli, who converted them to Home Depots. Promising smaller Sears stores and less apparel, Lampert engineered a $12-billion deal in 2005 to merge Kmart with Sears into a new entity, Sears Holdings Corp. As a consequence, Kmart moved to Chicago; its former headquarters has been empty ever since. “Lampert turned the business into a liquidation play, selling anything of value using the company’s

GIVING BACK IN 1924, ON THE 25TH ANNIVERSARY of the creation

of S.S. Kresge Co., which at the time had opened 184 stores and posted more than $51 million in annual sales, founder Sebastian S. Kresge established The Kresge Foundation, “for the benefit of mankind,” with an initial gift of $1.3 million. By the time Kresge died in 1966, he had contributed $60 million. The Troy-based Kresge Foundation continues its work today with an endowment of $4.5 billion. It was and remains a separate entity from S.S. Kresge Co. and its successor, Kmart Corp. “The foundation found its niche in being the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval in terms of grant-makers,” says Jennifer Kulczycki, director of external affairs and communications at the organization. “(During) much of the first 85 years, we focused largely on capital challenge grants — matching gifts to colleges, universities, hospitals, and cultural institutions. It was a way for these institutions to build up their own donor base so they would become sustainable after Kresge came and went.” Past grant recipients include the Kresge Library at Oakland University, the visitor center at Colonial Williamsburg, and the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago. In the mid-2000s, the foundation’s board of trustees shifted its mission away from matching grants and began to focus more on “strategic philanthropy” — no more waiting for institutions to approach them with requests for funding; rather, the organization decided to seek out opportunities more proactively. The initiatives include arts and culture, education, environment, health, human services, social investment practices, American cities, and Detroit. The Kresge Foundation has been an anchor investor in many local renovations and restorations, including Eastern Market ($4 million) and the Detroit Riverfront Conservancy ($50 million). It also contributed $50 million for the development of the QLine, hoping the Woodward Avenue light rail project can be a catalyst for a larger regional transit system in southeast Michigan.

In 2014, The Kresge Foundation gave $100 million of the more than $800 million in state and local contributions to the “Grand Bargain,” the plan created in the wake of Detroit’s bankruptcy to protect city pension obligations, municipal assets, and the Detroit Institute of Arts from being liquidated to pay off creditors. “The foundation’s work has recently transitioned from the city to the neighborhoods, to address the troubling issue of ‘two Detroits,’ ” Kulczycki says. “The Woodward Avenue corridor is built up and beautiful, but there are 137 square miles in the city of Detroit that could use some investment, as well.” She points to the foundation’s $50 million investment in 2018 in the Marygrove Conservancy. The award is helping to stabilize, protect, preserve, and transform the 53-acre campus of the former Marygrove College in northwest Detroit into an education- and arts-based community anchor. Kresge worked with the Marygrove Conservancy and others to create a collection of educational institutions on the campus, including an Early Childhood Education Center that opened in 2021. A new public elementary school, middle school, and high school, operated by Detroit Public Schools Community District in partnership with the University of Michigan School of Education, are also on the site. The Kresge Foundation originally employed outside investment counselors, but in the early 2000s it created its own investment office. Its portfolio includes a broad range of diversified strategies such as emerging markets, public and private equity, real estate, natural resources, venture capital, and cryptocurrency. The investment strategy has resulted in annualized returns of nearly 11 percent as of a five-year span ending Dec. 31, 2021. In addition, The Kresge Investment Analyst Program annually offers recent college graduates two- to three-year assignments in its investment office. The goal is to introduce the recruits to philanthropic investment strategies and prepare them for graduate business schools or positions in finance.

— By Tom Beaman

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1000

NUMBER OF SEARS AND KMART LOCATIONS IN THE U.S. BY YEAR

994

Sears

800

600

Kmart

550 397 370

400

286 195

200

2017

2018

2019

Sources: Statista

2020

2021

2022

assets including its real estate, brands, and credit portfolio,” Cohen says. “One hundred percent of what Lampert got in the way in which he liquidated Sears, Kmart, and Sears Canada went back to shareholders — and he, of course, has always been the principal shareholder.” The downturn began in 2010, when the company was no longer profitable; from 2011 to 2016, it lost $10.4 billion. In 2014, Sears’ total debt ($4.2 billion at the end of January 2017) exceeded its market capitalization ($974.1 million as of March 21, 2017). Sears Holdings Corp. entered Chapter 11 in October 2018 and is reported to still be $62 million short of being able to exit the proceedings. Sears declined from more than 3,500 physical stores in the U.S. in 2010 to just 695 in 2017. The exact numbers today are difficult to determine, but according to Brostocks.com, as of March Sears had 20 stores in the U.S. and Kmart operated nine outlets. At the same time, former Kmart properties throughout Michigan have been reborn as U-Haul, Tractor Supply, and Kroger stores. “It’s safe to say that founder Sebastian S. Kresge was in control of the company until just before he died in 1966, and the company was doing well,” Gordon says. “His heirs were involved with the Kresge Foundation but didn’t run the company.” According to an obituary in The New York Times, Stanley Kresge, Sebastian’s son who died in 1985, said “Kresge’s dissociation from Kmart management became complete earlier this year when they gave a fortune of personally held company stock to the Duke University Divinity School, the libraries of various Michigan colleges, and other worthy causes.” The kings of the retail hill today are Amazon, Target, Costco, and Walmart, but even these companies are facing headwinds that must be countered with innovation. Faced with higher costs, Walmart’s net income for the quarter ending in April fell 25 percent from a year ago.

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SUNDRY PHOTOGRAPHY VIA GETTY IMAGES

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Walmart, in a sign of rising inflation and fewer people entering the workforce, recently announced that its truck drivers can now make up to $110,000 in their first year with the company. To speed distribution, the company is expanding its $3.99 delivery-by-drone service to 34 sites in six states, with the potential to reach 4 million households. Amazon, the world’s largest e-commerce retailer, has had its share of growing pains, as well. Most recently, the company has been seeking to sublease a minimum of 10 million square feet of warehouse space, or to end or renegotiate leases with outside warehouse owners following its first quarterly loss in seven years. At the same time, in addition to its 2018 acquisition of Whole Foods Market, the company has launched more touch-and-feel concepts like Amazon Fresh grocery stores and the Amazon Go concept, where no physical check-out is required. Neither of these stores have a presence in metro Detroit. Other concepts being considered by retail developers include an omni-channel or hybrid model, where customers buy in the store and have it shipped to their homes, or they can order online and pick up their merchandise at the store. There’s also “retail flea market,” where multiple merchants fill a big box space. Another emerging trend is kiosk shopping at airports, hotels, convention centers, and retail stores. Customers can customize apparel and fashion accessories, pay with a credit card, and have their items delivered within hours. “More than 80 percent of all retail still takes place in an actual store,” Feinseth says. “Retailers who offer a differentiated shopping experience will continue to do well. The consumer is sitting on $2.5 trillion of excess savings. More people have lost money betting against the American consumer than probably any other trend. Never bet against the American consumer. They’ll lead us to the promised land.”

KEEP ON TRUCKING In the early 1980s, Kmart provided Walmart founder Sam Walton with access to its operations. Dismissing Walmart as a regional player in the Southwest at the time, the retailer would surpass its rival Kmart in the 1990s.

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Retired photographer Jim Secreto’s trove of automotive advertising art may be second to none. Now the question arises: What will become of it? BY RONALD AHRENS |

BECKY SIMONOV

hile working on a book three years ago, Rob Keil came from California to pay a call on Jim Secreto, the collector who, as Keil puts it, keeps “the story of car advertising all in one big room.” Secreto stores this trove at a secret Oakland County location — 1,400 square feet filled floor-toceiling with rare illustrations, dye-transfer photographic prints, 8 x 10-inch color transparencies, car catalogs, and ad proofs. It’s the accumulation of more than three decades of collecting. Keil was keen to see and photograph several works by the Mid-century illustration team

known as Fitz & Van, who labored together for 24 years and refined their art to an exceptional degree. Going behind the curtain, so to speak, Keil found the mass of material to be “fairly well organized” and Secreto’s passion to be palpable. “He’s just got an incredible library of stuff that he’s collected over many years,” Keil says by phone from San Francisco, where he’s an art director at Gauger and Associates, a marketing communications agency with offices near the Embarcadero district. “He can trace the evolution of Detroit advertising — car advertising, specifically — for about the last 100 years. He knows more about it than anyone else I know.”

FRAMED HISTORY Jim Secreto’s collection of automotive advertising art includes original artwork for Plymouth by Fitz & Van; it was the inspiration for the book “Art Fitzpatrick & Van Kaufman: Masters of the Art of Automobile Advertising.”

As a 10-year-old looking at ads for General Motors’ Pontiac Division in his father’s old National Geographic magazines, Keil was mesmerized by the work of Fitz & Van. He saw their AF/VK signature, but it took him years to figure out the letters stood for Art Fitzpatrick and Van Kaufman. Working in gouache, the opaque form of watercolors, Fitz gave the cars mirror-like surfaces and dimensional distortions to emphasize length, or — in the WideTrack Pontiac campaign — width. In gouache or colored pencil, Van supplied the detailed backgrounds, depicting aspirational locations and catching people in exuberant moments.

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“Glamor and storytelling,” Keil says. “I don’t know that anyone else did it better.” His definitive book, “Art Fitzpatrick & Van Kaufman: Masters of the Art of Automobile Advertising,” was published in August 2021. Secreto, who is 77 and lives in Oakland County, keeps going to work daily to attend to his collection, putting in sessions of at least four hours. During COVID-19, he made better inroads in organization. “I’d pull out a drawer and I’d go, ‘Man, look at this! This car line doesn’t even exist.’ ” Along with plenty of material on behalf of survivor brands, he’s keeping the flame for the dearly departed such as Plymouth and the playful “Rapid Transit System” campaign of 1968 to 1972, as well as Oldsmobile and its Dr. Oldsmobile muscle car series of 1969. Fielding the question of how he came to possess all of it, Secreto has a chuckle, saying, “The reason I’m laughing — I don’t want to brag — I am a real collector, OK?” In the 1970s and 1980s, on the way to becoming a top advertising photographer for automotive clients, he assembled what he rates as the largest North American collection of circus sideshow banners, which he keeps to this day. With three co-authors, he published “Freaks, Geeks & Strange Girls: Sideshow Banners of the Great American Midway” in 1996. “It’s a cult book now,” he says. “They stopped publishing it, but it went into three printings. And I had four museum shows. I think collecting automotive stuff is just a natural path.” Autos and freaks may not blend in every mind, but following the new path became inevitable after 1988, when Secreto started to share some creative space with Walter Farnyk in an old, repurposed church building at Maple and Livernois roads in Troy. Farnyk had been Secreto’s teacher at the Detroit Society of Arts and Crafts, which later became the College for Creative Studies. He died in 1992, and Secreto inherited the files for his mentor’s unpublished book on advertising. Closing up their shared space, he took everything to his main operation, which he describes as “a typical Detroit car studio.” “I was hooked,” he says. “I was fascinated by the illustrations from the 1930s. It was the style of the art — the real decorative period for illustration.” After this beginning, he found himself being favored by “the old guard,” who would drop in for coffee, tell their tales of the ad business in the postwar era, and sometimes favor him with an item that was too good to toss out. Then the tide turned against film photography and in favor of digital imagery. “In the mid-1990s, all the big labs were closing. I would go to the auctions, or they’d say, ‘Jim, you could come by, here’s the dye transfers.’ ” He started collecting these handmade prints, usually in a 20-inch by 24-inch format. They were used by an art director and a retoucher to make corrections to the vehicle, the lighting, and the imperfections of the locations and landscapes. “It cost anywhere between $400 and $600 back in the 1960s,” Secreto says. “It’s a process that no longer exists.”

ORIGINAL EQUIPMENT Secreto (above) posing with his collection of framed original illustrations, which includes art from Plymouth’s Rapid Transit System ad campaign from 1968-1972.

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STORYTELLING On Secreto’s walls and on his well-stocked shelves is the story of Detroit’s automotive advertising agencies like Young & Rubicam and CampbellEwald. Below are ads for the 1972 442 Oldsmobile.

Not quite realizing the golden era was ending, Secreto retired and closed his studio after a successful career. The collection he has amassed since then at his current hideaway location documents not only the themes and trends of advertising, but also the industry-wide standard of technical and artistic excellence. “You had to be creative, professional, within budget, disciplined — all of those things were demanded of you to be at this level in Detroit,” Secreto recalls. With agencies always working in the service of the client, few individuals emerged as household names. Fitz & Van lived in Connecticut; their early successes were on campaigns for GM’s Buick Division and Ford Motor Co.’s mid-priced Mercury Division. After Semon “Bunkie” Knudsen became general manager of the Pontiac Division in 1956, he first showed his acumen by hiring Elliot “Pete” Estes and John DeLorean to handle engineering, and then showed his discriminating taste by lining up Fitz & Van for a long run on Pontiac’s behalf. “They had a personal relationship with Bunkie Knudsen,” Secreto says. “They had what Detroit would call the Golden Touch. The agency (MacManus, John & Adams) couldn’t criticize their work because they were selected by GM management.” It was incumbent upon MacManus art director Mickey McGuire to work with whatever Fitz & Van produced. Secreto remembers McGuire as “beloved — a gentle giant” at just over 7 feet tall. McGuire served as a stabilizing force between the artists and the agency. “He was the only art director they worked with.” The MacManus agency started in Toledo in 1911 and, four years later, Theodore MacManus wrote copy for Cadillac’s momentous “Penalty of Leadership” ad, which responded to barbs from competitor Packard Motor Car Co. “In every field of human endeavor, he that is first must perpetually live in the white light of publicity,” MacManus proclaimed. Three decades later, ad execs named it the greatest advertisement to date. MacManus influenced Ray Rubicam, a writer at N.W. Ayer Co. in Philadelphia, who penned “Instrument of the Immortals” for Steinway & Sons. Rubicam poached account executive John Orr Young from Ayer, and they formed Young & Rubicam in New York, there setting the template for an agency of freewheeling creatives. In an odd twist of fate, Packard became a client.

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Meanwhile, in Detroit, MacManus raided Campbell Ewald in 1933 to ensure a vigorous future for his agency. New partners were Waldemar Arthur Paul John, a University of Michigan alumnus who went by his initials, W.A.P., and James Adams, known for saying, “If advertising had a little more respect for the public, the public would have a lot more respect for advertising.” The MacManus, John & Adams agency, as it was known, came to have many departments and employ hundreds of people. Before World War II, it was hard to match Cadillac and Lincoln in quality of advertising. Chrysler pursued a course of “dynamic impressionism” that incorporated speed streaks and graphic exuberance. Plymouth soberly pitched value on congested pages that had a plethora of typefaces and a proliferation of inset boxes. After the war, Studebaker was the first automaker to market all-new cars, and its ads were designed by Raymond Loewy & Associates. One ad said, “All over America the word for style is Studebaker.” Touting value and durability, Rambler, which produced a compact car, showed a mother and a toddler breezing along on the comforting thought that the next chassis lubrication wouldn’t be required until the kiddo was in kindergarten. Chevrolet blossomed when Campbell Ewald produced lively pages for the all-new 1955 model: “For sheer driving pleasure, Chevrolet’s stealing the thunder from the high-priced cars.” The illustration was smart, the composition was simple and uncluttered, and the copy was fun to read while conveying a few key features. Tasked with promoting Ford’s medium-priced Edsel brand in 1958, Foote, Cone & Belding (popularly known as Foote, Corn & Bunion) produced a tepid campaign with a big claim for pushbutton shifting by “Teletouch Drive.” The car line bombed. By the time Chevy introduced the 1976 Monte Carlo, simplicity ruled the day. A stunning composition presented just a full-page black field and the shimmering automobile. Twenty words of copy

FURY AND MUSCLE Secreto flips through his voluminous collection of automotive advertising art, which includes original 8x10 color transparancies of art depicting the 1968 Plymouth Fury.

plugging good taste and affordability were reversed, in white type, just above the bow-tie logo. During more than three decades working on Ford’s marketing and then on the agency side at J. Walter Thompson and Team Detroit, Catherine Cuckovich saw sweeping structural changes as the ad business matured. These changes especially corresponded to the auto industry’s 21st-century financial upheavals. In 2010, Chevrolet dismissed Campbell Ewald after 91 years, which Cuckovich says “sent shock waves through the industry.” Eight years later, Ford put its account up for review and sent the creative business to BBDO. There were cultural changes, too, as the “Mad Men” lifestyle of drinking and smoking gave way to more decorous behavior. And reductions in administrative support meant that everybody typed their own emails and logged their own appointments. “Most people now eat at their desk,” she says. “People go to the gym after work.” JULY - AUGUST 2022 || DBUSINESS.COM 39

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Today, Cuckovich is an assistant professor at the Mike Ilitch School of Business at Wayne State University in Detroit. In her advertising strategy classes, she shows students some vintage pieces, introducing them by talking about the integration of imagery and copy. “The old ads look really boring compared to the new ones because these students are used to movement, color, and less words,” she says. “They’re not inclined to read as much. But we talk about the importance of the headline and the roles of different types of copy.” Focusing her attention on some Fitz & Van pieces, she finds herself saying, “Oh, my gosh, it took forever. There’s just not the time or patience anymore for that.” Secreto points out how, in the glory days, the cars had to be pre-photographed to give the illustrators a basis for their work. Photography for print had long been seen as a quicker, cheaper, and more accurate medium for ads. In “American Automobile Advertising, 19301980: An Illustrated History,” the British writer, Heon Stevenson, states, “It has been claimed that the inception of color photography in automobile advertising from around 1932 removed the interpretative artistic middleman who had hitherto stood between the reader and the product; but, in

BEFORE AND AFTER Secreto’s collection includes illustration proofs showing originals and the finished products, above for the 1969 Oldsmobile 442 and below for the 1970 Chevrolet Chevelle.

reality, the artist, including the ‘deceitful’ elongator, continued to work alongside the photographer until after 1970.” Secreto cherishes the best of that period and continues to dab away at the labeling and cataloging in his collection. He selects a dye transfer and then matches it to an ad or a catalog. “That’s what I’ve been doing the last year and a half; going on eBay and looking, for example, for an ‘Oldsmobile 1968 full-line catalog.’ Then I buy the catalog and attach it to the dye transfers that I have.” He hosts astonished visitors, who stay an average of four and a half hours, leaving him spent. “I have to be more selective because it takes up so much of my time,” he explains. “It’s a day to prepare, it’s a day for the visit, and then it’s a day to put away. So that’s three days out of my week.” As he readies the collection to move on, he finds himself walking through it with representatives of institutions and automotive corporations. They’re interested, but primarily in the departments that concern themselves. “I’m reluctant to break it up,” he says, as it would be another kind of penalty to see it auctioned off lot by lot. In the meantime, he will go on opening drawers in the collection and surprising himself with forgotten treasures.

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Flower Power

Cannabis sales in Michigan are expected to reach $2 billion this year, making it one of the top markets in the country. But only the most business-savvy operations may survive as prices drop due to product saturation, and more competitors enter the space. BY DALE BUSS ILLUSTRATIONS BY JASON RAISH

CANNABIS ALL-STARS Michigan’s cannabis industry is drawing national investors and retailers as well as former sports stars like Calvin Johnson and Ben Wallace.

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NIC ANTAYA

annabis is on the march in Michigan, from a proliferation of multimillion-dollar, climate-controlled marijuana-growing facilities to dozens of sleek retail “dispensaries” for cannabis products, and from makeshift drying houses in old barns to new investments aimed at changing the economic course of entire towns. In fact, the legal cannabis trade already has estimated revenue of close to $2 billion a year statewide in absolute terms and on a per capita basis, in the wake of Michiganders’ 2018 vote to legalize marijuana for recreational purposes beginning in late 2019, which elevated legal weed’s status from “medical” applications only. Cannabis sales in the state are likely to reach around $3 billion before leveling off in the next few years, according to a study by Michigan State University in East Lansing. Meanwhile, Michigan ranks as one of the biggest legal cannabis markets in the nation, both in absolute terms and even more so on a per-capita basis. “There’s been a lot of suppressed interest in this product,” says Ankur Rungta, co-founder and CEO of C3 Industries Inc., a multistate cannabis cultivator, processor, and retailer based in Ann Arbor. “We’ve not allowed this plant and all its derivatives to be properly studied and looked at from a medical and recreational standpoint. What we’re seeing is something that had widespread use in our society now being brought into the mainstream, and being funded more directly by capital markets, scaled up, and brought into the modern-day economy.” Here’s where comprehending the fantastic growth of the cannabis industry in Michigan becomes a bit of a mind-bending experience. In many ways cannabis is developing conventionally, as other businesses have, with eager entrepreneurs rushing in, facilities under development, new government regulations, retail markets sprouting, and even entrenched competition complaining. And it’s being marketed much like tobacco was in decades past, with media-savvy messages meant to hook young users. Add to that the fact that although it’s still illegal federally, recreational marijuana use is legal in 18 states and counting. And yet, at the base of it all, we’re talking about … pot. Grass. Mary Jane. Reefer. The stuff that young boomers toked for fun in college and then, for the most part, gave up as unnecessary, if not illegitimate, for the rest of their lives. Yes, the substance is less harmful to the lungs than cigarette tobacco, and it’s a depressant that acts a lot like alcohol in its effects, but it’s also a hallucinogenic and may well be a gateway to other drug use. Not to mention that it could be causing other problems, such as the likelihood that driving high has contributed to an 11-percent increase in U.S. road traffic deaths last year. There’s a term people in the cannabis industry use for those who are interested in marijuana and its derivative products but are uncertain about whether and how to proceed: “canna-curious.” While true believers interpret this hesitancy as, “Is there really something in cannabis for me?” the fact is that many Michiganders are just asking, “What the hell is happening here?” Part of the reason for the difficulty in contextualizing the boom in cannabis sales is that comparisons are elusive. The trend has a bit of the feel of the neck-snapping build-out of the internet in the late 1990s and the simultaneous boom in e-commerce, because that phenomenon also appeared relatively quickly and was similarly difficult for many people to get their head around. Yet unlike uncanny phenomena that fizzle out, such as the dot-com boom then, or perhaps plant-based “meats” today, the groundswell in cannabis legalization and consumption has the feel of permanence. When the haze of the early days of this business clears, cannabis is likely to remain a medical, social, and even cultural institution. Driven largely by millennials and Generation Z, mainstream marijuana is another one of those huge generational transformations. “Cannabis is emerging from something with a stigma to something that’s seen in a positive light,” says Rob Sims, a former guard for the Detroit Lions who co-founded a vertically integrated cannabis company, Primitiv, with Lions Hall of Fame receiver Calvin Johnson. The pair operates a 12,000-squarefoot growing operation in Webberville and a dispensary in Niles.

