Today we’d like to introduce you to Andy Linn.
Hi Andy, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
My sister Emily and I founded the company in 2005 as a way to merge our mutual love for design with our admiration for our hometown of Detroit. We began by making Detroit-themed items in the house where we grew up in our parents’ basement near the Indian Village neighborhood in Detroit.
In 2009, we opened our eponymous flagship retail store in the Cass Corridor in Midtown, Detroit, where we showcase art, design, and handmade goods by more than 200 artists from throughout the Great Lakes region, as well as our house line of locally-themed products, which we now produce in our Midtown production studio. In 2011, we expanded our brick-and-mortar retail offerings by opening Nest, a complimentary home goods and gift shop next door to City Bird.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not, what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
With the pandemic, 2020 was a great challenge for us, as it was for so many businesses! Concerned for the safety of our staff and customers, we actually closed our doors a week before the state mandate, which was an emotional decision to make, but one we felt we needed to make. We worked to move many of our retail staff to at-home work as we could, rapidly pivoting our business from a 5% online model to a 100% online model in a matter of days. Forced to innovate rapidly, in addition to offering curbside, local delivery, and concierge services, we forged new business avenues by adding thoughtful pre-made gift boxes to our website, as well as dramatically expanding our online offerings and content—as well as our online advertising budget—to expand our appeal and reach. We also pivoted our wholesale business—which evaporated when most of our small retail customers closed in March—to a custom gift basket business for local corporate clients.
Ever since we re-opened in June 2020, it’s been a series of hurdles: re-opening with proper PPE and protections in place; capacity limits, the coin shortage, box shortage, staffing shortages, bag shortage, shipping delays, and now supply chain disruptions! The pandemic has definitely kept things interesting, but we’ve navigated the challenges so far and are determined to continue to innovate and improve.
I think that the inspiring ways that so many of the small shops out there have re-invented themselves is a testament to the hard-scrabble innovative and adaptive nature of small business.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
My passion growing up and in college was in illustration and painting. However, my interests towards the end of my undergraduate studies became cities and urban planning. After getting my Master of Urban Planning at Wayne State in Detroit, I worked at a small planning and economic development firm in the city, where I gained a further appreciation for the kinds of places and spaces I wanted to see in cities.
It was 2009, and my sister Emily and I admired a then relatively quiet corner of Midtown and thought it would be so nice if there was some more human-scale retail. If nobody else was going to do it, we’d better give it a try!
I think our company is a reflection of that amalgamation of artistic background and a love of place and an interest in making our corner of the city a little more interesting.
In terms of your work and the industry, what are some of the changes you are expecting to see over the next five to ten years?
Just as the pandemic has been wildly turbulent over the past year and a half, as we continue to emerge from this period in our history, I believe more yet-to-be-determined hurdles will appear—it will be up to small and large businesses alike to innovate and adapt, and I think that these types of challenges can create inspiring innovation, especially in the retail space.
Once we are more steadily out of the pandemic, I believe we could enter a new era of demand for services and retail, as people express their excitement to experience the world once again.
Of course, I also believe that the pandemic has pushed retail further into the online sphere—while I feel strongly that there will always be a place for experiential small-scale retail—it is and will be more important than ever for retail brands to have an established and robust online presence.
Pricing:
- Jewelry from Michigan artisans: $12-50
- Super soft locally themed apparel: $20-48
- One-of-a-kind glassware and mugs $12-15
- Enviable candles: $10-32
- Detroit’s best greeting cards: $4-5
Contact Info:
- Email: hello@citybirddetroit.com
- Website: www.citybirddetroit.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/citybirddetroit
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/citybirddetroit
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/city-bird-detroit
