Sixteen Years Ago, I Set A Retail-Minded Course For Journalism in Saline From An Office On East Bennett Street

From the Publisher—

As equal partner in a business that started thirty-five years ago, I felt like I should write an additional editorial for publication in Saline Journal this month. You can probably name businesses that have been around that long and even longer. But few of them are still actively run day-in, day-out by the founder. [1]

That founder wasn’t me. I freely admit that I married into D² Enterprises. But anyone who knows me will tell you that I always take charge of as much as can when I get involved in something. It wasn’t any different when I partnered with Dell here starting sixteen years ago.

My first work was out of our office on East Bennett Street, across from Henne Field. This was before even the first phase of the parking lot reconstruction; Design Hub was one of our fellow tennants, right across the hall, and Karen Ragland’s dog would often come over to visit. Large prints made from our own photography adorned those D² Enterprises walls — but they were just for decoration. [2,3,4,5]

Distribution of our images and written work was limited to interests such as Crain Communications, local news outlets, horological publications, and our own Proteus Publications subsidiary. [6]

I knew there was a much broader market for our prints and an opportunity to re-launch some of the postcard lines D² Enterprises had developed starting in the 1980s. Historical images featuring the old railroad depot and the Rentschler farmhouse alone were the stuff of which tourism attraction is made (and this was before anyone was seriously talking about a Saline hotel). Archived images reached out into the wider area, with memorable photographs of when the Bob-Lo Boats took guests out to that amusement park during warm summer days in Detroit. [7,8,9,10]

Expanding this business into retail channels was like going home for me.

I’ve worked in sales, sales management, and operations my entire adult life. I’ve run stores in Briarwood and the Pittsfield Township strip, and in the heart of downtown Ann Arbor. A lot of Saline Journal readers remember the many years I was in charge of the Calico Cat, both in the old Methodist Church building on South Ann Arbor Street (now home to Salt Springs Brewery) and West Michigan Avenue (Perry’s Tuxedos). [11,12]

It was important to brand our retail “d2 Saline” in order to both sell directly to the public and to emphasize our shared risk-reward understanding of operating as a brick-and-motar business alongside all the other merchants in this city. Dell continues to say that he has a distinct competitive advantage when writing about business and tourism because he has actually worked in business and tourism since his early days with events at Cobo Center, with manufacturing concerns through the convention and visitors bureau in Pittsburgh, and on long-term corporate development projects in Germany and Mexico. [13,14,15,16]

The same holds true with my understanding of retail.

Within a very short time in our current location on East Michigan Avenue in the Huntington Bank Building, I was asked to help develop what became known as the “Saline 12 east” initiative. It’s basic purpose was to raise the visibility of restaurants, merchants, and Rentschler Farm Museum along the US-12 corridor between North Maple Road and Industrial Drive — to expand the attraction of “Saline” beyond the reach of Main Street.

During my tenure as its spokesperson, I worked to understand the stories of those stakeholders. Then I wrote their stories for publication elsewhere, so that they would widely be read and appreciated.

Saline Journal followed as a natural extension of that, providing the business, attractions, and expanded borders of interest writing that we were known for to all of Saline. No one today who’s read us would call Saline Journal a “retail” publication. But I don’t think you’d have trouble seeing its special sensitivity to retail, the way we uniquely encourage its successes, consistently, through so many of our articles.

Now you know where I’ve put a lot of my fingerprints on these pages.

References

1. “Thirty Years Ago, I Celebrated My Five-Year Anniversary As A Journalist In Florida – Taking Photographs (As Usual)” Dell Deaton (August 6, 2018) Saline Journal.
2. “Hoover Building (135 E Bennett, Saline, MI 48176)” Dave Hamilton (August 2, 2018) Swisher Commercial.
3. “Henne Field” Saline.
4. Friends of Henne Field (home page).
5. Design Hub (home page).
6. Crain (home page).
7. “d2 Postcards” Amazon.
8. “Saline Depot Museum” Saline Area Historical Society.
9. “Rentschler Farm Museum” Saline Area Historical Society.
10. “Postcards: Bob-Lo Island Boat Ste Claire (10-pack)” Amazon.
11. Briarwood Mall (home page).
12. Salt Springs Brewery (home page).
13. Cobo Center (home page).
14. “Saline Has Been Providing Detroit Auto Show Content for Decades” Dell Deaton (January 11, 2018) Saline Journal.
15. “What does information age mean for future of trade shows?” Dell Deaton (April 27, 1998) Marketing News.
16. Exhibitor’s Handbook: México, Dell Deaton (1995) Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 95-67411, ISBN 0-9643371-1-8.