HEMP TALK On May 18, MLive hosted its Cannabis Insights conference at the Garden Theater in Detroit. Speakers included Calvin Johnson (top), and Rob Sims, Rebecca Neil, and Eric Hultgren (middle).

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Bud Shop As the cannabis sector gets more crowded due to rising competition and more product offerings, the best dispensary operators are differentiating themselves with exceptional branding, service, and merchandising, as well as promotional pricing. Take New Standard’s dispensary on John R Road in Hazel Park, for instance. The company’s CEO, Howard Luckoff, applies marketing and customer service practices borrowed from Shinola, where he once was a board member, as well as from Apple and Starbucks. “Our team members are educators,” Luckoff says. “What do you want to get out of this experience, and what do you want to learn? It’s about making both the connoisseur and the novice comfortable in our stores. We even have a loyalty program.” New Standard’s appeal starts just inside the front door, where the brightly lit waiting area sports whitebrick walls and olive-green, Mid-century-style chairs. A mellow tune from Sir plays on the store’s sound system. A list of weekly specials greets customers: “Kiva, $15/all edibles” and “Tree Town, 4 for $30.” Just inside the door to the retail area is an ATM, because the business is all-cash due to federal limits on bank and credit card transactions. Signs warn: “No weapons” and “No phone calls beyond this point” — a measure to try to prevent underage buying. A receptionist cards and registers each visitor before allowing them entrance through the locked doors leading into the store. The day’s first clients are a handful of men who appear to be retirees. No one is allowed to touch the merchandise, just to point to it or request it, so everything is behind or under glass. The first display a customer encounters is a jewelry-store-style table with many varieties of raw marijuana. The price is listed as $35 for each eighth-ounce. The cannabis flowers — resembling small, green-dyed cauliflowers — are shown off in 4-inch-square Lucite boxes with metal tethers attached, a la

department-store valuables. “Fifty percent of our sales are flowers,” Luckoff says. “You don’t have to put marijuana in your food anymore. In fact, we have marijuana brownies right over here,” he says, pointing to a shelf. To the uninitiated, the array of 275 different products is dizzying. There are dozens of brands and flavors of gummies. There are cannabis mints, CBD-infused almond bites and peppermint patties, chocolate bars, and Ripple Quick Sticks. The most popular edible, Luckoff says, is Wana Gummies. “It’s a West Coast brand,” he notes, “but they’re all manufactured in Michigan,” as all cannabis products sold legally in the state must be. Under glass in an adjacent room are tinctures, topicals, flower grinders, pipes, and many other types of paraphernalia. Rise tincture, Luckoff promises, is “three drops, and 10 minutes later you’ve got a buzz.” Luckoff’s tightly managed facility includes a backup generator on the roof. “If the power goes out, we’re still in business,” he says. “One day’s worth of revenue makes up for the cost.” Out back, a team of workers attends to the pickup and delivery side of the business, which usually includes 60 to 70 deliveries a day in New Standard’s dedicated fleet of four cars. Because he launched the operation during the pandemic, Luckoff bought a house behind the dispensary and knocked it down to make room for the customer delivery operation. From a dozen to about 20 New Standard staffers tend the facility throughout the day, including cashiers, “budtenders,” and someone to monitor the screen feeds from dozens of security cameras. Even in the labor-starved local economy, Luckoff says, New Standard easily recruits and keeps workers. “There’s no problem getting team members in this space,” he says. “Everyone wants to work in the cannabis industry.” — Dale Buss

“Ninety-year-old grandmothers have thanked me for something that helps them feel better, athletes are taking it for bumps and bruises, and (it’s being used for) everything in between, (by) the healthiest of people to those on their last legs. People are seeing the truth,” Sims says. The two ex-footballers have ambitions to create more medical uses for cannabis and other natural substances such as psilocybin, the hallucinogenic chemical in “magic” mushrooms. They’ve created a collaboration with Harvard University to research how such substances can help people with chronic pain and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a progressive brain condition that’s thought to be caused by repeated blows to the head, such as those sustained by football players. “Cannabis is one of those things that’s a natural substance, but where smoking (it) might not have been the best application,” Johnson said at a recent MLive cannabis conference at the Garden Theater in Detroit’s Midtown. “But we know a lot more now.” Ben Wallace agrees. “I never really was a marijuana smoker,” the defensive menace, who was a star with the Detroit Pistons for nine NBA seasons and was the first undrafted player inducted into the NBA Hall of Fame, says. “But to see guys come out of the sport and have chronic pains, aching joints, and stuff like that made me interested, so I gave it a try. It did help me with my aches and pains, so I thought I’d take this opportunity to get behind it and sort of help drive medical marijuana.” The new cannabis economy in Michigan isn’t just built around sports stars. It has several dimensions and multiple layers, attracting eager young entrepreneurs, rappers, buttoned-up attorneys, and sober owners of existing businesses. Andrew Blake owns a thriving family entertainment business in Armada — a big farm that offers fall pumpkin hunts, fruit and vegetable-picking in the summer and autumn, a restaurant, and other attractions. He also owns Blake’s Hard Cider. Recently, Blake struck a deal with Pleasantrees to open a beverage-processing facility at the site of the former Gibraltar Trade Center in Mount Clemens. The beverages will include cannabinol (CBD), the chemical in cannabis that’s reputed to have many therapeutic effects but isn’t a psychotropic like tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). Randall Buchman is president and CEO of Pleasantrees, which has built an impressive 110,000-square-foot cannabis growing and processing facility in Harrison Township alongside I-94. “I started growing it in my parents’ basement, and here we are,” says Buchman, whose financial backers include Skypoint Ventures, a Flint-based venture capital firm.

Budding Knowledge TYPE 1 Cannabis products are offered in multiple ways, including traditional buds that can be smoked in a pipe. The leaves can be rolled into a cigarette, as well.

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“I got into James Madison College at MSU but then decided I didn’t want to be president (of the United States). I sold weed in college, which paid most of my tuition.” Now, Buchman is doing cannabis deals with financial stakes that he never imagined for what once was a pastime. “This business is so nascent that in every single situation, you’re playing monopoly with real estate,” he says. “The deal structure and the flow is endless. It’s all unique.” Howard Luckoff might be the ultimate example of bringing establishment legitimacy to the newly clean cannabis business. A boyhood friend of Dan Gilbert and more recently the general counsel for Gilbert’s Rock Ventures, as well as a former board member of Shinola, Luckoff was still practicing real estate law for Honigman, a large law firm in Detroit, when one of his now-partners was investing passively in the cannabis space. “It was a new frontier, like at the time of the end of Prohibition, and I wanted to be part of a brand-new industry,” says Luckoff, CEO of New Standard in Bloomfield Hills. “I’m a silk-stocking lawyer, still in other businesses. My kids ask what they should say that I do. I say, ‘I’m in the retail business.’ It just happens to be for an agricultural product that we create. And it happens to be cannabis.” Whatever its status now, the journey to legitimacy for cannabis has been a long one. The federal government first regulated marijuana in 1937, when Congress passed the Marijuana Tax Act, which used taxation and regulation to essentially outlaw the possession or sale of marijuana. The Boggs Act of 1953 provided criminal sanctions of stiff mandatory sentences for offenses involving a variety of drugs, including marijuana. The 1960s, with the rise of the youth counterculture and illicit drug use, of course changed all of that. It was partly his disdain for that generation which reportedly led President Nixon to push his War on Drugs and to include marijuana — along with heroin and LSD — in “Schedule 1,” the most-restricted category in the Controlled Substances Act that Congress passed in 1970. Yet while many adults who came of age in that era left cannabis behind, others kept using it recreationally and, as they aged, they found it was effective to treat aches and pains. Groups such as NORML (National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws) and publications such as High Times helped create a popular basis for legalized marijuana. Their opening came with the decriminalization of medical marijuana in Oregon, Alaska, and Maine in the 1970s. The move was depicted as an aid for people suffering from ailments ranging from social anxiety to glaucoma. In 1996, California voters became the first to legalize marijuana for medical

TYPE 2 Cannabis-infused beverages and candies are available for sale at licensed retailers and often contain THC, which can make people feel “high,” or CBD, which is more relaxing.

IT WAS A NEW FRONTIER, LIKE AT THE TIME OF PROHIBITION, AND I WANTED TO BE PART OF A BRAND-NEW INDUSTRY.” — HOWARD LUCKOFF, NEW STANDARD

purposes at the state level. While 18 states, Guam, and Washington, D.C., now have approved recreational cannabis, states such as Florida still forbid it. The plant in all forms is still illegal in Idaho, Kansas, South Dakota, and Wyoming. Meanwhile, continued federal illegality of cannabis means that multistate operators such as C3 must, at this point, grow, process, and sell all their marijuana in each state that’s a market for them. They can’t legally cross state lines with cannabis. In Michigan, there are 540 medical dispensaries catering to 230,500 patients, and 478 recreational dispensaries. Recreational cannabis customers pay a 10-percent excise tax on top of the state sales tax, while medically designated customers don’t pay the excise tax. Yet the demise of Michigan’s 12-year-old medical-cannabis sector is ongoing, as recreational use continues to expand vigorously. Recreational sales surpassed medical sales in mid2020, and the industry forecasts that medical receipts will be about $324 million this year. The cannabis flower constitutes about 55 percent of cannabis products sold in Michigan, the state says, while non-flower products such as edibles and vapes comprise the rest of the market. The most popular products include CBD-infused edibles, vape cartridges, body oil, and topicals such as lotions, bath bombs, and tincture, an extract. Michigan dispensaries set a record for cannabis sales this year on April 20, an unofficial annual holiday for marijuana smokers with its origins among Grateful Dead fans of the 1980s. The state’s stores sold 4,912 pounds of cannabis on April 20, more than double the 1,912 pounds sold on that day in 2021, and a level more than 10 times higher than the 430 pounds sold in 2020. Even legal dispensing of marijuana is completely a cash business, because

TYPE 3 Known as cannabinoids, THC and CBD massage oils help reduce inflammation and soothe muscle pains. Cannabis also can be infused with oilve oils.

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Skunk Works In a state full of fascinating tech centers and industrial facilities, Pleasantrees’ marijuana-growing and processing operation in Harrison Township can place a claim on being one of the most interesting operations around. The multi-phase facility is in an unremarkable structure about the size of a Walmart, but Pleasantrees’ nondescript exterior belies the highly calibrated agricultural engineering wizardry on the inside. Pleasantrees complex of facilities here cost about $25 million to build, which is important because it’s harboring and monetizing tens of millions of dollars of marijuana every year. “I talked to the best engineers about systems that weren’t used for growing cannabis and told them I needed them to apply this to cannabis,” says Randall Buchman, president and CEO of Pleasantrees. “A lot of this technology is similar to what you need for indoor tomato farming.” But growing, harvesting, and processing cannabis to granular expectations is much more demanding than growing choice vegetables — which was apparent on a recent tour through the facility. “Companies are destined for failure if they don’t know what data to collect,” Buchman says. “It doesn’t cost me money to get better at what I’m doing, but it makes me more money.” White lab coats are mandatory for visitors, and everyone who enters the operative part of the facility must go through an airlock that takes a couple of minutes to vacuum away all the hairs, crumbs, and other personal detritus that have settled on each individual. The operation is divided into several huge rooms and some smaller ones, all fed by networks of pipes and conduits. The huge rooms each house dozens to hundreds of marijuana plants of different varieties, with growing conditions in each — light, temperature, airflow, moisture — kept optimal and delivered precisely, mimicking changes that would occur outside throughout the day and the growing season. “Crop steering is so important,” Buchman says about how Pleasantrees uses data to optimize crops. “Just a 10 percent difference in yields means millions of dollars” in unrealized revenues, “even in less than a year.” Racks of marijuana flowers, inventories of hundreds of thousands of dollars at a time, hang in drying rooms where they spend about 10 days. Once they’re dried, the flowers move into a living-room-size space occupied by about 20 people whose sole task is to use tiny scissors to trim the flowers into the usable and saleable portions. The strains have names like Acai Mint, and Apples and Bananas. “The worth of the flowers depends on the strain, its quality, and potency,” Buchman says. A $5.5-million air-conditioning system out back is required to keep humidity and temperatures in line. “It allows me to hold tolerances tight,” Buchman says. “No one wants to spend that kind of money, but the ability to hone those conditions pays for itself many times over.” The system also cleanses odors from the processing operation before emitting air from the facility to the outside, saving lots of complaints from the neighbors. Yet most everyone knows what Pleasantrees does: State regulators require the facility to mix its marijuana waste with cardboard, 50/50, because some desperate users otherwise would try to smoke the plant’s trash. All the hardware, software, personnel, and inventory on hand underscore the tremendous seriousness of the Pleasantrees enterprise. Yet cannabis entrepreneurs like Buchman maintain a bit of an edge reminiscent of the decades the industry spent only in the underground. For example, in Pleasantrees’ security room is a huge painting of one of the most famous photographs of Elon Musk: He’s smoking a joint on a Joe Rogan podcast in 2018. It’s a reminder that while the operation has a duty to maintain safety, there’s a fun side to the business, as well.— Dale Buss

most banks and credit-card companies won’t process purchases of cannabis products. That means dispensaries often are targeted by thieves; in Seattle, for instance, a recent surge in robberies at licensed cannabis shops is helping fuel a renewed push for federal banking reforms that would make the stores a less appealing target. In Michigan, the latest wave of cannabis facilities are “consumption lounges” — which, in essence, provide legitimate substitutes for college dorm rooms or a hiding spot in the woods. Hot Box Social, on John R Road in Hazel Park, opened in April and started hosting private events and ticketed experiences. Consumption lounges can’t sell weed or edibles, and Hot Box prohibits customers from bringing their own stashes. What customers can do is order from a menu of products made by local participating dispensaries like New Standard, and what they buy is quickly delivered to a counter at Hot Box. The million-dollar building features 3,000 square feet of space and sliding-glass garage doors so the lounge can be cleared of smoke within 30 seconds. Out back, a 5,000-square-foot patio is expected to open this summer. Hot Box is just the latest cannabis facility in Hazel Park, which has become an interesting microcosm of the expanding industry in Michigan. It’s fitting: 75 percent of Hazel Park residents voted to legalize marijuana, and the city council recently approved the decriminalization of entheogenic plants, including magic mushrooms and peyote. Hugging I-696 on the north, at least a half-dozen dispensaries and other facilities dot a square mile or so in the old industrial city, including several on John R and more to the south on Nine Mile Road. In addition to Luckoff ’s New Standard shop, Trucenta, a Troy-based company that owns Hot Box Social, also owns the Breeze dispensary on John R. These places mix indiscriminately with other retail outlets on John R such as GNE Paint Centers and Sullivan’s Continental Bike Shop, and with local institutions such as St. Mary Magdalen Church. Changes also abound at the state level. What was the Michigan Marijuana Regulatory Agency — the body overseeing the industry — recently was renamed the Cannabis Regulatory Agency under an executive order by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who gave the body authority to handle hemp products. All told, the cannabis excise tax generated more than $42 million last year, which is being doled out to the 163 Michigan communities that welcomed marijuana operations. Municipalities are generally free to spend the cannabis revenue as they choose. Bangor Township near Bay City, for example, with 12 recreational marijuana shops last year, received $677,000 — a 19 percent boost to its

A Slice of the Pot Pie Michigan Revenue Estimates (USD in mm) $600 $498 $500 $400

$452

$484

$461

$489

$510

$506

$359

$300 $200 $100 1Q21A

2Q21A 3Q21A 4Q21A 1Q22A 2Q22E 3Q22E 4Q22E

Sources: State Reports and Cowen and Co.

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2020 budget. The township plans to use the funds to offset the costs of road repairs, a new firetruck, and police expenses. Meanwhile, Emmett Township, near Battle Creek in Calhoun County, with 11 dispensaries, was planning to spend its $667,000 windfall on ever-increasing public-safety costs and to restore services that have slowly evaporated over time, according to MLive. In another layer of regulation, there continue to be tussles over how marijuana facilities will be managed in Detroit. The Detroit City Council recently approved a revised ordinance for awarding business licenses, after a longstanding disagreement among leaders and residents over how many cannabis sales opportunities should be specifically granted to longtime Detroiters. A federal judge halted the city’s initial ordinance last year after ruling the measure approved in 2020 was “likely unconstitutional” for providing too much preference to longtime residents. A couple hundred miles to the northwest, rural Evart (south of Cadillac) is counting heavily on cannabis. The former logging community is one of the poorest municipalities in Michigan; its downtown is in decay and amenities are in short supply. But in 2020, Lume Cannabis got the go-ahead for legalized marijuana sales and opened a 50,000-square-foot growing facility in a newly established industrial park. Founded by Bob Barnes Jr., the retired CEO and co-owner of iconic Michigan retailer Belle Tire, Lume was able to attract other investors who collectively have poured $65 million into what is now a 125,000-squarefoot operation. Lume plans to double its presence in Evart with a carbon-copy facility just as big. Indeed, cannabis is flowering all over Michigan. “Oregon is the most extreme and the most open and the most competitive state in the cannabis business, but Michigan is quickly approaching Oregon as one of the most open markets,” says Rungta, whose C3 Industries has nine stores in Michigan, with another five set to open soon. It also does business in Massachusetts, and is knocking on the door in Missouri, where voters are expected to approve adult recreational use of cannabis later this year. “It’s one of the largest markets in the country, from a revenue standpoint — larger than Massachusetts.” Why is Michigan such a great cannabis state? One reason is that it’s among the most populous to approve recreational use so far. There’s also the strong influence of the decades-old cannabis culture of Ann Arbor, where Rungta graduated from the University of Michigan Law School in 2008. In a state once known for having a podiatrist on every corner to treat

assembly line injuries, there’s also something to the need for the palliative effects of CBD and THC for an aging population. While Generation Z comprises the largest customer base at dispensaries in Michigan and nationwide, millennials aren’t far behind, and Generation X and boomers are numerous. The older the customer, the more they generally favor edibles, beverages, and tinctures over buying marijuana flower, retailers say. Also, Michigan has developed a reputation for “really trying to tighten the parameters the right way, to make sure real business owners are coming into the space” and helping to flush out “bad actors in the gray market,” says Samir Pimputkar, co-founder of Cloud Cannabis in Troy, which has eight dispensaries in Michigan. But there are stresses on Michigan cannabis growers, even as sales boom. Retail prices declined last year, in part due to the growth in the number of dispensaries and a dip in recreational prices that were affected by less expensive medical marijuana, often bought in larger quantities and without the state’s 10 percent excise tax. An eighth of an ounce of flower early last year sold for about $45, but now it can be bought in many dispensaries for around $20 or less. “This is one of the only businesses where the cost of production has gone up but prices have gone down. They’ve crashed,” says Buchman, of Pleasantrees. “There’s an extraordinary supply in Michigan.” Rungta goes further. “There will be winners and losers. There will be a wave of market corrections. If you don’t differentiate yourself and have a value proposition, you’re not going to make it. The level of pain will increase.” That’s why cannabis entrepreneurs are unhappy with the looming competition from hemp, which is federally legal and grown all over Michigan for industrial uses. The state’s hemp producers have proposed that they be allowed to convert hemp oil through a chemical process into products for the licensed markets now occupied only by cannabis growers and processors. “If you allow that into the TCH market, a lot of folks who’ve spent a lot of money to get compliance with cannabis regulations will have to compete with those in a much less regulated environment,” Pimputkar says. But most cannabis players still look forward to a rising tide of interest and mainstreaming that will keep lifting their industry. “We need to educate people that this isn’t an illicit drug anymore, and that the plant has great attributes that will help you,” Luckoff says. “It will just take time.”

Total Adult Use Sales Mix in 2021 Vape - 20%

Infused (Edible) - 14%

MI Adult Use Sales (USD in mm) ■

Concentrate

■ Edibles ■ Flower ■ Shake/Trim ■ Vape ■ Other

140 120 100

Concentrate - 7%

Other - 8%

80 60 40

Sources: Michigan Marijuana Regulatory Agency and Cowen and Co.

Mar -22

Jan - 22

Nov - 21

Sep - 21

Jul - 21

Mar - 21

May - 21

Jan - 21

Nov - 20

Sep - 20

Jul - 20

May - 20

Mar - 20

Jan - 20

20 Flower - 50%

Sources: Michigan Marijuana Regulatory Agency and Cowen and Co.

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By The number of women own ing or managing businesses is on the rise now that the COVID-19 pandemic is waning. But operat ing a company today comes with a different set of challenges, including talent recruitment, supply chain shortages, rising inflation, and managing what is now a flexible workforce. Please join us in celebrating — and learning from — the 2022 class of Powered by Women, as selected from reader nominations.

Profiles by Tim Keenan, Calli Newberry, and Gary Witzenburg Photography by Emily Crombez Hair and Makeup by the Beauty Gals Shot on location at the Shinola Hotel, Detroit 50 DBUSINESS || JULY - AUGUST 2022

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aving a family doesn’t mean having to sacrifice career goals and ambitions — just ask Linda Apsey, CEO of ITC Holdings Corp. in Novi, the nation’s largest independent electricity transmission company. If anything, Apsey says being a mom has helped her professional career, as she’s been able to embrace her maternal instincts and multitasking capabilities to help grow the company for nearly 20 years. “We started the business with about $350 million worth of assets. Today, we’ve grown the business through reinvestment in existing infrastructure, acquiring other transmission assets, and developing transmission projects in other states,” Apsey says. “We’ve grown this business from what was $350 million of assets in southeast Michigan to $9 billion of assets across seven different states.” After graduating from Michigan State University in East Lansing with a bachelor’s degree in public affairs management and a master’s in business administration, Apsey stayed in the state capitol, intending to pursue a career in politics. “I worked in the Michigan Legislature for a couple of years, and while (it) was exciting in terms of being in the thick of politics and policy issues, I recognized pretty early on that I didn’t see a lot of upward career mobility in the Legislature,” Apsey says. “I pivoted to see if I could leverage my education and experience, particularly in the policy arena.” She soon got a job at Detroit Edison (now DTE Energy) and she hasn’t left the utility industry since. She started in the regulatory department, transferred to the transmission department, and in 2003 she transitioned with her team to ITC as it acquired its new transmission assets. Apsey served as president of ITC Michigan, and was executive vice president and chief business unit officer for ITC, among other duties. But the title she’s most proud of is CEO, a role she took on in December of 2016. “It’s been a tremendous career, in terms of my own personal growth and development over that time, but to be part of a business and an organization that has grown so significantly, as well as being at the helm of that, has been tremendously rewarding,” she says. “I’m proud of the business — the company we are today, the culture we have, the employees and the team, and what our mission and purpose is, and that’s to energize our communities and drive a greater grid for ultimately what is a greener future.” Before ITC even obtained its new transmission assets, Apsey was a part of the team that prepared the Detroit Edison transmission department to be sold and undergo a smooth transition, which happened shortly after her twin daughters were born. While it was hectic at times between raising young children and growing a young company, Apsey says she’s embraced her motherly role.

