Why a clothing boutique owner is relocating her store from New Center to Detroit's east side

Angela Wisniewski-Cobbina has known since she was a kid that she wanted to open a clothing store in Detroit. She took a winding path to get there but in November 2019, she opened the women's clothing boutique Coup D'état in New Center.

But now, nearly five years after she opened the store, Wisniewski-Cobbina is leaving the space and moving the store to a new location on the city's east side amid a challenging environment for small businesses.

"You have to be able to give your guests and your clients a little bit more of an experience now," Wisniewski-Cobbina said in an interview earlier this year. "People changed the way they shop in the past four years. We're competing with e-commerce, Jeff Bezos (of Amazon) ... and as a multibrand retailer, sometimes I'm even competing with the designers and brands themselves."

Offering an experience — where customers can shop, grab a coffee or drink at a nearby cafe or bar and go out to dinner — was hard to do at her store in Cadillac Place, 3044 W. Grand Blvd., in the same building where mostly state of Michigan employees work.

Since Wisniewski-Cobbina opened her store, a lifestyle shop catering primarily to women and featuring independent designers, she has watched nearby stores, like Ferne Boutique, close their locations in Detroit.

A social media post announcing the closure of Ferne in May 2023 said: "So many crazy things have happened in this location over the past five years that have made it next to impossible to operate the business. Empty development promises, lack of population density and major shifts in the market due to the pandemic, with no change in sight."

A 'glimmer' in New Center's resurgence

When Wisniewski-Cobbina decided she was ready to open a store and was searching for a location in 2019, she knew she wanted it to be in Detroit.

She considered a few locations in the city but none of them were a perfect fit. It started to get down to the wire because she had ordered inventory that was starting to arrive.

When she walked into a former unemployment insurance office waiting room in the Albert Kahn-designed Cadillac Place, though, she knew it was the space, although she recognized it would be a bit of a gamble.

"It was a little bit of a glimmer," she said.

At the time, there was a lot of excitement surrounding New Center's future. The Henry Ford Pistons Performance Center opened in October 2019, just a few blocks from her store. The team behind the celebrated restaurant Selden Standard had announced plans to open an upscale Mediterranean restaurant at Woodward just south of Grand Boulevard. A former partner at Rose's Fine Foods was planning on opening an all-day cafe across the street.

When she opened Coup D'état — French for "coup" and for Wisniewski-Cobbina, means being rebellious in expressing your personal style — the first two months, November and December 2019, exceeded her expectations.

Then 2020 happens

Once the holidays were over though, "the harsh realities of being a retail store owner in a non-foot traffic area set in," she said.

"I just remember thinking, 'Did I make the right decision?' " Wisniewski-Cobbina said. "You start off and it's really buzzy and then the high of opening the business runs out and people aren't spending."

A few months later, the COVID-19 pandemic shut down nonessential businesses like Wisniewski-Cobbina's as part of the governor's "stay home" order.

An interesting thing happened though: With people staying at home with few plans and no events or trips to spend their money on, they shopped. Her online sales were so high in March, April and May of 2020 that she wondered whether she even needed a brick-and-mortar location.

A new reality sets in

But as stores began to reopen their doors, and life started to return to normal, Wisniewski-Cobbina noticed that the support small businesses sentiment had worn off and it seemed consumers had returned to their online shopping habits formed in the pandemic.

Those highly anticipated restaurants never opened.

Wisniewski-Cobbina was also a new mom, and being efficient with her time became even more of a priority.

By early last year, reality set in.

"I can't be running these crazy promotions all the time," Wisniewski-Cobbina remembers thinking. "If this is part of a larger trend in terms of spending and consumerism ... I started to think I probably should move and rethink the direction I want to take the brand."

Despite surviving a pandemic, other Detroit retail store owners also had a reckoning. In early 2022, Hugh, the design housewares, accessories and furniture shop in Midtown, closed. The owner said he was planning to move to an online-only business model and suspected that the boost from suburbanite shoppers visiting Midtown and shopping wouldn't return anytime soon.

Less than a year later, Hugh's next-door neighbor, the houseware and gift shop Nora, closed. The owner cited similar reasons as Hugh's owner for closing, as well as increasing rent prices.

More on Nora closing: Nora, design store in Detroit's Midtown, to close after 10 years in business

A move is needed, but where?

As Wisniewski-Cobbina thought about where she could move her store, she felt she didn't have many options, given how spread out everything is in Detroit.

She doubted she could afford the rent downtown, and even if she could, she wanted something more off the beaten path. While a move there would have likely brought more foot traffic, even that's not a guarantee.

For example, Wisniewski-Cobbina pointed out that clothing store Good Neighbor recently closed its downtown Detroit store because "downtown traffic hasn’t proven to be substantial (enough) to run an already difficult business," a social media post announcing the closure said.

Wisniewski-Cobbina even thought about moving to the suburbs. But then Anthony Curis, co-founder of the Detroit art gallery Library Street Collective, called.

He and his wife, JJ, are developing a public arts campus in Detroit's East Village neighborhood called Little Village. The development is anchored by the Shepherd, a former church turned-cultural arts center, and also includes a public skate park, a bed-and-breakfast and the Lantern, a former commercial bakery that they're redeveloping into a mixed-used space. Curis wanted Wisniewski-Cobbina to open her store there.

More on The Shepherd: New East Village arts district will transform church into creative space, feature skate park

She went to visit what was then a crumbling building in the winter. Wisniewski-Cobbina was skeptical. But Curis had a compelling vision, Wisniewski-Cobbina said, and after several conversations, she realized just how important it was for her to stay in the city of Detroit.

Wisniewski-Cobbina signed a lease for a price that she says is comparable to what she was paying in New Center. The store in New Center will close in July, and she hopes to reopen in the Lantern, 9301 Kercheval Ave., by early fall.

"At this point, I know myself more. I know the brand more. I'm more seasoned in terms of running a business, being in the city and knowing who my client is and who I want my client to be," she said.

"They're creating another destination," Wisniewski-Cobbina said of Little Village. "People are coming from the city, the suburbs and they're going to come here when they travel from out of the country. It's going to be a place for arts and culture enthusiasts to immerse themselves and I was like, 'That makes complete sense for me.' "

Contact Adrienne Roberts: amroberts@freepress.com.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Why a Detroit clothing boutique owner is relocating to the east side