There’s a new term out there to describe a recent manufacturing movement in America - “Make-tailers.” It’s a category of “embedded-in-the-community” companies that produce small-batch, high-quality artisan products. 

One of the marquee examples of this movement is Shinola. That name probably rings a bell. It used to be on shoe polish containers, and during World War II became a part of the American lexicon when the phrase, “You don’t know s**t from Shinola” became popular. Shinola the shoe polish company went out of business in 1960, and in 2011 Fossil founder Tom Kartsotis bought the name and founded a new company with it. It had been roughly 40 years since an American company had produced watches at scale, and his dream was to bring watch manufacturing back to the U.S.

Kartsosis is from Plano, Texas, but he chose Detroit for his new company’s headquarters and production facility. It was a city with a story that epitomized the underbelly of outsourcing, and four months before Shinola’s first line of luxury watches were made, Detroit declared bankruptcy.

Shinola has been divisive amongst Detroiters. Many see it as a sign of hope that a new form of manufacturing could return to the city. Others criticize Shinola for using Detroit as a marketing tool and take issue with luxury goods produced in a city where most people can’t afford them.