Linda Apsey CEO ITC Holdings Corp., Novi Employees: 700 Revenue: $1.7B

“Having been here from the start, (the company) almost feels like one of my kids. It feels like this is my baby, I helped create it, so now I have to help nurture it and help take it to its next phase and next level,” Apsey says. “That’s how I feel about it. I want to take care of this baby that I helped create.” With her own daughters now 23 and entering the professional world, Apsey has thought about advice she’d offer to young professional women. As someone who’s paved the way for women in the utility industry, she’s proof that nothing is impossible. “I sacrificed a lot in terms of pursuing my career, but (my daughters) look at me now and say, ‘We don’t remember that you weren’t at such-and-such soccer game or event.’ I’d say overall I did my best, and I made a majority of the events in their lives,” she says. “Did I make to them all? No. But they don’t remember that, and they just see me now. They say they want

to be like me. That really is such a huge reward and compliment, when they look up to me. They’re really proud of me, as I am of them.” Apsey says she’d tell young women today to set boundaries, make time for yourself, and don’t be afraid to take risks. “Early on, when we first started ITC, we were sort of a startup company — but we had a significant responsibility to keep the lights on, just given the role of our transmission grid. At the time, that came with great personal risk, as I stepped away from a utility and a secure job,” Apsey says. “I was 31 years old with two babies at home and, really, failure wasn’t an option. I think to be part of an organization, to have that experience in life, (I’d) encourage other young people that sometimes taking a risk can be not just challenging, but one of the most rewarding career experiences you can have.” — Calli Newberry JULY - AUGUST 2022 || DBUSINESS.COM 51

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Alicia Davis

Chief Strategy Officer || Lear Corp., Southfield Employees: 160,100 || Revenue: $19.2B

licia Davis vividly remembers the college professor who set her on the long, winding road that eventually led her to where she is today. “One day after class she told me that Goldman Sachs would be on campus the next day to interview for summer internships, and (she said) I should sign up because I would be perfect for that job,” Davis recalls. “She had been a professional at Prudential Securities and thought that the internship would be great for me. I’d never heard of investment banking, so I went to the business school library to learn more about it. That professor literally changed the trajectory of my life.” Growing up in Apopka, Fla., a small town outside of Orlando, Davis dreamed of being a nurse before moving on to law, “but the career surveys I took in high school suggested a career in business,” she says. “Ultimately, I would combine (law and business).” She majored in business administration at (HBCU) Florida A&M, then followed her internship to an investment banking analyst job at Goldman Sachs in New York City. After earning a juris doctor degree from Yale Law School and an MBA from Harvard Business School, she worked as an investment banker at Raymond James in St. Petersburg, Fla., before practicing corporate law at Kirkland & Ellis in Washington, D.C. From there, she changed careers to become a law school professor at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Along the way, as associate dean for strategic initiatives, she launched the school’s Problem Solving

Initiative, which brought students from the law school and other U-M schools together to teach and collaboratively develop solutions to difficult and urgent problems in business and society. In 2018, Davis was approached to join Lear Corp. as vice president of investor relations. After a year at the global automotive seating and E-Systems company, she was given responsibility for corporate development, an in-house M&A group. She was named to her current position, reporting to the CEO, in 2021. “I’ve been very fortunate and have loved every job,” she says, “but this is my favorite job.” To reach her dream position, Davis credits the assistance of others. “Successful mentorship,” she contends, “must begin with serious self-reflection by the mentee. I think it’s important for individuals to understand what they want out of a career and, more importantly, out of their lives. “I believe we have more power to define our future than we think, and too many of us float through life waiting for things to happen rather than envisioning the future we want and going out and making it happen. Throughout my career, I’ve been fortunate to have received mentorship and to have mentored people in both formal and informal settings, which has been very rewarding.” Davis says she loved her law professor job, and the offer to join Lear was one that she never expected. “I had considerable capital markets experience, both as an investment banker and as an academic who

researched and taught investor protection, but I’d never held a position in investor relations. This is an important, exciting, and very challenging time in the automotive industry, which is undergoing a transformation around the key trends of autonomy, connectivity, electrification, and shared mobility (called ACES). I knew that if I let the offer pass, I would likely regret it. “So I took the job, worked hard, learned as much as I could, and leaned in and took on increasing responsibility, which ultimately led to my current position as chief strategy officer for one of the world’s leading automotive suppliers. Operating in this environment requires an ability to remain agile and be able to evolve as circumstances change, while remaining focused on the future of the business and the industry.” With two adult stepchildren and a teenage daughter, Davis also practices and preaches a healthy work/ life balance. “Part of my job is working on transactions, including acquisitions, and Lear has announced four acquisitions over the past 14 months. We’ve been incredibly busy as we’ve worked to expand our product portfolio and technical capabilities,” she says. “But my daughter is in theater, and I go to all her performances. It’s very important to not miss any of them. Every employer that I’ve had, including Lear, is very supportive of family. We understand that people aren’t just workers, that they have lives outside the office, and it’s important for their mental well-being to be able to address the many facets of their lives.” — Gary Witzenburg

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Chris Feuell

hristine Feuell joined Honeywell in 2019 as chief commercial officer for Safety and Productivity SoluChrysler Brand CEO || Stellantis, Auburn Hills tions, a relatively new acquisition Employees: 59,400 (U.S.) in the fast-growing supply chain automation Net Revenue: $152B (Euros) business. “My role focused on creating, launching, and marketing integrated supply chain automation solutions and services. We were expanding into robotics and performance optimization systems, as well,” she says. “The company really thrived during the pandemic because everyone was shopping online. Our customers — Amazon, Home Depot, Target, Wal-Mart, UPS, and others — needed automation systems to help improve their warehouse and distribution throughput.” Then Stellantis, the newly formed combination of the French PSA Group and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA), came calling in 2021. It was looking for a tech-savvy leader to revitalize its Chrysler brand and liked what it saw in Feuell. “I put a lot of thought into whether I wanted to come back to the auto business after being away from it for 12 years,” she says. “The big attraction was how much it has transformed, with all these new-technology companies and nontraditional players causing disruptions — I think for the better — and challenging convention around improving customer-centricity and focus, delivering products that consumers will really value, and thoughtfully integrating technology to improve the vehicle mobility and ownership experiences.” So far, so good. “I’ve been really impressed with the quality of the leadership, and Carlos In 2010, Feuell left Ford and moved to Milwaukee to (Tavares, CEO) is a very focused and supportive leader,” Feuell says. “He’s built a very talented and take a position as executive director for global marketing diverse leadership team that’s aligned to a clear vision and brands at Johnson Controls. There, she moved through a progression of executive leadership jobs in each and accountable objectives.” Growing up in Albany Park, a few blocks north of of the company’s three business units — Power Solutions, Wrigley Field, Feuell has fond childhood memories of Building Technology, and Automotive Seating, the latter attending Chicago Cubs games. When she was in the of which was spun off in 2016 as Adient. Three years later, fourth grade, her dad took a job with Ford Motor Credit she joined Honeywell. Along the way, she received plenty of professional Co. in Dearborn, and the family relocated. She attended middle and high school in Plymouth guidance. “I’ve had some incredible mentors throughout before majoring in business with an emphasis on mar- my career,” Feuell says. “Probably most impactful were a keting and data science at Michigan State University in couple of men at Ford who gave me great advice about East Lansing. Following graduation, Feuell joined Ford being a woman in the industry, how to handle myself in Motor Co. as a dealer contact center representative in a challenging situations, and the kinds of roles that would help me continuously learn and develop as I tried to work sales and marketing trainee program. From there, she moved to New York City to take a my way up. “At that time, it was rare for a woman to lead a key sales zone manager role that required calling on dealerships. “I built a very thick skin there,” she chuckles, “but it business, region, or function, so it’s important to figure out the roles that provide the experiences to set you up for was one of the most fun jobs I’ve had.” Further field assignments followed until she moved those executive positions. Also, participating in developback to Dearborn in 1992 and took on a series of leader- ment programs is critical to strengthen continuous learnship roles in business strategy, global product manage- ing and build key critical thinking, strategic, and ment for SUV programs, SUV marketing, and vehicle leadership skills.” Feuell has been very involved in mentoring both colpersonalization and accessories. Her last role at Ford was director of global marketing, where she worked leagues and students, especially at Michigan State and with (now CEO) Jim Farley to create a consistent global at Stellantis, where she’s actively involved in its mentoring program and its Women in Business Resource Group. process for planning and executing vehicle launches.

“I feel very fortunate that Ford, Johnson Controls, Honeywell, and Stellantis all have had excellent support systems and mentoring programs,” she says. “I think a big part of being an effective leader is having a clear vision and strategy for the business to which the team is completely aligned.” Raising a family brought the same focus. “The key for me was to constantly keep a pulse on what was going on with my family and to prioritize certain things within my daughters’ schedules and my family’s needs,” she says. “I always blocked time on my calendar to be present at key moments, but I don’t think I ever felt that I was getting it perfectly right.” Her advice for women in business: “I think it’s important to constantly challenge yourself, to constantly learn new things, build new skills and capabilities, and be open to new experiences and challenges. Ask to participate in development programs, continuing education, or advanced degree programs. It’s also important to focus on self-care to help create a healthy work/life balance. “Find time for yourself, your passions outside of work that fulfill you. When I started at Ford, I had no idea where my career was going. But I found that with every new experience, I built new skills and cultivated new talents of which I did not know I was even capable, and that led to more doors opening and allowed me to progress to levels and roles that were extremely rewarding.” — Gary Witzenburg JULY - AUGUST 2022 || DBUSINESS.COM 53

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Carleen Gray CEO || GroupeSTAHL, St. Clair Shores Employees: 1,000 || Revenue: NA

ew people become CEO of the company where they started their career. Carleen Gray, of apparel decoration technology provider Groupe Stahl in St. Clair Shores, made the transition by melding a strong work ethic with natural leadership skills. After growing up in Washington Township and graduating from Central Michigan University, Gray went to work as a customer service representative and trainer at Stahl. She became marketing director and served in that role for a decade before moving to what was then Daimler-Chrysler Jeep’s licensing department. Gray returned to Stahl in 2007 as executive vice president and chief marketing officer, and was named CEO in 2018. “Never did I imagine when I first started that someone other than a family member would be CEO and that it would be this size,” Gray says. Groupe STAHL, which manufactures heat presses and is a technology innovator in garment decoration equipment, materials, transfer technologies, and decorated apparel, started as a family lettering and imprint business in Detroit in 1832. The company’s technologies

give customers — from small businesses to major sports leagues and high-profile brands — the ability to brand virtually any item, ranging from performance wear and team uniforms to accessories and sporting goods. Today, Stahl has nine facilities with about 1,000 employees in the U.S. Locations include Chesterfield Township, St. Clair Shores, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Florida. It also has another 600 workers in the U.K., Spain, Germany, China, and South Korea, but those are run by Stahl International and aren’t under Gray’s umbrella. “When I came into this role, there were six more divisions than we’ll have by the end of this year,” Gray explains. “We were much more fragmented, dipping our toes into a lot of different industries. Each division had its own bottom line, and they didn’t interact. There was a lot of redundancy.” As soon as Gray got the key to the CEO office, she started to consolidate administrative activities like finance, human resources, sales, marketing, and customer service. “We moved quickly to focus ourselves,” she says. “There was transparency. We created a leadership

team we call the Wolfpack. It took me about a year to figure out who were the main drivers and the people who could move the needle fastest. Now we’re much more focused, much more productive, and are leading our industry in innovation and technology.” Gray says her ability to build and lead a team are her most critical management strengths. “My mission was to bring formerly separate divisions together and create one strategy (for) goals and objectives. Stronger together, as we always say,” she notes. “This has paid off in increased sales and profitability as well as better communication and morale internally. We’ve crushed all expectations,and the team knows it’s because of their united efforts.” The innovations the Stahl team has come up with go well beyond the heat presses it manufactures that apply numbers, logos, and player names onto sports uniforms and other apparel. The heat presses themselves are an alternative to screen printing on clothes. “Screen printing takes more people, more space,” Gray says. “There are environmental factors that you have to be aware of, and there are a lot more steps to it. And staffing comes into play. One person is all you need to operate the heat press, and one operator can operate multiple presses. It’s cleaner and a lot less labor-intensive.” Among the innovations are the use of lasers, digital printing, and low-temperature adhesives in the garment decoration process, along with striving toward sustainability. “We’ve created heat presses with laser applications where the laser tells you where to put the logo,” she says. “They’re Wi-Fi-compatible and collect data in the cloud. Managers can tell if someone is working too slowly to manage productivity. These machines are running in giant facilities, as well as the smaller craft-size presses in smaller shops. Our market segments are hugely diverse.” When asked about the future of the 90-year-old business, Gray mentions doubling the size of the Pennsylvania facility, where it manufactures its heat presses, and reconfiguring its Arizona plant for more capacity. “Full-color digital printing is our future,” she says. “It’s now. We’re doing it. We get your order by 6 p.m. today and we ship it tomorrow. (Although) we’re still perfecting the service, we have thousands of orders. It’s on fire. We also make adhesives that will work at really low temperatures, so you won’t scorch the garment. “Our really big initiative is sustainability. We have a mission to become a greener company. All the paper and plastic carriers we use are recyclable. We use sustainable, recyclable, and water-based inks in everything we do. Innovation is going hand-in-hand with sustainability. There are all kinds of innovations to come.” About her unprecedented rise to the top of the company, Gray says, “The message (to her team) is always if I can do it, you can do it.” — Tim Keenan

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Anna Mans Motschall CFO || Mans Lumber and Millwork, Trenton Employees: 250 || Revenue: $160M (est.)

t might not have been predestined that Anna Mans Motschall would join the Mans Lumber and Millwork family business, but fate led her in that direction. According to Mans company rules, family members must decide by age 25 whether they want to join the business. Motschall was 25 in 2002 and working as an accountant at PricewaterhouseCoopers, four years removed from her graduation from the University of Miami in Ohio, when her father, Richard Mans, died suddenly. “I always knew I wanted to be in business, and when I took my first accounting class in college, I absolutely fell in love with it,” Motschall says. “When my father died is when I decided I wanted to give back to the family business.” Now, she and four cousins share equal ownership in the company started by their great-grandfather, Nicholas Mans, in Trenton in 1900. “We have a really strong family value system, held through the generations,” she says. “The family people who have chosen to work here all have a good work ethic.” The family’s value system began with Nicholas, followed by his four sons. From that generation, two more sons entered the business, including Motschall’s father. As the first woman in the line of succession, Motschall had to navigate the ultra-macho lumber industry. She won’t be the last, however, as there’s a fifth-generation Mans woman working in the company. “It was difficult at first, for sure,” Motschall recalls of her entry into the business. “It wasn’t as professional as I was used to in public accounting.

It took me a while to get confident in my opinion.” Motschall remembers when she first started going to lumber industry gatherings, especially lumberyard-specific software conferences. Among the 10 to 20 attendees, “There was probably one woman. And, in general, it wasn’t a very professional-looking crowd. Now when I go, there are professional people and more women.” A lot has changed — both in the industry overall and at Mans — in Motschall’s two decades in the lumber business. When she arrived, cashiers in each store counted the money in their cash registers and faxed a report to the Trenton office, where everything was recounted and verified. Motschall says it took about five years for her to get the company’s finances into something resembling a modern business. “I never wanted to be the person who came in and just started changing things,” she says. “I knew I was younger and had to balance change with the sensibilities of a business that had been doing things the same way for a long time. I wanted to change for the purpose of getting better, not just for the sake of changing.” One area she focused on early in her tenure was accounts receivable. “When I first got here, our collections were terrible,” she says. “People were hesitant to insist that customers pay because of relationships. We’re successful because of our personal relationships with customers, but there’s a way to be professional and collect.” By the time she joined the enterprise, Mans had expanded from Trenton to New Boston, Canton Township, Monroe, and Hamburg. The recession of 2008 took a large bite out of the homebuilding business,

which makes up about 80 percent of the company’s revenue. Only the Canton Township and Trenton Mans locations survived the recession. “Our sales went from $80 million to $25 million,” Motschall says. “We lost 75 percent of our workforce. We’re very focused on the residential homebuilder, and the recession was very hard on that segment. That wasn’t a fun time. I thought I might be part of the generation that ends this business, and you don’t want to be the ones to end it.” Today it’s a different story. Sales in 2022 are expected to reach $160 million, and in recent years Mans has opened a location in Ann Arbor and a specialty trim shop in Troy, and purchased the Dillman & Upton kitchen and bath remodeling operation in Rochester. It also transformed the customer-facing areas of the Canton Township and Trenton locations from lumberyards to finished product showrooms. “We found that people weren’t coming to our stores for the hardware,” she explains, “so we really did pivot to become more of a showroom. We do have lumber here, but it’s out back. I’m proud of the fact that I really helped make our back-end process more efficient.” One efficiency was centralizing the company’s distribution activities at the Canton Township location, which sits on 18 acres and includes a 25,000-square-foot showroom up front and a 50,000-square-foot building out back. Mans is in the early phases of adding a 30,000-square-foot expansion. For Motschall and the rest of the Mans family, the future looks bright. “I think it’s an exciting time at Mans Lumber,” she says. — Tim Keenan JULY - AUGUST 2022 || DBUSINESS.COM 55

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nnette Tomina first dipped her toes into the world of franchise operations with a group of friends who brought Wireless Toys to metro Detroit. Now she and her family are all in with the Aqua-Tots Swim Schools franchise. Tomina grew up in West Bloomfield Township, graduated from Andover High School, and earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Michigan–Dearborn and the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, respectively. After a couple of years of grant writing and helping immigrant children with homeschooling, she joined her friends who were running 10 Wireless Toys locations. With her help, they expanded to 200 locations. “I discovered I loved the franchise world,” says Tomina, who left Wireless Toys when it was bought out. From there, she started business consulting with smaller franchisors; Dollar Castle and Happy’s Pizza were among her clients. She soon discovered, however, that growth was difficult when the business is based on one-to-one relationships. Tomina came across the Aqua-Tots franchise while on a trip to Arizona. She filled out the franchisee form online and one of the owners called her within 20 minutes. A lunch meeting ensued, and Michigan’s first Aqua-Tots Swim School opened in Troy in 2011. “I came home (from Arizona) and told my siblings, This is what we’re opening,” says Tomina, who owns the local franchise with her brothers Patrick, Brian, and Faraj Tomina, and a cousin, Chris Jaboro. Aqua-Tots is a swim school for children ages 6 months to 12 years. It’s based in Arizona and has more than 130 locations across the United States and around the world. The pool at Aqua-Tots is always a comfortable 90 degrees, and instructors have 40 hours of classroom and in-pool training based on a proven curriculum. Since the Troy school opened, the family has added outlets in Farmington Hills, Sterling Heights, Novi, Auburn Hills, Canton Township, Woodhaven, and Dearborn. An Aqua-Tots is scheduled to open in Berkley in August and in Grand Rapids late this year or early next year. Tomina and her family also have five schools in California and one in Florida. Although Tomina says the Grand Rapids school likely will be her last Aqua-Tots in Michigan, she expects to expand further in California and Florida. She also has Waxing the City hair removal franchises in Canton Township and West Bloomfield Township, and is opening a Vio Med Spa franchise concept, where customers can get Botox and other appearance treatments, in West Bloomfield Township. “I try to visit each metro Detroit location twice over a two-week period to check in, touch base, and see what’s happening,” says Tomina, who adds that she also visits the California and Florida schools up to three times each year — not surprisingly, during the winter months. In addition to administrative duties, on any given day Tomina might find herself working a front desk, giving

Annette Tomina Co-owner Aqua-Tots Swim Schools, Troy Employees: 650 Revenue: NA

instructions to students in the pool, or doing maintenance. “I think that keeps my team together. They know I work as hard as they do, and that I love what I do every day. Some of my leadership team has been with me since the day I opened. Some have grown from swim instructors and front desk people to district managers.” The COVID-19 pandemic presented challenges for a business that’s based on close, one-on-one instruction with children. “We were closed for almost four months at the start of COVID-19,” Tomina recalls. “My leadership team was amazing, super supportive. A lot of us came in to work and started planning how we would reopen. (We had to figure out) how to restructure our business knowing we would reopen but be unable to have 10 classes with 40 or 50 kids in the pool at the same time and 35 adults in the lobby. We figured it out. We jumped through every hoop.” It also helped, she says, that the CDC decreed that the virus didn’t live in chlorinated water.

Tomina says the most satisfying aspects of her business are working with her team members and watching the young swimmers develop. “I focus on my team so much because I love them,” she says. “They’ve become part of my family. One thing we focus on is promoting from within. Seeing them grow and move up in the business is super rewarding, as is working with people who love to do what I do. “(I enjoy) seeing the kids go through our program, starting off petrified and then becoming more confident. It’s also satisfying to see the families that have been coming for many years, staying with us, believing in us, and validating that we run a good program and provide a good service for the community. It’s really rewarding for me.” Some of her students, she says, have gone on to earn scholarships and join college swim teams. More important to her, she says, is the fact that “now I’m having kids who I taught how to swim come back to work for me.” — Tim Keenan

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ccording to the U.S. Census Bureau, Texas is among the top three states that attract people from Michigan. Shannon Washburn, CEO of Detroit’s Shinola, took the opposite path. Born and raised in Lubbock, where she earned a fashion merchandising graduate degree at Texas Tech University, Washburn now leads an organization that wears its Detroit roots like a badge of honor. “Our original mission of creating 100 meaningful manufacturing jobs in Detroit is still at the heart of who we are,” says Washburn, who moved to the Motor City in 2015 when Shinola consolidated its operations in Detroit. “We have a strong business across the United States, so I think there are some people who respond to the brand story and the beautiful products, and Detroit is just another piece of the storyline.” Shinola is a design brand with a commitment to crafting lasting products — watches, bicycles, leather goods, journals, home audio, and other items for the home. “I really wanted to work for Shinola,” Washburn says. “I had been out of the working world for about four years, in semi-retirement. I was really engaged with what Shinola was doing and wanted to be a part of it.” She started at Shinola as a product development manager in 2012, working from Texas and drawing on her previous experience as a buyer for seven years with the Dillard’s department store chain, and 15 years with the Fossil Group, culminating as a brand manager. The latter company was started by Shinola founder Tom Kartsotis in 1984. “I started as an account executive at Fossil, then I moved into product development,” Washburn recounts. “I managed all of the product development for the brand, then moved into international brand management, working with all of our subsidiaries around the world. That was a great experience.” In 2014, she took over watch and jewelry product development at Shinola, traveling to Detroit monthly for a week at a time. In 2015, Shinola made Washburn a company vice president and she made the move north. She was named president in 2018 and CEO the following year. In her latter role, she’s responsible for establishing the company’s strategic direction and managing day-to-day operations, including its retail network and manufacturing footprint in Detroit. The Shinola Hotel in downtown Detroit is run by Bedrock under a licensing agreement. “The people are the most gratifying part of the job,” she says. “Being in this role, I get to interact with all of the different people within the organization. Seeing their successes and how the people who started with us 10 years ago have grown in the organization is something I’m really humbled by and proud of. When I see team members step up and take on new roles in the organization, that’s one of the things that really makes me smile.

