Shinola: a defunct shoe-polish name reborn as Detroit's watch factory

Shinola was an old American shoe polish, immortalized in the World War I-era put-down 'You don't know shit from Shinola,' and defunct for years. In 2011 Tom Kartsotis — who founded Fossil in 1984, built it into a $2 billion accessories company, left in 2000 and set up the investment firm Bedrock Manufacturing — bought the name for a high-end American watch venture, run with the Swiss movement maker Ronda.

He put the factory in Detroit, in the Argonaut building on the city's riverfront, and hired locally: most of the assemblers came from auto manufacturing or nowhere near watchmaking at all. Ronda flew in veteran watchmakers from Thailand and Switzerland to train each team for weeks at a time. Watches priced from $475 to $995, alongside $1,950 bicycles, leather journals and — as a throwback — actual shoe polish. Factory output was about 45,000 watches in 2013, with 150,000 targeted for 2014.

The positioning was the city itself. 'Made in America' is generic, argued creative director Daniel Caudill; Detroit, the battered capital of American manufacturing, still has cachet. A $10 million marketing campaign made the city the centerpiece, and every would-be retail vendor had to visit Detroit before stocking the brand. The first six months brought more than $20 million in sales, with the watches carried by Neiman Marcus and Bloomingdale's alongside Shinola's own flagship stores in Detroit and Manhattan.

First six months topped $20M in sales; about 50,000 watches in 2013, targeting 150,000 the next year on the road to $100M revenue.

The name came with a story attached: a century-old brand famous for a folksy insult — recognition money can't buy, acquired for the cost of a trademark.

It sold the place, not just the product. Detroit's manufacturing story gave the watches an emotional pull that generic 'Made in America' claims could not.

Kartsotis had run Fossil, so the factory bet was paired with real distribution from day one: Neiman Marcus, Bloomingdale's and its own flagships.

Rather than pretend an American watchmaking workforce existed, Shinola imported trainers and built one — accepting training costs as the price of the story.

A dead brand name plus a credible place story can price a product far above its parts — but the premium only holds while the story stays defensible.

Shinola kept stretching the story through the 2010s — leather, journals, jewelry, eyewear, bicycles — and opened the 129-room Shinola Hotel in downtown Detroit in 2018. The pandemic pushed its e-commerce sharply higher, and by 2021 it was selling through its own stores and Neiman Marcus. The awkward edge never fully went away: because the movements were Swiss, the watches were labeled 'Built in Detroit' rather than 'Made in USA,' and critics kept asking how homegrown the products really were — the standing tax on a brand whose premium rests on where it is made.