Oct 25, 2010

New Shoppe is positively DetroitBy Georgea KovanisFreeP.com

The new Detroit Shoppe at Somerset Collection North in Troy is selling iconic hometown merchandise — fedoras from Kid Rock’s clothing company, festive Faygo Redpop T-shirts, Pewabic Pottery vases, retro-looking 80th anniversary tins of potato chips from Better Made and more.

It’s also showcasing something that in previous years might have been a tougher sell — Detroit as a good experience and a good place.

The 4,880-square-foot store, which opens Monday and closes at the end of the holiday season, is designed to be a museum-like experience, highlighting some of the best things associated with the city. That means you’ll see the scoreboard from old Tiger Stadium, one of Aretha Franklin’s dresses, a guitar from Kid Rock, a few of those big papier-mâché heads from the Thanksgiving Day parade and a replica of Motown’s famous Studio A, where shoppers can sing karaoke.

The idea for the Detroit Shoppe was spawned, in large part, by a profile of the city that aired last spring on NBC’s “Dateline” program. Many local viewers found the depiction of Detroit to be excessively negative.

“Me, personally, when I watched it, I thought, ‘That’s not the Detroit I know,'” said Linda McIntosh, the mall’s marketing manager, who spent much of her childhood living in the city. “I remember getting real excited and I thought, ‘We should put everything that’s great about Detroit together.’

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