Shannon Washburn CEO || Shinola, Detroit || Employees: 475 || Revenue: NA “The thing I can do the best to support my team is to be present, be attentive to them, and be available in the moment when they need (me).” Washburn says there were a couple of areas that tested her when she became CEO. “I had a general feel for the manufacturing piece,” she says, “but learning the process of manufacturing and how to be more efficient at manufacturing was something that was new to me.” The COVID-19 pandemic also exposed Washburn and the entire Shinola team to areas of the business that needed attention. “When we saw the business shift to online sales during the pandemic, we really had to pivot to become a best-in-class digital organization,” Washburn shares. “Learning the digital marketing side was something I hadn’t really had any experience in. That’s been an interesting opportunity to learn. The digital marketing piece is changing every day, and it’s changing so fast. You have to stay on top of it.”

With the pandemic mostly in the rearview mirror, Washburn says she’s bullish about what lies ahead for Shinola. “I think the future’s really bright,” she says. “We’re focused on our core businesses and becoming a lifestyle brand. I think when we opened the hotel in downtown Detroit back in 2019, that was an amazing opportunity for us in terms of brand awareness. It also showed us about hospitality as hospitality. We were able to integrate some of our brand ideas and thoughts from hospitality that are reflected in the hotel or in the store, so you get the same experience.” The hotel serves as a test bed for products in the home category, an area of growth for Shinola. “We had a lot of people who loved the products that were in the hotel, so now we’re doing blankets, pillows, candles, room sprays, different things for your home,” she says. “We’re doing well and growing. It’s all positive.”— Tim Keenan JULY - AUGUST 2022 || DBUSINESS.COM 57

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Kathy Weaver Managing Director, Michigan Market Leader Aon, Dublin, Ireland Employees: 50,000 || Revenue: $12.1B

elping people and making progress is what Kathy Weaver does best, and she’s been doing just that for the past 15 years at Aon, a global professional services firm with Michigan offices in Southfield and Grand Rapids. Weaver started as an account executive in Southfield before eventually becoming the resident sales director for Michigan. In December 2021, she took the helm of both offices as managing director and Michigan market leader. “It’s an exciting time at Aon Michigan,” Weaver says. “We’re actually building out new office spaces in Gas Light Village in East Grand Rapids and in Southfield in the Town Center complex.” She says although the two locations have historically operated independently, collaborating as one is nothing new for Aon and its 50,000 colleagues worldwide. “(Our clients) are very intrigued by the fact that we can quickly take action at scale,” Weaver says. “If I sit down and have a conversation with a (client) or if anyone on my team does, we have colleagues around the globe with such a deep pool of experience in every solution line who can provide advice to (help clients) make better decisions with clarity and confidence.” Potential solutions include commercial risk, health, wealth, and human capital. “What I love about (Aon), and what’s attracting so much talent to us, is that we don’t have solution-line boundaries,” she says. “We’re asking everyone in the firm to think bigger and be open to working collaboratively internally to help clients solve their biggest challenges.”

Human capital is just one of the hot topics of late, according to Weaver, as leaders everywhere are working on new ways to operate in and out of the office. She says Aon is well-positioned to help in this area, and it’s one of the things she’s most excited about. Aon recently developed what it calls a Smart Working Model, which includes virtual, hybrid, and in-office work styles. Weaver says this creates a healthy, productive, inclusive, and sustainable way of enabling colleagues to deliver their best work for clients from wherever they’re best placed to do so. Instead of having mandatory in-office days or hours, Aon focuses on “moments that matter,” which include times to celebrate, collaborate, take part in coaching, and serve clients. As a recently appointed board member of the Detroit Economic Club, Weaver says she and other leaders have had conversations about navigating new working environments, and Aon’s Smart Working Model has resonated among her colleagues — making the company an example for others as they determine their own environments and schedules. In addition, Weaver serves on the board of Girl Scouts of Southeastern Michigan, where she just completed a three-year term as treasurer and finance chair. She’s also a mentor for American Corporate Partners, a national nonprofit organization dedicated to helping military service members transition to the civilian workforce. “I had a sister retire after almost 25 years with the Navy as a lieutenant commander, and (I have) a brother who’s an Army National Guard reservist and has been for the last 20-plus years,” Weaver says.

“Having siblings who’ve been actively deployed, this is just a really fundamental way for me to give back and to say thank you for your service.” Over the past year, Weaver has worked internally with others to reignite the Veterans Business Resource Group at Aon. They recently planted flags across the U.S. for Memorial Day and are recruiting more Aon colleagues to serve as mentors in American Corporate Partners. Along with her mentorship, Weaver has helped lead many training and coaching committees at Aon, becoming a mentor to young professionals. She says she’d encourage young people starting their careers to ask good questions and understand a company’s values before making decisions. “Ensure that the firm you’re committing to has the values and the cultures you’re looking for. I think that’s overlooked far too often,” she says. “Talk to a lot of people and ensure that it’s the kind of colleague experience you want to be a part of. Spend time listening to not just your local leadership, but also the leadership of your organization.” Although she’s often a mentor during these sessions, she says that doesn’t stop her from learning from and valuing each conversation she has with her colleagues. “I walk away from every single one of those interactions having learned something as much as I’ve hopefully helped others,” Weaver says. “My hope is that colleagues realize they’re valued. I want to hear what it is that motivates and drives them, and I want to help them by using regular feedback and professional development to be the most successful they can be in their career with whatever their desire and purpose.” — Calli Newberry

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PROMOTIONAL CONTENT

TRUSTED ADVISERS Q&A

IS IT TIME TO CONSULT WITH A QUALIFIED EXPERT? Q: I own a cannabis farm and I’m looking for faster testing results for my product samples. Can Prism Triangle help me? A: Prism Triangle’s full-service cannabis testing lab has state-of-the-art equipment and technology that provides for shorter testing times, from 72 hours to a little over a day. You won’t need to quarantine your products for prolonged periods of time, so you can sell them sooner. Prism’s lab procedures are reliable and consistent, and all staff members are trained and experienced in the cannabis testing industry. The Department of Cannabis Control and Michigan’s Cannabis Regulatory Agency mandate that all cannabis products need to be tested before they’re sold. Prism Triangle specializes in the testing of cannabis potency, to ensure safety. Their precise lab testing and labeling creates trust and

loyalty with your clients. Patients medicating with cannabinoids need accurate cannabinoid concentration data to effectively treat their illnesses and to safely consume cannabis products. Another of Prism’s specialties is testing for pesticide contamination, heavy metals, residual solvents, microbial and mycotoxin contamination, environmental contamination, and harmful lipids. They also test for nutrient concentrations and shelf life/stability. Get a faster turnaround on your cannabis lab testing by using Prism’s in-house courier service. They’ll pick up your samples and securely deliver them to their lab. Prism services cannabis farms, processors, and stores.

Prism Triangle, LLC Joey Ruefiel Owner 850 Ladd Rd., Bldg. B Walled Lake, MI 48390 833-483-7822 prismtriangle.com

Q: I’ve found bad reviews of my business on the internet. Is that considered defamation? A: Defamation refers to false statements

made to a third party that causes damage to an individual’s reputation. There are two types of defamation covered under the legal system: libel and slander. Libel is a written false assertion of facts committed when an individual is defamed through writing, such as, emails, social media posts, etc. Slander is verbal or spoken lies, such as, during a phone call, television broadcast or in a meeting. If somebody believes that they didn’t get the service that they expected, that’s not defamation. That’s someone who’s unhappy. They thought their experience was different

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than what the business provided. A bad review for a business is defamation if the person wasn’t actually a client when they make false statements about what happened. If the person calls the owner something that could affect the owner’s business reputation, that is defamation. Google and other internet platforms are not liable for defamatory language. So, you need to take action against the person who published those falsehoods. A good first step is hiring a lawyer to draft a cease-and-desist and demand for retraction, which can be done without having to get the court involved.

George Law Maggie George, Esq. Attorney & Counselor at Law 444 S. Washington Ave. Royal Oak, MI 48067 248-330-7223 mgeorge@georgelaw.com

6/2/22 2:12 PM

PROMOTIONAL CONTENT

TRUSTED ADVISERS Q&A Q: How are middle market businesses dealing with continued challenges in the U.S. labor market? A: Current conditions in the U.S. labor market are complicating the picture for middle market businesses. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in February, the unemployment rate fell to 3.8%, edging closer to its pre-pandemic level of 3.5%. As a result, competition for qualified workers remains high. KeyBank’s latest Middle Market Business Sentiment Survey found leaders are acutely aware of the tight labor market: among the 50% who said they plan to hire over the next six months, more than 6 in 10 anticipated some degree of difficulty hiring skilled workers, non-managerial professionals, and managers. When asked to identify the main obstacles to

filling their hiring needs, they cited scarcity of qualified workers, high salary requirements, and the length of time required to identify and hire qualified workers. To attract and retain talent in this tight labor market, middle market businesses planned to offer competitive wages, flexible working hours, and comprehensive benefits packages.

KeyBank David Mannarino President and Commercial Sales Leader KeyBank’s Michigan Market 248-204-6550 David_Mannarino @keybank.com

This material is presented for purposes only and should not be construed as individual financial advice. KeyBank does not provide legal advice. All credit products and payment solutions are subject to collateral and/ or credit approval, terms, conditions, availability and subject to change. ©2022 KeyCorp.

Q: My business is having supply chain problems. How can I manage this supply uncertainty? A: Don’t panic. Determine the root of the disruption and review both supplier and customer contracts. Maybe you can temporarily substitute using additional suppliers. Ask your suppliers about their emergency planning and whether you can access buffer inventory. Consider whether your business is eligible for insurance coverage or indemnification from the supplier. In future negotiations, add terms that provide for indemnification or coverage for specific disruptive events. If the matter is severe, consider asking for copies of insurance policies to assess whether a claim is available. Identify how the issue will impact your customers.

Do you have delivery requirements for your own customers? Almost all supply agreements have force majeure clauses addressing significant disruptive events. If possible, negotiate your agreements so that these clauses are consistent on your supplier and customer side, and negotiate in contingencies that match the realities of your business operations. It is important to act in good faith and make reasonable efforts to offset the impact of any supply disruption. Finally, keep detailed records of your crisis-related expenses, estimated lost revenue and mitigation measures. This will help determine the reasonably-claimed cost of any disruption.

Plunkett Cooney Glenn C. Ross Associate 38505 Woodward Ave., Ste. 100 Bloomfield Hills, MI 48304 248-433-2312 plunkettcooney.com gross@plunkettcooney.com

Q: Why is it important to have access to good oral health care? A: Teeth tell us a lot about someone’s story: their temperament, age, and health status. But not everyone has an equal shot at taking care of their teeth. There are many barriers at play when it comes to acquiring good oral health care. At Delta Dental of Michigan, we believe in breaking down those barriers so we can stand by our mission of improving oral health through benefit plans, advocacy, and community support. Smiles display confidence which can affect many aspects of an adult’s life including successful relationships and career earning potential. According to a national survey from Delta Dental Plans Association, more than half of adults (53 percent) say their smile has a bearing

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on their overall success. Employed adults in the United States lose more than 164 million hours of work each year because of oral health problems, further showing the critical need for regular preventive dental appointments. Dental care is personal, so it’s important that members feel comfortable with the dentist they choose, and that the dentist has a schedule and location that are convenient for them. Delta Dental features the largest network of dentists in the country and in Michigan, making a healthy smile and healthier body just around the corner.

Delta Dental of Michigan Susan Gisholt Manager of Talent Strategies 4100 Okemos Rd. Okemos, MI 48864 248-269-5042 deltadentalmi.com

6/2/22 2:12 PM

EXEC LIFE

THREE CHORD BOURBON

07-08.22

68 CREATIVE MUSE Neil Giraldo, an award-winning musician, songwriter, and arranger who is the band leader for Pat Benatar, launched Steel Bending Spirits in Ann Arbor, which produces Three Chord Bourbon in Chelsea.

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Main Event

Return on Investment

Production Run

Patents and Inventions

Opinion

The Circuit

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Main Event

In a converted garage at M1 Concourse in Pontiac, men and women learn the fundamentals of boxing, and reap the benefits of training the body and mind. BY DAN CALABRESE AND MICHELLE COHL | NICK HAGEN

harlene Shaya is COO of Wixom-based J&B Medical Supply and a former Oakland County assistant prosecutor. Lila Lazarus is a former health care reporter for Fox 2 who now runs Lila Productions in Orchard Lake. Both women regularly take part in a gathering designed to enhance their professional effectiveness, confidence, and focus by being encouraged to punch each other — and their trainer, Jeff Watters. Welcome to M1 Fight Club, the Pontiac-based facility where people come to practice boxing and leave with a heightened spirit of energy and drive that can then be applied to their professional lives. By the way, don’t be surprised if many of the clients are female executives of major metro Detroit companies. “Let’s face it, we feel tough,” Shaya says. “You’re not going to mess with us.” M1 Fight Club would be easy to miss for anyone who doesn’t know where to look. Operating out of a garage at Pontiac’s M1 Concourse, it’s a boutique fight gym surrounded by an atmosphere of motor sports and classic cars. That’s because former professional boxer Watters, who owns the operation with partners Steve and Kathy Minns, saw an opportunity to turn an underutilized asset into a top performer. “When I was still boxing, I would come up with out-of-thebox routines,” Watters says. “I got kind of a weird reputation with other fighters.” Weird, but good, because the other fighters noticed that the routines got results. As far back as 1994, when Watters was in his early 20s and still trying to establish his own fighting career, he was being asked to help train others. His combined fighter/trainer career lasted until Watters turned 37. That’s when he was told that one more fight could end not just his career, but his life. “I was diagnosed with dilated cardiomyopathy,” Watters recalls. “I was getting ready to go to Puerto

Rico for a fight and I was told, ‘No, you’ve got to go to Beaumont. You’re in congestive heart failure.’ ” Watters didn’t believe the diagnosis at first. He had no symptoms, and he had just run the Chicago Marathon a few months earlier. But after initially resisting surgery, he had a pacemaker/defibrillator implanted in his chest. With no more opportunity to fight, Watters recognized his good fortune at having already established a reputation as a fight trainer — but he wanted to do more than train other professional fighters. He saw boxing skills as critical to both the physical and mental well-being of non-athletes, and he wanted to make the training available to a broader audience. At no point did Watters decide to specifically market to executive women. As he picked up a few

GOING THE DISTANCE Lila Lazarus, a former health care reporter for Fox 2 who now runs her own production company, trains reguarly at M1 Fight Club in Pontiac.

clients, though, he discovered that his reputation was growing via word-of-mouth. In 2007, Lazarus was one of the first people to train with Watters. “I started with Jeff when I was at Fox,” she says. “My whole career was about convincing people to live healthier lives and wellness. And here, Jeff doesn’t let you phone it in.” Clients show up ready to train and Watters cycles them through a series of exercises that includes shadow boxing, speed bags, jump ropes, and more.

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Exec Life

Shaya likes the fact that thanks to her boxing skills, she could handle herself if threatened. She’s also found that the benefits of boxing training extend far beyond the physical. “It helps with the sharpness of your brain,” she says. “When you’re doing boxing skills, you have to be on cue with your thinking. It not only helps with self-defense, it helps with stress. I love all of it.” Lazarus and Shaya both express the benefits of getting up early in the morning and working out in the ring before going to work. The average person who’s trying to wake up in the morning probably doesn’t think about getting in the ring, but Lazarus says they should. “It goes against your grain to think this is going to give you energy,” she says. “Everyone feels so fatigued these days. But this gives you energy.” According to Watters, it’s much easier to train women because men tend to think they already know what they’re doing. “Men will come in, for the most part, and spend time saying, ‘I know, I know, I used to get in a lot of street fights,’ ” Watters says. “You’re 55. When was the last time you were in a street fight?

It’s harder to get a guy to take direction, to throw a punch the right way, whereas most of the girls come in and, for them, it’s more of a foreign thing.” Watters insists the women who train with him become much better fighters than their male counterparts, in addition to reaping the benefits in other aspects of their lives. “Boxing makes everything you do better,” he says, “and the women get that better than the guys do. The guys want to fight. They don’t necessarily want to learn how to do it. You have to come in here dumb, telling yourself you don’t know anything.” In a typical training session, Shaya and Lazarus bounce around the ring with Watters, jabbing at his padded hands while being careful to get their feet and hip action right, which adds power to their punches. Both fighters seem surprisingly quick, but it soon becomes clear there’s a reason for that. “You can improve quickness,” Watters says. “People think quickness has to do with hand speed, but it doesn’t. It has to do with hip movement. Punching power, on the other hand, is something you either have or you don’t.”

Out of these sessions comes some eyebrow-raising advice. One might not expect a trainer working with female executives to give advice like “Don’t hook with a hooker.” But in the boxing sessions, the meaning of the term soon becomes clear. “If you’re sparring with someone who has a good left hook, you don’t want to lead with a left hook,” Watters says, explaining that such a tactic will almost always leave a fighter on the losing end of the exchange. As he presents this often-repeated advice, Lazarus and Shaya nod knowingly. They’ve heard it and internalized it already. It’s part of the mental preparation that helps them make good decisions in the ring — and keeps them sharp when they get back to the office. Most of this boxing fun is headquartered upstairs, in one of the many private garages M1 Concourse offers on a condominium basis. It was previously used by retired dentist Steve Minns and his wife, Kathy Minns, to house some classic cars. The couple once had plans to build out the garage to possibly include a kitchen, a bar, or some other amenities.

FIGHT CLUB Steve and Kathy Minns purchased a condo garage at M1 Concourse in Pontiac and added a boutique boxing facility inside called M1 Fight Club. They co-own the club with former professional boxer Jeff Watters.

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TRAIN AND RECOVER KATHY MINNS HAD BEEN TRAINING WITH JEFF WATTERS

Those plans were curtailed when, in 2018, Steve Minns suffered a stroke. It forced him to sell his Novibased dental practice and to reconsider how he might be able to use the M1 space. His post-stroke prognosis wasn’t encouraging, and didn’t necessarily include walking again, but he had been training with Watters for a year prior to that point, and Kathy Minns suggested Watters work with her husband on some boxing techniques that might serve as rehabilitative therapy toward regaining the ability to walk, as well as to promote other motion. As the three talked, the couple saw an opportunity to partner with Watters on the use of their M1 garage and invest money in its development as a boxing gym. Today, Watters and the Minnses are partners in M1 Fight Club. The creation of the club fulfilled a vision for Watters, who had hoped at one point that M1 Concourse would build him a garage specifically for boxing. While that never came to fruition, the partnership with Steve and Kathy Minns brought about the same result. During group workouts, some participants have the job of “catching” the blows from their counterparts. If that sounds like a less-than-appealing task, there’s also plenty of training value to it. “It’s tougher, sometimes, catching, but it’s also a better way to learn the combinations,” Watters says. “I could do a boxing class on a rooftop and have 20 people, and not have a bag or anything.” For that reason, Watters often brings little to no equipment to the sessions. As much as everyone values the training, he says there’s nothing like actual sparring. “If I say to my people that we’re going to punch bags, half will show up,” Watters says. “If I say we’re sparring, every single person will show up.”

RIGHT CROSS Jeff Watters trains Lazarus during a recent boxing session at M1 Fight Club. She typically trains early in the morning, before going to work.

Sparring involves head gear and plenty of safety measures, but it’s still fighting. Watters pulled out a recent photo of him with a gash above his eye to prove the point. This sparring isn’t a passive, leisurely exercise. Beyond group sessions, Watters offers a series of 10 private sessions for $1,100. Those who would like to split a session with one or two others can sign up for 10 split sessions for $450. For groups, which Watters tries to limit to eight people, the cost per person is $250 for 10 sessions. And for those who want to train like professional boxers, Watters will put clients through six weeks of six-days-a-week training — along with the help of a nutritionist — for $2,500. By design, M1 Fight Club has no other trainers. Watters does all the training himself because he wants to give clients the very specific experience he offers — the same one that got him the weird reputation with other fighters back in the mid-1990s. In addition to the female executives who make up such a significant part of his clientele, Watters also trains players from the Red Wings and has a fair number of male clients. Often, he finds that the most important threshold a client must clear is learning not to fear the pain of being hit. “After you know what it feels like, the mentality is different,” Watters says. “You realize this thing you were afraid of hurt, but it isn’t that big a deal.”

on boxing techniques for about a year when her husband, Steve, suffered a stroke. It forced him to sell his Novi-based dental practice and resulted in the couple bringing in Watters as a partner in the use of their garage at M1 Concourse in Pontiac. From that sequence of events, M1 Fight Club came to be located in Garage No. 77. But Kathy Minns had something more in mind when she contacted Watters in the midst of Steve’s recovery from his stroke. “Steve had only been home for a month after his stroke, and he was still in a wheelchair in the house here,” Kathy says. “I mentioned to Jeff that maybe the boxing would be good for Steve, and Jeff said he thought we could do it.” Watters had worked with people who were recovering from concussions and other head injuries, so he was confident he could come up with an approach that would help Steve Minns. At the time, doctors were skeptical that Steve would walk again, so Watters devised an approach that would not only get him punching, but would also stimulate his brain. “I was boxing before I had the stroke,” Steve says, “but at this point I was totally laid out, and my wife said to me, ‘Listen, Jeff is going to come to the house and you’re going to start boxing again.’ All I could do was sit in the chair and swing one arm. That was it.” Over time, that changed. “Jeff makes these combinations that are unbelievable,” Kathy says. “He was punching this way and moving that way, and it helped Steve’s brain to connect. It’s not just physical, boxing; it’s mental.” In the past two years, Steve has made significant progress, and he credits Watters’ help in leading him to such a solid recovery. “I didn’t think I had the courage or the ability to do it,” Steve recalls. “But Jeff said, you can do it. And we started just in the chair.” Now 71, Steve Minns hopes others will take inspiration from his experience. “I want to encourage people who have had strokes or have some kind of disability,” he says. “You can do much more than you think you can, if you’ve got the courage to do it.” — Dan Calabrese

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6/16/22 2:06 PM

DON'T LOSE ANY MORE GROUND WITH YOUR KEY ACCOUNTS

Gerry Weinberg & Associates

REMOTE SELLING QUIZ Today’s sales landscape is going through significant short and longterm changes due to the current socio-economic changes. Are you still waiting? Has your team adapted to online meetings with buyers?

Will you regain revenue in Q4?

Are employees effectively engaging with prospects and customers while working from home?

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5/31/22 4:25 PM

Exec Life

STARTUP SUCCESS Sarah Endline grew up in an entrepreneurial family in Bay County, where her grandparents ran a farm and an insurance business, the latter of which was passed on to and operated by her parents.

RETURN ON INVESTMENT

Hippie Capitalist

Serial entrepreneur Sarah Endline creates, innovates, disrupts, and repeats — all while embracing a social mission. BY TOM MURRAY |

JEAN-LUC MÉGE

arah Endline is 50 years old, and she’s accumulated a long list of impressive credentials as an entrepreneur — and, as she often refers to herself, as a “disruptor.” She’s a fellow and EIR (Entrepreneur in Residence) at Harvard Business School and the Harvard Innovation Lab, represents the U.S. State Department in promoting startups, and travels the world to speak on entrepreneurship. All of which is a long way from growing up in the small town of Auburn in Bay County, where her grandparents ran a farm and a small enterprise. “My grandpa started an insurance business for farm, home, and automobiles, and then my mom and dad ran it,” Endline recalls. “There’s research that shows that small-business kids kind of learn about entrepreneurship through osmosis very early on. “If you can imagine, even in terms of vocabulary, a young person hears the word ‘customer’ very early, along with words like ‘bill,’ ‘invoice,’ and ‘count the dollars.’ I was OK with sales and with interacting with customers, like it was just a natural thing.” She got her first opportunity to do just that at John Adams Elementary School, when her class took part in a competition selling M&M candies. Endline was determined to come out on top. “Selling candy is sales at its essence, right?” she asks rhetorically. “It’s just interaction and transaction with a customer. And if you’re not shy about simply asking, and you’re OK with the fact that someone may say no, it’s not very complicated, right?” The next critical step on Endline’s journey took place at Bay City Western High School, where she was elected president of her class. That was just the beginning. “I joined Junior Achievement, which back in the day had night programs where, literally, high school students were running a company,” she says. “You had mentors guiding you, but you were running the company. I became the president of the company,

and then became Junior Achievement president of the year because we had strong results.” From there, the experience of helming a business enterprise became even more real for Endline. “The Kellogg Foundation, out of western Michigan, was funding community foundations to have what they call a youth initiative,” she says. “It was called the Bay Area Community Foundation, and I became a co-chair. The youth initiative would meet at the Kellogg Community Foundation office and make grants to (derserving) nonprofits in the Bay County area. “We were the community leaders, but we were all, you know, 16 and 17 years old and giving away these grants for consumer-focused products. One year it was personalized playing cards, and another it was these wooden towel racks that were very useful.” Endline’s next stop was at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where she focused on international relations and marketing on the way to earning a bachelor’s degree in the business administration program. “This is really dating back,” she says sheepishly, when asked about the meaning of the “distinction” tag on her degree. “I don’t really want to quote a 4.0 or a 4.2 or what it was, but it’s basically with honors, just higher-ranking.” Following graduation, Endline connected with the AIESEC network, a global platform focused on empowering the leadership potential in young people aged 18 to 30.

“It set up international programs for students around the world,” Endline explains. “I was very involved at the chapter level, and they would send chapter leaders to the national office. So I moved to New York City and I became a national vice president, and then I was elected to be national president. I essentially ran this large international nonprofit business of cultural exchange. After that, I was connected to a very important mentor, a Flint guy and a Michigan grad.” Enter Steve Mariotti, founder of the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship, an educational nonprofit that partners with schools, communities, and youth development groups to introduce the concept of entrepreneurship to underrepresented learners. “While I was with the NFTE in 1997, we were partnering with Microsoft and starting to use the internet to educate people,” Endline says. “I went to Silicon Valley and I ended up working at Microsoft for a summer.” Endline was already thinking about going to business school, and U-M’s Ross School of Business was her obvious choice. “I absolutely was so loyal, and so in love with Michigan,” she says. It didn’t hurt that Mariotti stepped up to play a critical part in Endline’s decision. “I said, What do you think I should do? and he said, It will be valuable in your life to have two communities. You already have the Michigan community, right? So go add another community.” Like Harvard Business School. “He was the one who told me (I was) good enough for Harvard Business School,” Endline says. “I visited the campus with him and I ended up with scholarships. So he’s a seminal mentor for me.” Endline’s arrival at Harvard in 1999 was perfectly timed with everything that was on the verge of exploding in Silicon Valley. “It was tech boom time, and I was president of the high-tech New Media Club at Harvard. And I was very drawn to the Valley and what was happening because I knew that massive, radical change was coming. I wanted to be in San Francisco, and in the Valley, and around that change.”

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Endline bounced around the tech haven, sharing her expertise with a wide range of businesses that were creating brands and launching new products. “Before business school, I was at AIESEC, then at the World Bank and the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship, and started partnering with Microsoft and MSN.” After earning her MBA from Harvard, Endline moved to San Francisco for what she calls “the real Silicon Valley experience” and joined Yahoo. “I spent those years in Silicon Valley and then, as an entrepreneur, I just started to think, When are you going to build your own thing? I’d learned how to build consumer digital products; (I wanted) to go back to creating a physical consumer product,” she says.

“I’m studying the candy industry and seeing all these artificial ingredients and colors, and I kept peeling the layers. And there, at the center of it, is the cacao bean. And I felt the story really wasn’t being told. Now people know what cacao is, but when we were launching in 2005, we were literally running around everywhere saying cacao, and people were looking at us, saying, What are you talking about?” Endline’s research on cacao also brought back fond memories of her early days on her grandparents’ farm, where the importance of growing and consuming natural products was a priority. As a result, she made frequent visits to her cacao sources in Latin America to ensure the integrity of all the ingredients.

HIGHER MISSION Endline launched Sweetriot as an “activist” candy company in which some of the profits go to charitable causes. She sold the business in 2018, and today is working on digital products.

That wasn’t all Endline wanted to accomplish with her idea. “Even at Michigan, I started to learn about Ben & Jerry’s and their social mission ice cream, and Anita Roddick ( founder of The Body Shop) with her activist cosmetics, and I just thought to myself, If you’re going to build a product, why not have a product with core values and a mission?” She moved back to New York City and revisited her elementary school roots, when she was hawking M&Ms. “That’s when I came up with the idea of building an amazing candy company that’s fair trade and organic,” Endline says. “It has this built-in mission, which is how I came up with the Sweetriot concept.” Sweetriot was what Endline describes as her “activist” candy company, built on the foundation of what were then the virtually unknown beneficial qualities of one essential ingredient.

Endline also focused on making more than money. “We were a very early B corporation, which means we baked (into the business) doing good,” she says. It’s a decision Endline attributes to her experiences on the farm and the lessons she learned from her grandparents. “Michigan shaped me,” she says. “As a small-town Midwestern girl, those values shaped me — downto-earth, reliable, loyal, hard-working, caring about others. And what’s interesting is I learned about all these things in the early ’90s, when I was at U-M. I just felt like that was the future. If you’re going to spend your time and energy as an entrepreneur building something, why not build something with values and real integrity?” Sweetriot was a stunning success. Its products — wrapped in recyclable and reusable packaging — were sold in more than 2,000 stores nationwide, including Whole Foods, Pier 1, and Zingerman’s Mail Order.

WE WERE VERY EARLY DISRUPTORS IN THE SPACE, AND THAT’S WHAT I LIKE TO DO, CLEARLY.” — SARAH ENDLINE, SWEETRIOT The company received a wide array of awards and recognition for the quality of its products. Endline reveled in her role at the helm of a company that was deemed “socially responsible” as much as she enjoyed giving herself an informal title — “Hippie capitalist.” “I’ve always used business to create a positive social impact,” she explains. “I don’t believe you have to choose between profits and planet.” Even with all its success, Endline sold Sweetriot in 2018. “For me as an entrepreneur, my work was done,” she maintains. “We were very early disruptors in the space, and that’s what I like to do, clearly. You can probably see a pattern: I like to go in, create things, innovate, disrupt, then take some time to think about what’s next.” So what is next for Sarah Endline? For starters, she’s doing a ton of traveling. “I’m on my way to 100 countries across every continent but Antarctica,” she exults. “France, Colombia, Kenya, China, South Africa, Hungary, Turkey — so many favorites.” She also serves on the regional council of the global Entrepreneurs Organization, the board of AIESEC Life, and touts the value of what she calls “Stoop Time,” which is exactly what it sounds like — sitting on the stoop of her Brooklyn brownstone, where she watches and chats with passers-by and thinks about whatever that next thing for her might be. “I’m studying the entire Web3 movement,” she says, referring to the latest iteration of the World Wide Web, which is based on technology encompassing everything from AI and machine learning to blockchain and the theory of token-based economics. “What they all represent is total disruption,” she says. “The part I’m focused on is NFTs, or nonfungible tokens. They’re a representation of the future of digital products. Some people focus on games. Some people focus on sports. Some people are focused on music. Some people are focused on the fine arts. Some people are focused on community.” Not surprisingly, Endline is pursuing a much different path. “I’m trying to figure out what consumer product line or marketplace I can build in the future using this NFT technology, leveraging everything I’ve done in the past. I don’t have it figured out yet.” The hunch is that she will. Eventually, inevitably, and while being extremely disruptive along the way. JULY - AUGUST 2022 || DBUSINESS.COM 67

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PRODUCTION RUN

Spiritual Notes

Grammy award-winning artist Neil Giraldo has developed a line of premium bourbon and rye whiskeys in Chelsea. BY R.J. KING

he road from Cleveland to Chelsea isn’t long, but for Neil Giraldo, the journey lasted nearly four decades and took him from his childhood home to multiple cities around the world before he settled in southeast Michigan in 2017 to craft, produce, and distribute what are now award-winning bourbon and rye whiskeys from Steel Bending Spirits. Giraldo is the main producer, guitarist, songwriter, and bandleader for Pat Benatar, whose band broke out on the music scene in 1979 with the debut album “In the Heat of the Night.” The record reached No. 12 on the Billboard charts and was

certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America. A steady string of hits followed, written by the now-married couple and others, that overall resulted in four Grammy Awards, five platinum-or-better records, and 15 top 40 Billboard Hot 100 Singles. The hits include “Heartbreaker,” “Hit Me with Your Best Shot,” “Love is a Battlefield,” “You Better Run,” “We Belong,” and “Promises in the Dark.” Giraldo and Benatar, who live in California, were recently selected for induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. The ceremony is set to take place Nov. 5 in Los Angeles. While Benatar had been eligible for induction in 2000, the long wait came from the couple’s shared desire to be recognized together. So how does a successful guitarist, songwriter, and producer whose career saw him write 100-plus songs that led to more than 50 million albums sold, and who’s been part of bands led by Rick Derringer, Kenny Loggins, John Waite, and Rick Springfield, among others, launch a spirits brand? “My family is from Sicily, and my grandfather made his own whiskey and grappa, and I have fond memories of being with him and sipping it when I was 6 years old,” says Giraldo, founder and chairman of Steel Bending Spirits in Ann Arbor. “At the time, it didn’t taste very good because I was a kid. But that

wasn’t important; rather, what I cherished was being with my grandpa.” Fast-forward to 2016, and Giraldo and a small team were working on a screenplay for a documentary about the music scene in northern Ohio. While writing the treatment, Giraldo and a few others embraced the idea of launching a spirits brand. Following a year-long search for a location, the guitarist settled on Chelsea, and specifically Ugly Dog Distillery, to handle the first of what are now seven handcrafted selections of bourbon and rye whiskeys. Soon after, the spirits business took over and the film project was put on the back burner. The venture began with researching the best whiskey-producing regions in North America. After American oak from the Missouri Ozarks was selected, unique flavor profiles were added, and after following several additional steps, the company infused what it calls a “proprietary process of pyrolysis” where the barrel wood is heated, or charred, to precise temperatures to release unique flavor and aroma compounds such as maple syrup, vanilla, and caramel. Sourcing up to 12-year-old bourbons from distillers in Tennessee and Kentucky, the company’s products are blended by Ari Sussman, a Michigan State University graduate in public policy who today is recognized as a master distiller.

THREE CHORD BOURBON

BARREL AGED In addition to being an accomplished guitarist, musician, and arranger, Neil Giraldo launched Steel Bending Spirits in Ann Arbor, which produces Three Chord Bourbon selections in Chelsea.

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THE RUNDOWN

Steel Bending Spirits launches on May 6, 2016

Seven bourbon and rye whiskey selections are produced

21,000 cases of Three Chord Bourbon to be sold in 2022

37 states where Three Chord Bourbon is sold

BOBBY BANK VIA GETTY IMAGES

Source: Steel Bending Spirits

HALL OF FAME Giraldo and his wife, Pat Benatar, were recently selected for induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. The couple are currently on a summer tour, which included a concert in Detroit on June 23.

At Steel Bending Spirits, he serves as head distiller, blender, and spirits developer. The selections are sold under the Three Chord Bourbon brand, an extension of the three basic notes used in most every song. The theme continues on the label, which includes the silhouette of a guitar pick surrounded by a starburst meant to represent soundwaves. The inset is highlighted by the Roman numeral III, with a C interwoven between the figures and a small star. “Bourbon and music are similar in their formation,” Giraldo says. “It takes patience and creativity to make something memorable. My goal was to provide people a way to converse while sipping whiskey or bourbon, and support causes that help musicians get started in the industry and make a living.” Through a distributorship agreement with MO Cellar Selections in Milford, Three Chord is now available in 37 states. Overall, sales have been brisk for Blended Bourbon Whiskey, Twelve Bar Reserve, Amplify Rye Whiskey, Strange Collaboration, Whiskey Drummer, Tennessee Straight Whiskey, and Bourbon Cream. In 2019, the first full year of sales, Three Chord sold 2,300 cases, followed by 8,300 cases in 2020 and 11,300 cases last year. In 2022, Tony DeYoung, COO and executive director of sales at Three Chord, says the company is on pace to sell 21,000 cases. Prices range from $29.99 to $79.99 per bottle. “We have nine employees and are growing, and Three Chord can be found in fine liquor stores, major retailers, gourmet markets, and private clubs,” DeYoung says. “With MO Cellar Selections, we’ll be expanding more across the country and around the world. In addition to our lineup, we also do limited releases.” Coming down the pipeline are “two new expressions” that incorporate toasted barrels and honey barrels, DeYoung adds. Three Chord has been recognized with gold awards from the 2018 Craft Distillers Spirits Competition — Best in Show Overall for its Twelve Bar Reserve and Best of Class for Small Batch 11 Years or Older; a silver medal from the 2018 World Spirits Competition; and a gold for Amplify Rye Whiskey from Tastings.com’s 2019 International Review of Spirits (93 points). “What struck me about Three Chord is that they developed an amazing lineup of bourbon whiskeys essentially as a startup business,” says Michael Ogurek, president and owner of MO Cellar Selections. “We were expanding beyond our wines, and Three Chord was the first liquor company we signed with. They really helped round out our portfolio in early 2020, when the pandemic was starting to emerge.”

Giraldo, an arranger who plays the guitar, piano, and drums, attributes his success, in part, to a strong family. “I started playing guitar when I was 6 years old, and my sister, Priscilla, played the accordion, and together we played Italian songs at first,” he says. “From there, I learned to play a lot of different instruments, and I began playing with my Uncle Timmy. “I was young, so he would sneak me in the back (of clubs). I started playing with Rick Derringer in New York City, and the next thing you know, I’m playing in stadiums and arenas. It’s been a great life, and I’m glad to have created songs with Patricia and others that people identify with and enjoy. Now I’m doing the same thing with our spirits, and I couldn’t be happier.”

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Exec Life PATENTS AND INVENTIONS

Civil Lady Clarissa Britain navigated around battlefields during the Civil War on a 900-mile journey to Michigan, where she patented seven inventions including a sheltered ambulance, cooking pots, a floor warmer, and, for miners, a lantern-powered dinner pail. BY NORM SINCLAIR

FRONT LINE During the Civil War, women helped care for injured soldiers, as depicted in “Our Women and the War,” a wood engraving by Winslow Homer (1862). Clarissa Britain, who lived in Michigan at the time, took a different path by creating an “improved ambulance,” for which she received a U.S. patent. She also developed other inventions and was awarded seven patents overall.

Her sibling was an early settler in the area and a founder of St. Joseph. He was also a prominent businessman and a member of the Democrat Party who served in the Michigan House of Representatives and Senate before becoming the state’s eighth lieutenant governor under Gov. Robert McCelland. With her extensive education, it was only natural that Britain would establish a school of her own, the Niles Female Seminary. Her female students were encouraged to take classes in rhetoric, logic, astronomy, chemistry, geometry, algebra, botany, and French — subjects usually reserved for boys. Students also were taught “The Elements of Moral Science,” a study of “human duty.” Writing in Michigan History Magazine, Denise E. Pilato, a professor of science in technology at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti who researches and writes about American female inventors, believes Britain might have been influenced by the class, as her later inventions promoted efficiency, economy, and the utility of products at affordable prices. Despite the school’s acclaim in its seven-year run, in 1848 Britain sold the facility, moved back to New York, and took a teaching position at her old finishing school, Emma Willard’s Troy Seminary. Three years later, Britain was once more on the move, this time to Beaufort, S.C., to be closer to her sister, Marth Johnston, and her family. She continued teaching, but there’s no record of which of

several schools for girls in Beaufort may have employed her. She next decamped for West Virginia, where she was hired as vice principal of a school in Wheeling. After a short stint there, she moved back to Beaufort just in time to witness history firsthand as South Carolina became the first state to secede from the Union, touching off the Civil War. In 1862, she learned Calvin had died in St. Joseph at age 62. As executor of his estate, Britain returned to Michigan, traveling 900 miles north through states in which battles were being fought. That experience helped inspire some of the seven inventions she produced between March 10, 1863, when her first patent was recorded, to the last one on Sept. 27, 1864. Britain was 47 years old when she developed a floor-warming stove, a forerunner of floor heaters popular in new and remodeled homes. “The object of this invention is to use the heat produced at the bottom of the stove for the purpose of heating the floor around or on the sides and in front of the stove, thereby warming the feet of the persons in the room,” she said in the description of her invention. Britain’s most ambitious invention, likely the result of personal contact with the war, was explained in her patent application filing as an “improved ambulance” to be used “for the removal of the wounded from the battle to safe quarters, where they may receive immediate surgical aid.”

CLEVELAND MUSEUM OF ART

istorians of the Civil War era wouldn’t have been surprised if they had discovered that Michigan’s 19th century inventor, Clarissa Britain, was a spy for either the North or the South, given her ability to safely navigate around battlefields. A native of New York, Britain lived in at least seven states during her lifetime. In 1841, she settled in St. Joseph, along the coast of lower Lake Michigan. She later moved to Beaufort, S.C., and was living there in 1860 — in the axis of the confederacy — when the state became the first to secede from the Union. The following year, the U.S. Navy bombarded Port Royal, a mere six miles from her Beaufort home. She left soon after and journeyed 900 miles by herself, through states where the fighting raged, to return to Michigan. It was an almost unheard-of feat for a single woman in her 40s. While a cloak-and-dagger scenario certainly would have made for a more glamorous tale, Britain’s peripatetic journeys are explained by her deep devotion and attachment to her siblings. During a 17-month period while living in St. Joseph in the 1860s, Britain submitted seven patent applications to the U.S. Patent Office for inventions ranging from a floor warmer to a portable ambulance built on a horse wagon, to better protect and care for wounded soldiers coming off the battlefield. Britain’s story began in Brownville, N.Y., in 1816, where she was one of four children born into what was described as a politically prominent middle-class family. Her father, Maj. Gen. Calvin Britain, served in the War of 1812. Because of his position, Clarissa was afforded a quality education and earned a teaching certificate. Early on, she demonstrated a keen aptitude for learning. She was described as a student who “excelled in mathematics” at the Rev. James Boyd School in Watertown, N.Y. She moved on to the Troy Female Seminary, founded and operated by Emma Willard, a notable women’s rights activist of the time. Britain developed as a “pupil of distinction” in a school noted as being a learning center for gifted young women who wouldn’t otherwise have been exposed to the difficult courses offered to men of the time. After graduation, Britain taught school in Batavia, N.Y., and Washington, Pa., before moving to Michigan to live with her brother, Calvin, in St. Joseph. 70 DBUSINESS || JULY - AUGUST 2022

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The unit was designed to be inexpensive, and easily disassembled and erected near battlefields. As an added benefit, wounded soldiers could be cared for while being transported to a hospital. Her other inventions were more domestic in nature and intended to lighten workers’ chores, including a pot for boiling potatoes and other vegetables, then drying them without taking them out of the pot; a drainer for drying dishes without using a dish cloth; and a safety improvement for oil-burning lamps. Another of her creations was an improved pot for boiling potatoes and vegetables, in which they could be dried or mashed and kept warm on a stove without burning them. In keeping with her theme of easing the labors of others, Britain invented a lantern dinner pail that she said could help miners. Her dinner pail, she wrote, provided the “means for warming articles of food, and also, where light is necessary, as in mines, to afford means for giving light at the same time the articles are warming.” There is no record showing she made any money from her inventions.

BETTER BOILER Britain developed an improved pot for boiling vegetables and potatoes that could be integrated with a cooking stove. The device also could keep items warm without burning them.

In 1866, she once again left Michigan, moving to Kenosha, Wis., where she was appointed the principal of Kemper Hall, a notable Episcopalian girl’s boarding school that operated until 1975. The Gothic Revival campus is on the National Registry of Historic Places. The following year she was back in Beaufort, taking care of her seven nieces after her sister died. In 1870, she moved to Chicago with the children and her brother-in-law, part of a wave of people trading rural farms for urban centers. Ten years later she moved back to St. Joseph to live with another sister, Isabella. Her last move is an unexplained one, to Baton Rouge, La., where she died in 1895 at age 80. While the name Clarissa Britain is long forgotten, Calvin Township in Cass County is named after her brother — and, by extension, the entire family.

NATIONAL REGISTRY

FIRST AID An updated design for a horse-drawn ambulance wagon Britain created was used “for the removal of the wounded from the battle to safe quarters, where they may receive immediate surgical aid.”

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OPINION

Up in Smoke

Michigan’s recreational cannabis sector has reached nearly $2 billion in annual sales in less than three years, but prices are dropping amid rising competition from outside players and market saturation. All of this offers a case study for Michigan cannabis companies as they race for market share, but at what cost? Based on market data, we can expect continued M&A activity in 2022 in the sector, as investors focus on vertical integration in key markets, expanding geographical footprints, and maximizing individual brand awareness. As new states have come online, this year has been fairly robust for M&As, led by Cresco Labs’ acquisition of Columbia Care, which includes operations in

MICHIGAN IS UNIQUE IN THE SENSE THAT COMMUNITIES DECIDE WHICH (CANNABIS) PURVEYORS WILL GET A LICENSE ...” The cannabis sector still has opportunities for generating revenue among operators as new products are added, both from local and national sources, while the related construction trade, supplier base, and service providers in the state drive economic activity. In turn, the market has created demand for once-vacant industrial buildings and commercial spaces. After years of debate, the Detroit City Council recently passed a recreational marijuana ordinance — and it is, perhaps, a harbinger of growth. The market shift adding recreational sales to medical uses will allow for up to 100 retail licenses, which will be offered via a lottery system. Traverse City officials, meanwhile, recently said the city will allow for up to 24 recreational licenses among a population of more than 15,000 people. As other communities debate allowing recreational sales, the cannabis market likely won’t be as robust when new stores are finally approved and opened. Cannabis operations in some regions in Michigan have halted production until pricing levels rise, while others are reorganizing in a bid to maintain sound gross margins. The sea of changing market conditions has left some major multistate operators and other investors rethinking their acquisition strategy. Large multistate brands with footholds in Michigan have decided to pull back on their expansion efforts in other states, as well. Most notably, Canada’s Aurora Cannabis is set to close facilities across three continents as it looks to regain profitability. This includes the sale of a large greenhouse for a fraction of what was spent on developing and building the facility.

several states, at an estimated transaction value of $2 billion. In Michigan, groups such as New Standard, Curaleaf, C3 Industries, Pleasantrees, and TerrAscend have expanded their brand presence locally. Gage Cannabis in Detroit, meanwhile, recently entered into an all-stock agreement to be acquired by TerrAscend in a deal estimated at $545 million. Most of this value is based on an aggressive growth strategy and expansion in the state — a daunting task now that flower prices have hit a floor. Michigan is unique in the sense that communities decide which purveyors will get a license, and how many will be issued. This is something to take into account when considering the sector as a seller, given a good deal of enterprise value can be based off forecasted earnings and how fast a given operator can grow. One of the biggest issues that developed at the tail end of 2021 was price deflation. While every state offering recreational cannabis sales has experienced some form of price compression, Michigan has been leading the nation from a wholesale level with spot prices down 54 percent yearover-year, according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health and Cowen and Co. “The struggle we see now (in Michigan) is that there are many more out-of-state brands, as well as new local brands, all competing for

limited shelf space,” says John McLeod, CEO of Cloud Cannabis. Cultivators want stable channels to sell their product at a fair price. With an influx of new brands, the competition grows and the resulting excess supply drives down the price of flowers. Can we expect new brands to pay for shelf space as they compete for consumer approval going into the tail end of 2022? While we celebrate a new business sector in cannabis, we must not forget that some of the “best practices” learned through other businesses can be applied to cannabis operations. Price deflation will weed out poorly planned operations, while allowing others to gain market share through scalable growth strategies. As it stands, large national players will continue to drive expansion through the state with heavily capitalized investments. But for anyone looking to invest in the sector, it’s best to develop a sound investment strategy to take advantage of growth opportunities.

MARCO EADIE

Managing director at O’Keefe, a middle-market investment bank and financial advisory firm in Bloomfield Hills. Over his career, Eadie has focused on transaction advisory services including mergers, acquisitions, restructurings, divestitures, and event-driven financing, as well as debt and equity capital raises for both private and publicly held companies.

MATT LAVERE

s Michigan continues to roll out recreational cannabis sales that, in less than three years, have reached nearly $2 billion in overall annual revenue, the industry is fast approaching market maturity. While there’s room for further growth as cities including Detroit and Traverse City prepare to open the doors to retail cannabis sales, things like saturation, price deflation, and excess capacity are creating a new set of challenges.

BY MARCO EADIE

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Breakfast Series

Powered By Women Gem Theatre, Detroit | 8:30 - 10:30 A.M. | Tickets available at DBusiness.com The number of women owning or managing businesses is on the rise now that the COVID-19 pandemic is waning. But operating a company today comes with a different set of challenges, including talent recruitment, supply chain shortages, rising inflation, and managing what is now a flexible workforce. Please join us in celebrating, and learning from, the 2022 class of Powered By Women as selected from reader nominations. HONOREES Linda Aspey | President & CEO | ITC Holdings Corporation Alicia Davis | Chief Strategy Officer | Lear Corporation Christine Feuell | CEO | Chrysler Brand Carleen Gray | CEO | GroupeSTAHL Anna Mans Motschall | CFO | Man’s Lumber Annette Tomina | Owner | Aqua-Tots Swim Schools Shannon Washburn | CEO | Shinola Kathy Weaver | Managing Director & Michigan Market Leader| Aon

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Exec Life

STARRY NIGHT CHRISTINE MJ HATHAWAY

The Detroit chapter of Financial Executives International (FEI), a 501(c)(6) nonprofit business association, hosted a networking event on June 7 to celebrate the beginning of summer at The Delmar Detroit’s rooftop in Greektown. The event featured cocktails, a buffet dinner, and networking. FEI members hold positions such as controller, treasurer, chief accounting officer, and CFO at companies in all major industries. The organization serves as an avenue for professional development among more than 65 chapters nationwide.

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1. Susan Gibson, Yasmeen Jasey 2. Joan and Ken DiLaura, Jake Goedekke 3. Don Campion, Nancie Stoddard 4. Ryan Ballatyne, Beth Lieberman, Craig Wasen 5. Alma Diaz, Shanti Daya, Avec O’Brien

CARS AND CIGARS CHRISTINE MJ HATHAWAY

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The Celani Family Foundation and the Cigar Family Charitable Foundation hosted Cars and Cigars Smoke Detroit on June 9 at the Michigan Lottery Amphitheater at Freedom Hill in Sterling Heights. Founded by Tom Celani and Dario Bergamo in 2014, the event brings together a car show in the park along with cigars, music, appetizers, and beverages before a sit-down dinner, entertainment, and a live auction. Proceeds from the event assist the Cigar Family School in the Dominican Republic, and underprivileged families and children through Gleaners Community Food Bank and the Capuchin Soup Kitchen.

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6. Rhonda Walker, Dario Bergamo, Lexi Walton 7. Maya Ellicott, Miranda Richards 8. Dominic Argentiiero, Tony Corso, Paul Sabatini 9. Jason Tinsley, Leon Richardson, Levi Stubbs 10. Frank Torre, Mark Davis

HOPE AFFAIR CHRISTINE MJ HATHAWAY

Life Directions hosted its Spark of Hope Gala on May 14 at the GM Renaissance Center Wintergarden in downtown Detroit. The event raised funds for the organization’s programs that seek to shape young people into mature and responsible adults. The evening featured a live and silent auction, a dinner, an afterglow, and awards. Will and Martina O’Sullivan, co-founders of Focus Family, received a Lifetime Achievement award, and Timothy O’Brien, principal at O’Brien Construction Co., was the Guiding Light honoree. 11. Vincent Nunn, Celeste and Evelyn Worsham, Rev. Alex Steinmiller 12. Terry Larkin, Joy and Jim Schmid 13. Tim and Debbie O’Brien 14. Mary Glantz, Mary Okray, Paul Glantz 15. Linda Wrobel, Annette Howard, Scott Wrobel

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THE ULTIMATE BOOK ABOUT DETROIT’S HISTORY Explore the latest book from award-winning journalist and DBusiness magazine editor R.J. King. “Detroit: Engine of America” is the real life story of how the city grew, step by step, from a French fort on the riverfront in 1701 to become the world’s largest manufacturing economy in 1900.

To purchase copies of “Detroit: Engine of America” personally signed by the author, visit DetroitEngineofAmerica.com. Audiobook Now Available on Audible

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Exec Life

DETROIT HORSE POWER PATRICK GLORIA

Detroit Horse Power hosted its third annual gala on May 13 at the Roostertail in Detroit. Funds generated by the event benefited the 501(c)(3) organization’s horse summer camps, barn trips, and weekly after-school programs. The evening featured a dinner, live music, a silent auction, awards, and student speakers. The lessons learned from taking care of horses help students develop long-term skills for school, career, and life successes. Strategic Staffing Solutions in Detroit was the presenting sponsor.

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1. Meagan Snavely, Emily Halaburda, Katie Goncalves 2. Ethan Warchol, Tom Schoenith, Chris King 3. Lauren Plue, Susan Plue 4. Chad and Stacey Lumbert, Christie and Anthony Allport 10. Andrea and Scott Benson

APACC GALA PATRICK GLORIA

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The Asian Pacific American Chamber of Commerce in Clawson hosted its 21st annual fundraising gala on May 7 at MGM Grand Detroit. The ethnic and black-tie event featured a silent auction, a seated dinner, desserts, door prizes, live entertainment, and a keynote presentation by Sanjay Rishi, America CEO of Work Dynamics. Funds raised from the event support APACC’s goal of facilitating business relationships among Asian and U.S.-based companies while promoting the economic advancement of Asian Pacific Americans. The event was sponsored by DTE Energy, MGM Grand Detroit, DBusiness, and more.

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6. Donovan and Ann-Marie Morris, Venus and Nathan Randle 7. Duc Nguyen-Abrahamson, Leonie Teichman 8. Lisa Ani and Stan Patterson 9. Angela and Sung Moon 10. Caren Wu, Bruce Mitchell, Grace Lee

LIFETIME HONOR CHRISTINE MJ HATHAWAY

The Michigan District Council of the Urban Land Institute hosted its Lifetime Achievement Dinner on May 3 at the MGM Grand Detroit. The event raised funds for ULI, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that seeks to shape the future of the built environment for transformative impact in communities worldwide. This year’s event honored David V. Johnson, a ULI member since 1984 and founder and chairman of Victor International Corp. The award honors individuals who have made a positive impact on the vibrancy and quality of life in Michigan through the use of land. 11. Eric Larson, Lila and Danny Appiah 12. Mark Szerlag, Eric Szerlag, Steve Gordon, David Miller 13. David and Pam Johnson 14. Cheryl and Paul Robertson, Mark and Jennifer LoPatin 15. Ben and Barb Maibach, Amb. David Fischer

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EVENTS AND OPPORTUNITIES SPONSORED BY DBUSINESS

ASSOCIATION FOR CORPORATE GROWTH acg.org/detroit The Association for Corporate Growth (ACG) Detroit Chapter is a nonprofit business organization of professionals from corporations, lenders, and private equity firms who advise, invest in, or own middle market companies. This group also includes professionals from accounting, investment banking, law, and other firms. It curates and facilitates more than 40 middle-marketdriven business/networking events for 400-plus local members annually. To learn about membership opportunities, visit our website.

AUBURN HILLS CHAMBER OF COMMERCE | IMPACT 2022 Thursday, Sept. 22 | 8 a.m. – Noon | 2GatherMore | 3391 Cross Creek Parkway, Auburn Hills 248-853-7862 | auburnhillschamber.com This half-day leadership conference celebrates inclusivity and innovation within the workforce. The audience of CEOs, COOs, HR executives, as well as those responsible for DEI initiatives will hear from local business thought leaders who successfully demonstrate trailblazing efforts in workplace development and diversity.

BEAUMONT HEALTH FOUNDATION | DRIVE FOR LIFE INVITATIONAL Monday, July 11 | 8:30 a.m. | Oakland Hills Country Club | 3951 W. Maple Road, Bloomfield Hills beaumont.org/driveforlife This event features a round of golf on the world-class championship courses at Oakland Hills Country Club. Anticipation is high for both the North Course and newly renovated PGA tournament South Course. A live broadcast will cover the festivities. Guests are set to enjoy breakfast, lunch, cocktail hour, a buffet dinner, and an auction. Proceeds benefit oncology patient programs/services at the Walter & Marilyn Wolpin Comprehensive Breast Care Center in Beaumont Hospital Royal Oak and Wilson Cancer Resource Center in Beaumont Hospital Troy. For more information and sponsorship opportunities, contact Mariana Keros at 947-522-0092 or mariana.keros@beaumont.org.

DETROIT FESTIVAL OF BOOKS Sunday, July 17 | 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. | Historic Eastern Market, Shed 5 | 2934 Russell St., Detroit detroitbookfest.com | books@detroitbookfest.com Join us at the fifth annual event to benefit community wellness! Our nonprofit organization promotes the joy of reading and rich culture that surrounds it. There will be appearances/features by DBusiness Editor R.J. King, Delray Barbecue, Deon Forrest (aka Greektown Hotbox), Detroit Van, DJ SevenWhales, John K. King Books, Pong Detroit, the Detroit Metro Convention & Visitors Bureau, plus Treat Dreams ice cream. Mingle with the Arts & Scraps team amid several book vendors. All are welcome; admission is free. Donations are accepted and encouraged to route literature toward appropriate entities. The official Bookfest Afterparty takes place at Eastern Market Brewing Co., with Bookfest Bash inside Bea’s Detroit.

ENTREPRENEURS’ ORGANIZATION – DETROIT CHAPTER P.O. Box 453, Royal Oak | eonetwork.org The Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO) is a global, peer-to-peer network of more than 14,000 influential business owners with 198 chapters in 61 countries. Founded in 1987, EO is the catalyst that enables entrepreneurial leaders, who represent a range of industries, to achieve greater success both personally and professionally. To attend an event, inquire about partnerships, or receive member information, contact admin@eodetroit.com.

FRENCH AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE – MICHIGAN CHAPTER | MEADOW BROOK CONNECT Thursday, July 21 | VIP Reception at 5 p.m., 6 p.m. – 9 p.m. | Meadow Brook Hall | 350 Estate Drive, Rochester faccmi.org | info@faccmi.org Join us for our annual summer event that unites the American European business community in a magical lawn and terrace setting! This evening will feature premium French wines and the rarest car show. Network among directors and executives to establish professional relationships. Be inspired by innovative presentations of prominent industry visionaries who influence the world’s leading manufacturers. Delight in examples of the finest global automotive designs that exude purpose and style from past to present. Enjoy a string quartet for entertainment. Savor over 32 award-winning wines and distinctive hors d’oeuvres. Win exclusive items through the online/silent auctions while supporting Le Détroit scholarships. The exchange program provides next generation students at Michigan universities with an opportunity to study in France. RSVP by Saturday, July 16. ADV E RTI SE ME NT

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Exec Life

ALL-STARS PATRICK GLORIA

The Detroit Chapter of the Association for Corporate Growth hosted its seventh annual M&A All-Star Awards on May 3 at the Townsend Hotel in downtown Birmingham. The event featured a strolling dinner, drinks, networking, and an awards ceremony honoring Wolverine Worldwide Inc., PM Environmental, Justin Hanna of Jaffe Raitt Heuer & Weiss, Huron Capital, Cliff Roesler of Angle Advisors, Lee Kellert of Jaffe Raitt Heuer & Weiss, and a posthumous lifetime achievement award for ACG Detroit Executive Director Sharon Kimble.

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1. Caleb Erbert, Christopher Letts, Eric Jones 2. Julie Noe, Steve Savoy, Derron Sanders, Larry Gardner 3. Lydia Mansoor, Michael Sarafa, Gjina Lucaj 4. Mario Mastroianni, Jeff Sternberg, Sherry Beaupre 5. Doug LaLone, Peter Bridges, Matt Morgan

BATES STREET CHRISTINE MJ HATHAWAY

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The Bates Street Society hosted its annual dinner on April 30 at The Community House in Birmingham. The society was formed in 2015 to recognize donors who make significant charitable contributions to the work and mission of The Community House, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that provides continuity between personal, professional, philanthropic, and recreational pursuits. The event featured a seated dinner, wine and cocktails, live entertainment by jazz saxophonist Jeff Ponders II, and a recognition of the society’s members and pillars.

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6. Bill Proctor, Robert Dempster 7. Seth and Laura Herskovitz, Linda and Dr. Barry Franklin 8. Brian and Rose Bolyard 9. Evan and Gwen Weiner 10. Jocelyn Chen, Jessie Beld Elliott, Rob Hynes

WHEELS UP TALEEN MARKARIAN

The Oakland County Sheriff Police Athletic League (PAL) hosted its 2022 PAL Gala on April 29 at the Maven by Midfield – Hangar 2, with a VIP reception held before at the Oakland County International Airport, both in Waterford Township. The event featured a dinner, drinks, live entertainment, and more. Funds generated go to support Sheriff PAL, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, that aims to empower young people to reach their full potential through athletics, mentoring, and other programs. 11. Soleil Gross, Naquito Gross, Solange Gross 12. Sheriff Mike J. and Pam Bouchard, Cheryl Callahan, Patrick Callahan 13. Lance and Doris Solis, Dana and Ryan Maggio 14. Jennifer Parker, Angela Powell, Linnette Phillips 15. Drayl Mason, London Mason

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EVENTS AND OPPORTUNITIES SPONSORED BY DBUSINESS

KIDSGALA, DAVID C. MCKNIGHT FOUNDATION | GOLF INVITATIONAL Tuesday, Aug. 30 | 7:30 a.m. | Links of Novi | 50395 W. 10 Mile Road, Novi events.golfstatus.com Please join us for our second annual tournament! Enjoy a round of golf, complemented by breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Participate in the raffle to win exquisite prizes. This nonprofit organization, created in memory of Nicole Marie Burton, hosts gifted celebrations for children who battle and experience life-altering events. It is dedicated to honoring each individual child’s life achievements. Kindly direct registration and sponsorship questions to Jeffery Kavanaugh at 734-306-9027 or jefferyk@kidsgala.org.

NEW DAY FOUNDATION | COLOR OF WELLNESS 5K Saturday, July 30 | 8 a.m. – Noon | Rochester Municipal Park | 400 Sixth St., Rochester foundationforfamilies.org Lace up your shoes and get in the race! Spend a beautiful morning with us as we run to benefit Michigan families who face cancer. This chip-timed event welcomes contenders of all ability levels. Register before Wednesday, July 13, to guarantee receipt of a shirt and medal. Participants of each gender who finish top in their category will win a prize package from our event sponsor, The Woodhouse Day Spa, Rochester Hills. Our mission as a nonprofit is to provide emotional care and financial assistance for families impacted by the diagnosis of cancer. We are a leader in the cancer support community, partnering with more than 50 hospitals across Michigan to help those hit hardest by this disease. Programs are intended to have a positive impact on treatment outcomes and survivorship.

NEW DAY FOUNDATION | GOLF CLASSIC Monday, July 18 | 10 a.m. – 7 p.m. | The Wyndgate Country Club | 1975 W. Gunn Road, Rochester Hills foundationforfamilies.org Experience a round of golf at this beautiful and challenging venue in support of local families who face cancer. Enjoy an 18-hole scramble, beverage offerings on the course, lunch, as well as a contest with prizes. This event will also feature an open bar, hearty appetizers, and carving stations amid dinner on the terrace. Our mission as a nonprofit organization is to provide emotional care and financial assistance for families impacted by the diagnosis of cancer. We are a leader in the cancer support community, partnering with more than 50 hospitals across Michigan to help those hit hardest by this disease. Programs are intended to have a positive impact on treatment outcomes and survivorship.

PAUL W. SMITH GOLF CLASSIC Monday, July 11 | 9 a.m. – 5 p.m. | Detroit Golf Club | 17911 Hamilton Road, Detroit paulwsmithgolf.com Join us for the 19th annual tournament fundraiser that has supported more than 55,000 individuals in their youth to achieve mental, physical, and social growth/wellness. Enjoy breakfast, the driving range, 18 holes of golf, lunch, refreshments, and an awards reception. To date, this event has netted over $7.7 million. Beneficiaries include Detroit PAL, The Children’s Center, The Children’s Foundation, and Variety the Children’s Charity of Detroit. Returning as title sponsor is News Talk 760 WJR. The tournament sponsor is Ford Motor Co. Our presenting sponsors are Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, DTE Energy Foundation, General Motors Corp., Lear Corp., and Toyota Motor Sales, USA. Sponsorships are still available.

PROFESSIONAL GOLF PLANNERS OF AMERICA | FEDERAL LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS ASSOCIATION – CHAPTER 21 GOLF OUTING Friday, July 29 | 8:30 a.m. – 5:30 p.m. | Fieldstone Golf Club | 1984 Taylor Road, Auburn Hills progolfplanners.com/fleoa Join the fun in support of our men and women who serve to protect us! Register now for the driving range, golf cart, 18 holes of golf, lunch, golf ball launch cannon, PGPA’s $10K Hole-in-One contest, raffle prizes, dinner, awards ceremony, silent auction, gift bag, and more. The Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association is a nonpartisan, nonprofit professional association exclusively representing federal law enforcement officers. Included are more than 26,000 federal law enforcement officers from over 65 different agencies nationally. FLEOA is a charter member within the Department of Homeland Security Federal Law Enforcement Working Group. Furthermore, two seats are held on the Federal Law Enforcement Congressional Badge of Bravery Board.

ADV E RTI SE ME NT

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From the Top

LARGEST ACCOUNTING FIRMS IN METRO DETROIT RANKED BY METRO DETROIT-AREA EMPLOYMENT

2. PLANTE MORAN 3000 Town Center, Ste. 100 Southfield 48075 248-352-2500 plantemoran.com Top Local Executive: James Proppe, managing partner Detroit-Area Employees: 2022: 1,346 2021: 1,290 Michigan Employees: 2022: 1,802 2021: 1,738 Number of CPAs: 2022: 707 2021: 778 3. ERNST & YOUNG One Kennedy Square 777 Woodward Ave., Ste. 1000 Detroit 48226 313-628-7100 ey.com Top Local Executive: Angie Kelly, Detroit managing partner Detroit-Area Employees: 2022: 812 2021: 787 Michigan Employees: 2022: 944 2021: 913 Number of CPAs: 2022: 341 2021: 338 4. UHY* Chrysler House 230 E. Grand River Ave., Ste. 700 Detroit 48226 313-964-1040 uhy-us.com

Top Local Executive: Tom Callan, Great Lakes managing partner Detroit-Area Employees: 2021: 435 2020: 403 Michigan Employees: 2021: 457 2020: 421 Number of CPAs: 2021: 196 2020: 174 5. KPMG* 150 W. Jefferson Ave., Ste. 1900 Detroit 48226 313-230-3000 kpmg.com Top Local Executive: Kevin Voigt, office managing partner, Detroit and Grand Rapids Detroit-Area Employees: 2021: 316 2020: 320 Michigan Employees: 2021: 384 2020: 392 Number of CPAs: 2021: 86 2020: 85

2022: 385 2021: 243 Number of CPAs: 2022: 178 2021: 107 8. BDO 2600 W. Big Beaver Rd., Ste. 600 Troy 48084 248-362-2100 bdo.com Top Local Executives: Matt Manosky, Kevin Patterson, Andy Zaleski, John Marquardt and Tony Lawrence, managing partners Detroit-Area Employees: 2022: 213 2021: 156 Michigan Employees: 2022: 758 2021: 630 Number of CPAs: 2022: 211 2021: 205

10. GRANT THORNTON 2777 Franklin Rd., Ste. 800 Southfield 48034 248-262-1950 grantthornton.com Top Local Executive: Jim Tish, office managing partner Detroit Area Employees: 2022: 100 2021: 86 Michigan Employees: 2022: 100 2021: 86 Number of CPAs: 2022: 44 2021: 44 11. CLAYTON & MCKERVEY 2000 Towne Center, Ste. 1800 Southfield 48075 248-208-8860 claytonmckervey.com Top Local Executive: Rob Dutkiewicz, president Detroit-Area Employees: 2022: 77 2021: 77 Michigan Employees: 2022: 77

2021: 77 Number of CPAs: 2022: 39 2021: 39 12. GORDON ADVISORS* 1301 W. Long Lake Rd., Ste. 200 Troy 48098 248-952-0200 gordoncpa.com Top Local Executives: Paul J. Arment and Maureen M. Moraccini, executive committee Detroit-Area Employees: 2021: 68 2020: 68 Michigan Employees: 2021: 68 2020: 68 Number of CPAs: 2021: 31 2020: 31 13. COLE, NEWTON & DURAN 33762 Schoolcraft Rd. Livonia 48150 734-427-2030 cndcpa.com Top Local Executive: Christopher Boloven, managing partner Detroit-Area Employees: 2022: 44 2020: 46 Michigan Employees: 2022: 44 2020: 46 Number of CPAs: 2022: 19 2020: 17

CPA Detroit-Area Employees: 2021: 29 2020: 27 Michigan Employees: 2021: 29 2020: 27 Number of CPAs: 2021: 11 2020: 11 15. MRPR GROUP, CPAS AND ADVISORS 28411 Northwestern Hwy., Ste. 800 Southfield 48034 248-357-9000 mrpr.com Top Local Executive: Angie Mastroionni, president and managing principal Detroit-Area Employees: 2022: 23 2021: 23 Michigan Employees: 2022: 47 2021: 50 Number of CPAs: 2022: 23 2021: 30

*Did not respond to request for information. Source: DBusiness research

14. EDWARDS, ELLIS & ASSOCIATES* 2155 Butterfield Dr., Ste. 305 Troy 48084 248-643-4545 eeacpas.com Top Local Executive: Jeffrey B. Ellis, PLANTE MORAN, SOUTHFIELD

6. REHMANN* 1500 W. Big Beaver Rd. Troy 48084 248-952-5000 rehmann.com Top Local Executive: Ryan Krause, regional managing principal Detroit-Area Employees: 2022: 306 2021: 305 Michigan Employees: 2022: 715 2021: 693 Number of CPAs: 2022: 244 Michigan; 302 nationwide 2021: 310 7. DOEREN MAYHEW 305 W. Big Beaver Rd., Ste. 200 Troy 48084 248-244-3000 doeren.com Top Local Executive: Chad Anschuetz, managing shareholder Detroit-Area Employees: 2022: 305 2021: 243 Michigan Employees:

PLANTE MORAN

1. DELOITTE 200 Renaissance Center, Ste. 3900 Detroit 48243 313-396-3000 deloitte.com Top Local Executive: David Parent, managing partner Detroit-Area Employees: 2022: 1,398 2021: 1,140 Michigan Employees: 2022: 1,612 2021: 1,313 Number of CPAs: 2022: 332 2021: 309

9. BAKER TILLY US 2000 Towne Center, Ste. 900 Southfield 48076 248-372-7300 bakertilly.com Top Local Executive: Patrick Killeen, Michigan managing partner Detroit-Area Employees: 2022: 100 2021: 94 Michigan Employees: 2022: 130 2021: 105 Number of CPAs: 2022: 42 2021: 37

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CORPORATE AVIATION (TOP REGIONAL AIRPORTS 2022) GENESEE COUNTY BISHOP INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT (FNT) G-3425 W. Bristol Rd. Flint 48507 810-235-6560 bishopairport.org Tower: Yes Instrument Approach Procedures: Yes Number of Runways: 2 Longest Runway: 7,849 ft. Total Operations 2021: 32,959 Services: Fuel (100 LL, Jet A), maintenance, hangars, tie-downs, aircraft parking, ground power unit, de-icing, restrooms, showers, flight planning, satellite weather, passenger lounge, passenger terminal, on-site rental cars, lavatory service, air stairs, pilot lounge, crew cars, limo service, catering, business services, pilot supplies, internet, conference room, U.S. Customs, flight training, air freight, military landing rights FBOs/Other Services: Avflight Flint, 810-235-0681 Hours: Open 24 hours daily PRICE’S AIRPORT (9G2) 15057 Lindbergh Ct. Linden 48451 810-735-6569 horizonlakesairpark.net Tower: No Instrument Approach Procedures: Yes Number of Runways: 1 Longest Runway: 4,000 ft. Total Operations 2021: Unavailable Services: Self-serve fuel (100 LL), maintenance on call, snow removal, hangars, tie-downs Hours: Open 24 hours daily

OAKLAND COUNTY INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT

LIVINGSTON COUNTY BRIGHTON AIRPORT (45G) 8664 Hyne Rd. Brighton 48114 810-599-1747 brightonairport.org Tower: No Instrument Approach Procedures: No Number of Runways: 1 Longest Runway: 3,120 ft. Total Operations 2021: 3,800+ (est.) Services: No fuel available, tie-downs Hours: Open 24 hours daily (irregular) LIVINGSTON COUNTY SPENCER J. HARDY AIRPORT (OZW) 3399 County Airport Dr. Howell 48855 517-546-6675

co.livingston.mi.us/airport Tower: No Instrument Approach Procedures: Yes Number of Runways: 1 Longest Runway: 5,002 ft. Total Operations 2021: 50,000 Services: Fuel (100 LL, Jet A), maintenance, repair, inspection, charter, rentals, flight training, hangars FBOs/Other Services: Airservice Enterprise Inc., 517-546-7379; Fuel After Hours, 517-861-1856; Crosswinds Aviation, 517-552-1101 Hours: 7 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Friday; 8 a.m.-noon Saturday-Sunday

MACOMB COUNTY RAY COMMUNITY AIRPORT (57D) 59819 Indian Trail Ray 48096 586-612-9910 go2ray.com Tower: No Instrument Approach Procedures: No Number of Runways: 2 Longest Runway: 2,495 ft. Total Operations 2021: Unavailable Services: Fuel (100 LL), flight instruction, mechanic on call, hangar, tie-downs FBOs/Other Services: Berz Flight Training, 586-731-6750 Hours: 10 a.m.-4 p.m. daily ROMEO STATE AIRPORT (D98) 15340 32 Mile Rd. Romeo 48096 586-336-9116 airnav.com/airport/D98 Tower: No Instrument Approach Procedures: Yes Number of Runways: 1 Longest Runway: 4,000 ft. Total Operations 2021: Unavailable Services: Self-serve fuel (100 LL, Jet A), on-call maintenance, airport management, rental cars, flight training, charter, aircraft rentals, hangars, hangar leasing/sales, passenger terminal, passenger lounge, tie-downs FBOs/Other Services: St. Clair Flight School, 586-536-0773 Hours: 8 a.m.-4 p.m. Monday-Friday

OAKLAND COUNTY OAKLAND COUNTY INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT (PTK) 6500 Patterson Parkway Waterford Twp. 48327 248-666-3900 oakgov.com/aviation

OAKLAND COUNTY INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, WATERFORD TOWNSHIP Tower: Yes Instrument Approach Procedures: Yes Number of Runways: 3 Longest Runway: 6,521 ft. Total Operations 2021: Unavailable Services: Fuel (100 LL, Jet A), aircraft parking, maintenance, repair, parts, detailing, pilot/passenger lounges, rental cars, limo service, catering, ground power units, de-icing, lavatory and oxygen service, flight planning, live weather radar, U.S. Customs, heated FBO hangars, conference rooms, wireless internet, showers, catering, concierge, passenger/freight charters, military landing rights FBOs/Other Services: Michigan Aviation, 248-666-3440; Oakland Air, 248-666-4300; Pentastar Aviation, 248-666-8230; Royal Air, 248-666-3070 Hours: Open 24 hours daily OAKLAND/SOUTHWEST AIRPORT (KY47) 57751 Pontiac Trail New Hudson 48165 248-437-2333 oakgove.com/aviation Tower: No Instrument Approach Procedures: Yes Number of Runways: 1 Longest Runway: 3,128 ft. Total Operations 2021: Unavailable Services: Self-serve fuel (100 LL), pilot/passenger lounge, hangars, tie-downs, internet and computer for flight and weather planning. American Aces offers flight training and aircraft rentals. Other Services: Flight school only, American Aces, 248-446-9734 Hours: 8:30 a.m.-5 p.m. OAKLAND/TROY AIRPORT (KVLL) 2672 Industrial Row Troy 48084 248-288-6100 oakgov.com/aviation Tower: No Instrument Approach Procedures: Yes Number of Runways: 1 Longest Runway: 3,549 ft. Total Operations 2021: Unavailable Services: Self-serve fuel (100 LL, Jet A), hangars, tie-downs

FBOs/Other Services: JDS Pumps-N-Go, 248-288-6100; 2HRFUEL. com, 248-655-1474 Office Hours: 8 a.m.-6 p.m. daily

WASHTENAW COUNTY ANN ARBOR MUNICIPAL AIRPORT (KARB) 801 Airport Dr. Ann Arbor 48103 734-994-2841 airport@a2gov.org Tower: Yes Instrument Approach Procedures: Yes Number of Runways: 2 Longest Runway: 3,505 ft. Total Operations 2021: Unavailable Services: Fuel (100 LL, Jet A), maintenance, repairs, parts, aviation accessories, rental cars, restroom, limousine service available 24 hours a day, parking/tie-downs, auxiliary power units, jump-starting, computerized weather and flight planning, aircraft parking, aircraft rental, aerial tours/aerial sightseeing, rental/crew cars, oxygen, pilot lounge, shower, internet, passenger lobby, catering, refreshments, aircraft rental, flight training, hangars, glider towing, tie-downs FBOs/Other Services: Ann Arbor Aviation Center, 734-662-6806; Solo Aviation, 734-994-6651; Bijan Air Inc. (helicopter), 734-769-8400 Hours: Nov.-March 8 a.m.-6 p.m. daily; April-Oct., 8 a.m.-8 p.m. daily; terminal open 7 a.m.-dusk WILLOW RUN AIRPORT (YIP) 801 Willow Run Airport Ypsilanti 48198 734-485-6666 willowrunairport.com Tower: Yes Instrument Approach Procedures: Yes Number of Runways: 3 Longest Runway: 7,543 ft. Total Operations 2021: Unavailable Services: Fuel (100 LL, Jet A), flight planning, de-icing, aircraft lavatory service, satellite weather, U.S. Customs services, parking (ramp and tie-down), hangars, passenger terminal, pilot lounge, catering, concierge, rental/crew cars,

high-speed wireless internet, business services, freight/cargo handling, military landing rights FBOs/Other Services: Avflight Willow Run (East), 734-482-2621; Avflight Willow Run (West), 734-483-3531; Odyssey Aviation, 734-547-7359; Flagship Private Air, 734-926-2000 Hours: Open 24 hours daily

WAYNE COUNTY CANTON-PLYMOUTH-METTETAL AIRPORT (1D2) 8550 North Lilley Rd. Canton Twp. 48187 734-459-0012 airnav.com/airport/1D2 Tower: No Instrument Approach Procedures: Yes Number of Runways: 1 Longest Runway: 2,302 ft. Total Operations 2021: Unavailable Services: Fuel (100 LL), hangars, maintenance, repair, parking, tie-downs, flight school, aircraft rental, high-speed wireless internet, lounge, computerized weather, flight planning Hours: 8 a.m.-4 p.m. daily COLEMAN A. YOUNG INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT (DET) 11499 Conner Ave. Detroit 48213 313-628-2146 detroitmi.gov/Government/ Departments/airport.aspx Tower: Yes Instrument Approach Procedures: Yes Number of Runways: 2 Longest Runway: 5,090 ft. Total Operations 2021: Unavailable Services: Fuel (100 LL, Jet A), maintenance, cleaning, de-icing, hangars, weather/flight planning, tie-downs, charter, courtesy transportation, aircraft lavatory service, passenger terminal, pilot lounge, rental cars, limo service, catering, aircraft sales, aircraft cleaning/washing/detailing, conference rooms, concierge, military landing rights FBOs/Other Services: Avflight, 313-527-6620; Active Aero, 734-547-7359

Tenants: Detroit Aircraft Corp., ASX, and more Hours: Open 24 hours daily DETROIT METROPOLITAN WAYNE COUNTY AIRPORT (DTW) Wayne County Airport Authority 11050 Rogell Dr., Bldg. 602 Detroit 48242 734-247-6878 metroairport.com Tower: Yes Instrument Approach Procedures: Yes Number of Runways: 6 Longest Runway: 12,003 ft. Total Operations 2021: 238,574 Services: Cleaning, fuel (100 LL, Jet A), hangars, office rental, weather/ flight planning, tie-downs, passenger/ pilot lounges, lavatory and potable water, GPU, ground handling, rental/ crew cars, de-icing, exec terminal, crew lounge, wireless, catering, limo service, conference rooms, on-site hotel and concierge, military landing rights FBOs/Other Services: Signature Flight Support, 734-941-7880 Hours: Open 24 hours daily GROSSE ILE MUNICIPAL AIRPORT (ONZ) 9601 Groh Rd. Grosse Ile Twp. 48138 734-675-0155 grosseileairport.com Tower: No Instrument Approach Procedures: Yes Number of Runways: 2 Longest Runway: 4,846 ft. Total Operations 2021: Unavailable Services: Fuel (100 LL, Jet A), hangar leasing/sales, tie-downs, computerized weather, pilot lounge, plane wash, rental/crew cars, charter, aircraft lavatory service, conference room, concierge, catering, restaurant and lodging on-site, flight training, military landing rights FBOs/Other Services: Grosse Ile Municipal Airport, 734-675-0155 Hours: 8 a.m.-6 p.m. Monday-Friday; 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday Sources: Michigan Office of Aeronautics, AirNav.com, DBusiness research

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From the Top

(RANKED BY 2021 ASSETS) 1. DFCU FINANCIAL 400 Town Center Dr. Dearborn 48126 888-336-2700 dfcufinancial.com Top Local Executive: Mark Shobe, president and CEO Assets 2021: $6.4B Assets 2020: $5.8B Total Income 2021: $167.86M Total Loans 2021: $906.9M Total Loans 2020: $906.6M 2. GENISYS CREDIT UNION 2100 Executive Hills Blvd. Auburn Hills 48326 248-322-9800 genisyscu.org Top Local Executive: Jackie Buchanan, CEO Assets 2021: $4.03B Assets 2020: $3.55B Total Income 2021: $172.9M Total Loans 2021: $2.5B Total Loans 2020: $2.25B

Assets 2019: $1.8B Total Income 2021: $74.4M Total Loans 2021: $1.09B Total Loans 2020: $989M 6. MICHIGAN FIRST CREDIT UNION 27000 Evergreen Rd. Lathrup Village 48076 800-664-3828 michiganfirst.com Top Local Executive: Michael Poulos, president and CEO Assets 2021: $1.4B Assets 2020: $1.3B Total Income 2021: $103.4M Total Loans 2021: $668M Total Loans 2020: $915.6M 7. UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN CREDIT UNION 340 E. Huron St., Ste. 100 Ann Arbor 48104 734-662-8200 umcu.org

3. MICHIGAN SCHOOLS AND GOVERNMENT CREDIT UNION 40400 Garfield Rd. Clinton Township 48038 586-263-8800 msgcu.org Top Local Executive: Peter D. Gates, president and CEO Assets 2021: $2.06B Assets 2020: $2.77B Total Income 2021: $116.8M Total Loans 2021: $2.3B Total Loans 2020: $2.09B 4. CREDIT UNION ONE 400 E. Nine Mile Rd. Ferndale 48220 800-451-4292 cuone.org Top Local Executive: Gary A. Moody, president and CEO Assets 2021: $1.8B Assets 2020: $1.65B Total Income 2021: $65.2M Total Loans 2021: $1.1B Total Loans 2020: $1.05B 5. COMMUNITY CHOICE CREDIT UNION 31155 Northwestern Hwy. Farmington Hills 48334 877-243-2528 communitychoice.com Top Local Executive: Robert Bava, president and CEO Assets 2021: $1.6B

Top Local Executive: Tiffany Ford, CEO Assets 2019: $1.3B Assets 2020: $1.18B Total Income 2021: $48.5M Total Loans 2021: $754M Total Loans 2020: $912.5M 8. COMMUNITY FINANCIAL CREDIT UNION 500 S. Harvey St. Plymouth 48170 734-453-1200 cfcu.org Top Local Executive: William Lawton, CEO Assets 2021: $1.2B Assets 2020: $1.16B Total Income 2021: $61M Total Loans 2021: $1.13B Total Loans 2020: $1.03B 9. VIBE CREDIT UNION 44575 W. 12 Mile Rd. Novi 48377

10. MICHIGAN EDUCATIONAL CREDIT UNION 9200 N. Haggerty Rd. Plymouth 48170 734-455-9200 michedcu.org Top Local Executive: Robert Sandercock, president and CEO Assets 2021: $1.07B Assets 2020: $1B Total Income 2021: $25.5M Total Loans 2021: $444M Total Loans 2020: $486.5M 11. ZEAL CREDIT UNION 17250 Newburgh Rd. Livonia 48152 800-321-8570 zealcreditunion.org Top Local Executive: Julie Kreinbring, president and CEO Assets 2021: $848.6M Assets 2020: $749.8M Total Income 2021: $36.8M Total Loans 2021: $438.8M Total Loans 2020: $388.8M 12. CHRISTIAN FINANCIAL CREDIT UNION 35100 Van Dyke Ave. Sterling Heights 48315 586-772-6330

christianfinancialcu.org Top Local Executive: Patricia L. Campbell, president and CEO Assets 2021: $826.4M Assets 2020: $723.2M Total Income 2021: $33.3M Total Loans 2021: $449.4M Total Loans 2020: $382.3M

ourcuonline.org Top Local Executive: Tina Dix, president and CEO Assets 2021: $280.3M Assets 2020: $316.2M Total Income 2021: $14.7M Total Loans 2021: $227.4M Total Loans 2020: $199.4M

13. ALLIANCE CATHOLIC CREDIT UNION 26913 Northwestern Hwy., Ste. 520 Southfield 48033 877-950-2228 allianceccu.com Top Local Executive: Robert Grech, president and CEO Assets 2021: $619.6M Assets 2020: $559.6M Total Income 2021: $23.1M Total Loans 2021: $207.2M Total Loans 2020: $193.4M

16. CORNERSTONE COMMUNITY FINANCIAL 2955 University Dr. Auburn Hills 48326 248-340-9310 800-777-6728 ccfinancial.com Top Local Executive: Heidi Kassab, president and CEO Assets 2021: $372.7M Assets 2020: $329.9M Total Income 2021: $18.7M Total Loans 2021: $294.3M Total Loans 2020: $62.9M

14. DIVERSIFIED MEMBERS CREDIT UNION 1480 E. Jefferson Ave. Detroit 48027 313-568-5000 dmcu.com Top Local Executive: Kathie Trembath, CEO Assets 2021: $516.7M Assets 2020: $460.1M Total Income 2021: $18.5M Total Loans 2021: $247.6M Total Loans 2020: $212.4M

17. PUBLIC SERVICE CREDIT UNION 7665 Merriman Rd. Romulus 48174 734-641-8400 pscunow.com Top Local Executive: Dean Trudeau, president and CEO Assets 2021: $367.4M Assets 2020: NA Total Income 2021: $19.9M Total Loans 2021: $198.4M Total Loans 2020: NA

15. OUR CREDIT UNION 3070 Normandy Rd. Royal Oak 48073 248-549-3838

18. MICHIGAN UNITED 576 E. Lincoln St. Birmingham 48009 248-647-5958 michiganunitedcu.org

MICHIGAN SCHOOLS AND GOVERNMENT CREDIT UNION, COMMERCE TOWNSHIP

MICHIGAN SCHOOLS AND GOVERNMENT CREDIT UNION

LARGEST CREDIT UNIONS IN METRO DETROIT*

248-735-9500 vibecreditunion.com Top Local Executive: Allan McMorris, president and CEO Assets 2021: $1.14B Assets 2020: $1.06B Total Income 2021: $53M Total Loans 2021: $740.6M Total Loans 2020: $694.6M

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From the Top

Top Local Executive: Andrew Staley, president and CEO Assets 2021: $234.1M Assets 2020: NA Total Income 2021: $8.9M Total Loans 2021: $136.7M Total Loans 2020: NA 19. PEOPLE DRIVEN CREDIT UNION 24333 Lahser Rd. Southfield 48033 248-263-4100 peopledrivencu.org Top Local Executive: Renee Demarco, CEO/manager

Assets 2021: $342.6M Assets 2020: $325.4M Total Income 2021: $13.4M Total Loans 2021: $176.7M Total Loans 2020: $178.6M 20. LOC FEDERAL CREDIT UNION 22981 Farmington Rd. Farmington 48336 248-474-2200 locfederal.com Top Local Executive: Stephen Grech, president and CEO Assets 2021: $324.1M Assets 2020: $280.9M

Total Income 2021: $9.7M Total Loans 2021: $163.6M Total Loans 2020: $140.5M * Total financial results are listed for credit unions headquartered in Wayne, Oakland, Macomb, Livingston, and Washtenaw counties. Sources: Michigan Credit Union League and Affiliates, DBusiness research

LARGEST BANKS AND THRIFTS IN METRO DETROIT* (RANKED BY 2021 ASSETS) 1. HUNTINGTON BANK 333 W. Fort St. Detroit 48226 866-258-1807 tcfbank.com Top Local Executive: Tom Shafer, senior executive vice president Assets 2021: $173.4B Assets 2020: $47.8B Net Income 2021: $1.5B Net Income 2020: $222.8M Total Loans 2021: $111.4B Total Loans 2020: $34.5B

2. FLAGSTAR BANK 5151 Corporate Dr. Troy 48098 248-312-2000 flagstar.com Top Local Executive: Alessandro P. DiNello, president & CEO Assets 2021: $25.4B Assets 2020: $31B Net Income 2021: $549M Net Income 2020: $566.2M Total Loans 2021: $19.9B Total Loans 2020: $25.6B

3. COMERICA BANK 411 W. Lafayette Blvd. Detroit 48226 313-222-4000 comerica.com Top Local Executive: Michael T. Ritchie, Michigan market president Assets 2021: $12.3B Assets 2020: $12.3B Net Income 2021: $336.5M Net Income 2020: $204M Total Loans 2021 (FY average): $11.4B

Total Loans 2020 (FY average): $11.6B (These figures reflect Comerica’s Michigan banks.) 4. STERLING BANK AND TRUST One Towne Square, Ste. 1900 Southfield 48076 248-355-2400 sterlingbank.com Top Local Executive: Thomas M. O’Brien, chairman, president & CEO Assets 2021: $2.87B Assets 2020: $3.9B Net Income 2021: $7.6M Net Income 2020: $12.4M Total Loans 2021: $1.65B Total Loans 2020: $2.5B 5. LEVEL ONE BANK 32991 Hamilton Court Farmington Hills 48334 248-737-0300 levelonebank.com Top Local Executive: Patrick J. Fehring, chairman, president & CEO Assets 2021: NA Assets 2020: $2.4B Net Income 2021: NA Net Income 2020: $22.7M Total Loans 2021: NA Total Loans 2020: $1.7B 6. BANK OF ANN ARBOR 125 S. Fifth Ave. Ann Arbor 48107 734-662-1600 bankofannarbor.com Top Local Executive: Tim Marshall, president & CEO Assets 2021: $3.3B Assets 2020: $2.2B Net Income 2021: $38.3M Net Income 2020: $22.9M Total Loans 2021: $1.8B Total Loans 2020: $1.6B

HUNTINGTON BANK, DETROIT

7. CHOICEONE BANK 109 E. Division St. Sparta 49345 810-395-4313 choiceone.com Top Local Executive: Kelly J. Potes, CEO Assets 2021: $2.3B Assets 2020: $1.9B Net Income 2021: $22M Net Income 2020: $18M Total Loans 2021: $1.06B Total Loans 2020: $1.1B 8. FIRST STATE BANK 16100 E. Nine Mile Rd. Eastpointe 48021 586-775-5000 fsb.bank Top Local Executive: Gene Lovell, president & CEO Assets 2021: $937.2M Assets 2020: $926.9M Net Income 2021: $1.2M Net Income 2020: $7.6M Total Loans 2021: $474M Total Loans 2020: $516.6M 9. OXFORD BANK 60 S. Washington St. Oxford 48371 248-628-2533 oxfordbank.com Top Local Executive: David Lamb, president & CEO Assets 2021: $750.7M Assets 2020: $698.1M Net Income 2021: $10.5M Net Income 2020: $7.1M Total Loans 2021: $411.1M Total Loans 2020: $537.1M 10. FIRST NATIONAL BANK IN HOWELL 101 E. Grand River Ave. Howell 48843 517-546-3150 fnbh.com Top Local Executive: Ron Long, president & CEO Assets 2021: $664M Assets 2020: $550.6M Net Income 2021: $5.6M Net Income 2020: $6.6M Total Loans 2021: $443M Total Loans 2020: $379.7M

HUNTINGTON BANK

11. UNIVERSITY BANK 2015 Washtenaw Ave. Ann Arbor 48104 734-741-5858 university-bank.com Top Local Executive: Stephen L. Ranzini, president & CEO Assets 2021: $488.4M Assets 2020: $552.2M Net Income 2021: $28.2M Net Income 2020: $30.8M Total Loans 2021: $331.9M Total Loans 2020: $303.9M 12. CHELSEA STATE BANK 1010 S. Main St. Chelsea 48118 734-475-1355 chelseastate.bank Top Local Executive: Joanne Rau, president & CEO Assets 2021: $438.4M

Assets 2020: $379M Net Income 2021: $6M Net Income 2020: $4.7M Total Loans 2021: $208.5M Total Loans 2020: $210.9M 13. FIRST INDEPENDENCE BANK 7310 Woodward Ave., Ste. 101 Detroit 48202 313-256-8400 firstindependence.com Top Local Executive: Kenneth Kelly, chairman & CEO Assets 2021: $412.3M Assets 2020: $287.4M Net Income 2021: $2.6M Net Income 2020: $2.5M Total Loans 2021: $186.2M Total Loans 2020: $161.1M 14. DEARBORN FEDERAL SAVINGS BANK 22315 Michigan Ave. Dearborn 48124 313-565-3100 mydfsb.com Top Local Executive: William R. White, chairman & president Assets 2021: $272.3M Assets 2020: $269.8M Net Income 2021: NA Net Income 2020: $541K Total Loans 2021: $184.2M Total Loans 2020: $182.9M 15. HURON VALLEY STATE BANK 130 S. Milford Rd. Milford 48381 248-684-9626 hvsb.com Top Local Executive: Jack Shubitowski, president & CEO Assets 2021: $237.1M Assets 2020: $192.2M Net Income 2021: $2M Net Income 2020: $1.6M Total Loans 2021: $137.7M Total Loans 2020: $149.4M 16. MI BANK 3707 W. Maple Rd., Ste. 100 Bloomfield Township 48301 855-642-2651 mi.bank Top Local Executive: Rob Farr, chairman & CEO Assets 2021: $188.2M Assets 2020: $120M Net Income 2021: $14.4K Net Income 2020: $-1.5M Total Loans 2021: $111.3M Total Loans 2020: $94.4M *Total financial results are listed for banks headquartered in Wayne, Oakland, Macomb, Livingston, and Washtenaw counties. For banks headquartered outside this area, local results only are provided. Many national banks do not release results for individual markets; therefore, major institutions are not included on this list. Total loans also account for leases. Sources: Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., DBusiness research

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DIGITAL ADVERTISING SOLUTIONSCALL CALL 248-268-8026 FOR FOR DIGITAL ADVERTISING SOLUTIONS 248-268-8026 COMPASSMEDIA.COM COMPASSMEDIA.COM CompassDigital_FP_HD.indd 1

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PROMOTIONAL CONTENT

2022

FIND THE FACES OF: Best-In-Class Service ................................... 86 Cannabis Culture .......................................... 87 Careers In Cannabis...................................... 88 Investigations ................................................ 89 Investment Management ............................. 90 Protecting Your Rights, Reputation, and Livelihood ............................................... 91 Michigan’s Best Cannabis Testing Lab ........ 92 Mortgage Banking......................................... 93 Lingerie .......................................................... 94 Security ......................................................... 95 Your Next Realtor .......................................... 96

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PROMOTIONAL CONTENT

2022

THE FACE OF

BEST-IN-CLASS SERVICE LAUREN DAVIS, SENIOR ACCOUNT MANAGER — DELTA DENTAL OF MICHIGAN 4100 OKEMOS RD., OKEMOS, MI 48864 | DELTADENTALMI.COM

“Reliable” is one word that describes how Lauren Davis approaches her role as senior account manager with Delta Dental of Michigan. Davis has 10 years of experience with Delta Dental of Michigan, and 18 years in benefits. “The dental benefits space can be complex, but regardless of the question, my customers know they can reach out to me,” she says. With a 99.6 percent customer retention rate, it’s clear Davis and the rest of the Delta Dental team are bringing

added value to their customers. Delta Dental of Michigan’s sales and account management team prioritizes being a partner, and believes in helping HR teams find the best fit for their biggest asset. “It brings me a lot of personal satisfaction to play a role in alleviating some of the daily pressure my contacts feel as they seek to care for their organization’s most valuable resource — their people,” Davis says. To learn more, visit deltadentalmi.com/DentalDoneBetter.

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PROMOTIONAL CONTENT

2022

THE FACES OF

CANNABIS CULTURE NEW STANDARD CANNABIS

24906 JOHN R RD., HAZEL PARK, MI 48030 | 248-873-0420 | ANEWSTANDARD.COM New Standard’s leadership team is comprised of a diverse group of individuals with backgrounds from across multiple industries, yet they all share a common passion: Setting a new standard for cannabis culture across the state of Michigan. The future of cannabis culture is led by the next generation of Michigan leaders. At New Standard, its co-founder and CSO, Maxim Ermakov; co-founder and director of product development, James Fisher; compliance director, Chelsea Oliver; and marketing director, Skylar Van

Dyke, collaborate to create innovative retail experiences while leveraging vertical integration to fulfill the needs of the evolving cannabis consumer. New Standard opened its flagship Hazel Park location in April of 2020. Now, with nine stores across the state, it has quickly become one of Michigan’s leading cannabis retailers. To learn more about New Standard and its team of cannabis experts, visit anewstandard.com. Pictured left to right, above: James Fisher, Chelsea Oliver, Maxim Ermakov, Skylar Van Dyke. 87

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PROMOTIONAL CONTENT

2022

THE FACE OF

CAREERS IN CANNABIS JACOB PETERSMARK — THE UNITED GREEN

3252 UNIVERSITY DR., STE. 142, AUBURN HILLS, MI 48326 | 947-886-2427 | THEUNITEDGREEN.COM Jacob Petersmark is the mind behind the operations of Michigan’s No. 1 cannabis staffing company, The United Green. Petersmark’s call to cannabis stemmed from watching several of his family members battle cancer. During that time, he saw firsthand the benefits cannabis provided to his mother and grandmother during treatment. The result was a call to action for Petersmark to increase awareness surrounding the many medicinal benefits cannabis has to offer. This eventually led to the establishment of The United Green — a cannabis-specific staffing agency focused on providing more health options to

people across the United States. Today, Petersmark’s continued belief in the healing effects of CBD and THC serves as the foundation for The United Green. His passion for promoting the benefits of cannabis is seen in the continued successes of The United Green, which recently surpassed its 3,000th hire. With his company ranking in the top 1 percent of cannabis staffing agencies nationwide, the Michigan State Broad College of Business graduate is a great example of a young business professional fueled by a passion for helping others.

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PROMOTIONAL CONTENT

2022

THE FACE OF

INVESTIGATIONS KEVIN M. CRONIN, PRINCIPAL — FORTARIS CAPITAL ADVISORS

6632 TELEGRAPH RD., STE. 245, BLOOMFIELD HILLS, MI 48301 | 248-410-3839 | FORTARISCAPITAL.COM Kevin M. Cronin, principal of Fortaris Capital Advisors, oversees a boutique investigative firm based out of Bloomfield Hills. He has consistently been recognized for providing clients with the expertise needed to mitigate risks through investigative tools, and giving his clients a competitive business advantage. After 20+ years in government service, Cronin transitioned his law enforcement career to the private sector, specializing in domestic and foreign corporate investigations, background intelligence dossiers, crisis management, threat and risk assessments, asset searches, surveillance, counter-surveillance measures, executive protection, and security services. He has

successfully led numerous criminal and corporate fraud, espionage, embezzlement, theft, insider trading, digital forensics, and cybersecurity investigations, assuring his clients have access to world-class expertise and helping to mitigate the significant risks of today’s volatile business environment. Cronin holds a Master of Business Administration degree from Michigan State University and a Bachelor of Arts in criminal justice from Concordia University. As a former special agent for the Department of Homeland Security, Office of Inspector General, Cronin held a top-secret security clearance for the U.S. government. 89

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PROMOTIONAL CONTENT

2022

THE FACES OF

INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT KRISTIE GUADIANO & TODD MOSS — GREYSTONE FINANCIAL GROUP, LLC 665 HULET DR., BLOOMFIELD HILLS, MI 48302 | 248-267-1270 | GREYSTONEFG.COM Greystone Financial Group offers dynamic solutions to individuals and employer retirement plans, helping its clients thrive at every stage of life. The company believes its clients should be able to live life to the fullest, without worrying about managing their finances. Because every individual and company is unique, the team at Greystone believes every financial plan should be personally tailored to each client. Greystone has worked hard to build a reputation based on trust, proficiency, and lifelong relationships with its clients

and partners. “Our commitment to our clients includes building relationships that span multiple generations,” says Todd R. Moss, managing partner. “We strive to be our clients’ first point of contact when they encounter financial opportunity or strife. Simply put, each client’s success is our success.” In contrast to today’s version of minimal, hit-or-miss customer service, the Greystone Financial Group offers a level of personalized care that’s assuring and empowering.

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PROMOTIONAL CONTENT

2022

THE FACES OF

PROTECTING YOUR RIGHTS, REPUTATION, AND LIVELIHOOD DERRICK & MAGGIE GEORGE — GEORGE LAW

444 S. WASHINGTON AVE., ROYAL OAK, MI 48067 | 248-470-4300 | GEORGELAW.COM Whether you’re facing a criminal charge, need civil litigation representation, or have a pressing legal matter regarding your business, George Law, headquartered in Royal Oak, provides the strong counsel you need. From the moment you retain them, they become partners in your case. The George Law team, which works with clients throughout all of Michigan, knows a legal problem can affect all aspects of your life. They manage your legal issue so you don’t have to deal with the stress and worry. Clients

come from all economic and geographic backgrounds, but they’re all looking for the same thing: The best possible legal outcome. To that end, cases at George Law are handled by multiple attorneys and staff members, to ensure that creative problem-solving and sharing of ideas takes place for each client. When you’re represented by George Law, you can feel confident that you have well-versed, knowledgeable advocates fighting for you! 91

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PROMOTIONAL CONTENT

2022

THE FACE OF

MICHIGAN’S BEST CANNABIS TESTING LAB JOEY RUEFIEL, OWNER — PRISM TRIANGLE, LLC

850 LADD RD., BLDG. B, WALLED LAKE, MI 48390 | 833-483-7822 | PRISMTRIANGLE.COM Prism Triangle, LLC is a full-service cannabis testing lab that has state-of-the-art equipment and technology that provides quick testing, from 72 hours to a little over a day. With Prism you can sell your products sooner, since you won’t need to quarantine them for long periods of time. The Department of Cannabis Control and Michigan’s Cannabis Regulatory Agency mandate that cannabis products have to be tested before being sold. Prism’s lab procedures are reliable and consistent, and its staff is experienced in the cannabis testing industry.

This enables consumers to make informed and safe purchasing decisions based on the strength and composition of cannabis products, which creates trust and loyalty with your clients. Prism tests for pesticide contamination, heavy metals, residual solvents, microbials and mycotoxin contamination, and harmful lipids, and offers genetic testing. They also test for nutrient concentrations and shelf life/ stability. Prism has an in-house courier service and can pick up your samples and securely deliver them to their lab. Prism services cannabis farms, processors, and stores.

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PROMOTIONAL CONTENT

2022

THE FACES OF

MORTGAGE BANKING HARRY GLANZ & DAN BURKE – CAPITAL MORTGAGE FUNDING

17170 W. 12 MILE RD., SOUTHFIELD, MI 48076 | 248-569-7283 | CAPITALMORTGAGEFUNDING.COM Since 1992, Capital Mortgage Funding has been a leader in Michigan’s mortgage banking industry. Led by Harry Glanz and Dan Burke, two of the state’s most well-respected mortgage banking luminaries, the company is driven by a simple but effective philosophy. “We’re a relationship-driven organization; our focus is on our clients’ experience and making the process as smooth as possible,” says Glanz, who, like Burke, brings more than 33 years of experience to the business. “We have some of the most experienced mortgage

bankers,” Glanz adds. “We’re proud of our award-winning mortgage team and state-of-the-art process that customizes and efficiently completes the right mortgage for each client.” CMF specializes in residential loans, and proudly celebrates its 30th anniversary in 2022. Capital Mortgage Funding is powered by Fairway Independent Mortgage Corp. NMLS No. 2289. Equal Housing Opportunity. Harry Glanz, President/Co-founder, NMLS No. 61034. Dan Burke, Vice President/Area Manager/Co-founder, NMLS No. 61101. 93

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PROMOTIONAL CONTENT

2022

THE FACES OF

LINGERIE LISA HARDY HAMILL & KIM HARDY HICKSON — HARP’S LINGERIE

265 S. OLD WOODWARD AVE., BIRMINGHAM, MI 48009 | 248-642-2555 | HARPS-LINGERIE.COM A customized fit and extraordinary lingerie are the secrets to a happy customer. Keeping the tradition alive, the granddaughters of Betty Harp, founder of Harp’s Lingerie — Lisa Hardy Hamill and Kim Hardy Hickson — know that what you wear underneath your outfit is just as important as the clothes themselves. Lingerie determines your silhouette and your comfort, ensuring you’ll look and feel your best. At Harp’s Lingerie, you’re showered with excellent customer service and fit perfectly for

undergarments that will accentuate your figure. Harp’s carries a wide variety of intimate apparel for your everyday, bridal, and special occasion needs. Hard-to-fit sizes are Harp’s specialty; they carry band sizes from 32-54 and cup sizes from AA-N. Experience the Harp’s difference and see why, for more than 70 years, they’ve proudly earned the loyalty of generations and repeat customers. Harp’s strives to make everyone feel beautiful and special when they walk out the door, just as Mrs. Harp did so well.

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PROMOTIONAL CONTENT

2022

THE FACE OF

SECURITY RUDY PATROS, CEO – SECURATECH

27260 HAGGERTY RD., STE. A1, FARMINGTON HILLS, MI 48331 | 877-929-2288 | SECURATECH.COM With more than 20 years of experience, Securatech CEO Rudy Patros prides himself on leading the premier security company in Michigan — a company that can fulfill its clients’ every security need, whether it be to protect their home, businesses, or other investments. In 2009, Patros had a vision to start a security company that was different and offered a level of service no other company can match. Today, Securatech sets itself apart from the competition by offering boutique-style services and solutions

that keep its clients a step above everyone else. Securatech ensures its property, employees, and clients are safe. A rigorous screening and training process is followed when it comes to hiring security guards and protection details, and Securatech is the No. 1 leader in electronic and physical security. The company has three offices nationwide and over 200 employees. With an extensive client range, it services businesses ranging from Ford Motor Co. to your local restaurant. 95

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PROMOTIONAL CONTENT

2022

THE FACE OF

YOUR NEXT REALTOR LOGAN WERT — INDULGE PROPERTY GROUP AT KW DOMAIN

210 S. OLD WOODWARD AVE., STE. 200, BIRMINGHAM, MI 48009 | 248-590-0117 | INDULGEPROPERTYGROUP.COM Logan Wert and his team at Indulge Property Group, have a slogan that they live by and want everyone they work with to live by: “Treat yourself to the best, you deserve it.” With his only focus being on looking out for his clients’ best interests and giving them the best possible service, Wert has built his entire business solely on referrals. Once you work with Wert and his team, it would be hard to imagine working

with another real estate agent. His professionalism, market knowledge, and a desire to be the best in the business has landed him in the top 1 percent of all agents in metro Detroit. “This is just the beginning,” he says. Wert has consistently doubled the amount of families he has helped with buying and selling homes every year. With a goal to assist 200 families this year, odds are he will be your next agent.

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Closing Bell

Brain Gain Lansing native Dr. Alexa Canady overcame discrimination on the way to winning acclaim as the nation’s first Black female neurosurgeon.

ddressing the American College of Surgeons in 2016, Dr. Alexa Canady pointed out a problem: Forty-five percent of the nation’s neurosurgeons were then more than 55 years old. In her mid-60s and retired, the Lansing native was well-positioned to offer wisdom. “We have to attract the best of the students … in order to continue to be what we consider an elite specialty,” she said. At the time, medical students and residents were slow to embrace surgical subspecialties, but as she reminded her audience, “It’s fun to make people better.” If anyone could provide inspiration, it was Canady, the nation’s first Black woman to become a pediatric neurosurgeon. As chief of neurosurgery at Children’s Hospital of Michigan in Detroit during the 1980s and 1990s, she treated kids from rich and poor families, learning from all of them. Besides leading the department, she conducted research and served as associate professor at the Wayne State University School of Medicine in Detroit. “Looking back, what stands out in my memory are the special relationships I had with my young patients,” she told an interviewer. “I watched them grow up. I got up in the middle of the night to care for them. I cared for every single one of them as if they were my own.” For her work, she received numerous awards, including induction into the Michigan Women’s Hall of Fame in 1989. But none of her accomplishments could be foreseen after her desultory start at the University of

PATIENT LEADER Dr. Alexa Canady spent most of her career in Detroit, working at Children’s Hospital as well as conducting research as a professor of neurosurgery at Wayne State University’s Medical School.

Michigan in Ann Arbor. Canady enjoyed her time and traveled with the school’s debate team, but she became discouraged with her studies in mathematics and ended up on academic probation. She was working in the summer of 1970 on The Michigan Daily when her older brother, Clinton Canady III (today a circuit court judge in Lansing), called her attention to a scholarship program in medicine for minority students. Following the opportunity, Canady found her way to the clinic of distinguished geneticist Arthur Bloom. “He showed me what a joy the field could be, and after that it was all medicine,” she said in an oral history. After receiving a bachelor’s degree in zoology, she undertook medical studies at U-M, graduating cum laude in 1975. She completed a oneyear internship at Yale New Haven Hospital, then entered a residency at the University of Minnesota Medical Center, where an administrator welcomed her by saying, “Oh, you must be our new equal-opportunity package.” Canady said being the first at anything was never her goal; rather, it was just the dream of being a neurosurgeon that motivated her. “It wasn’t until I started talking to people in the community that I understood that milestone and why it was more important than I realized,” she said. It opened the eyes of children to new possibilities — and, for that matter, it opened the eyes of the white male residents whom she later trained. The appointment at Children’s Hospital of Michigan came in 1982. Five years later, she was named chief of neurosurgery. While treating cases of trauma, hydrocephalus, hereditary spinal abnormalities, and brain tumors, she was also known for playing video games with her patients. In 2001, Canady retired and moved with her husband, George Davis, to Florida. She has said her way of indulging herself was reading four newspapers a day, but Sacred Heart Hospital in Pensacola managed to lure her out of retirement, and in the next decade she established a pediatric neurosurgery department there. Among her many memorable statements, one stands out for its big-picture view: “I want the health care system to understand that its real job is to improve the health of the community in total,” she said.

BRIAN LANKER

BY RONALD AHRENS

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C o n g r at u l at i o n s TO THE 2022 CLASS OF 25 UNDER 25 AWARD WINNERS!

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The annual 25 Under 25 program recognizes students in the Mike Ilitch School of Business for their outstanding achievements both in and out of the classroom. Honorees are selected for their demonstrated success in academics, leadership, professional development and campus/community service. The 25 honorees were selected by a panel of executive judges from across Metro Detroit.

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