{"id":50176,"date":"2021-05-10T08:00:53","date_gmt":"2021-05-10T12:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dodgegarage.com\/news-api\/?p=50176"},"modified":"2024-03-25T11:21:29","modified_gmt":"2024-03-25T15:21:29","slug":"all-heart-right-in-the-heart-of-the-motor-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/showcase\/2021\/05\/all-heart-right-in-the-heart-of-the-motor-city.html","title":{"rendered":"All Heart … Right in the Heart of the Motor City"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

DETROIT SHIRT COMPANY<\/strong><\/h1>\n\n\n\n

For native Detroiter Jim Drysdale, a few false starts – and a lot of self-motivation – launched him into his passion for retail. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat started for me as a Liberal Arts degree turned to a\nsemester of engineering, which evolved into a master\u2019s degree in training and\ndevelopment and a career developing training for companies,\u201d explained\nDrysdale. \u201cBut I still hadn\u2019t found my forever career.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Jim<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

When it came down to it, Drysdale always had a passion for\nretail. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cRetail has always fascinated me. I see it as providing a product that a shopper wants bad enough to spend money that may have taken them 2-3 hours to earn.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

But it wasn\u2019t until he met a graphic design student, a guest at a family holiday party, that he got the idea to create a royalty-based program for artists who created T-shirt designs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEven then, our focus was Detroit-based merchandise,\u201d said Drysdale. \u201cBut what I found, at least at the beginning, was that suburb stores were leery of selling items with the Detroit name. After hearing dozens of ‘no\u2019s’ to selling our wares on consignment, I ended up giving shirts to retailers and telling them they only needed to pay me if they sold.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And sell they did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As they became increasingly more popular, they gained the\nattention of some influential decision-makers at then Daimler-Chrysler. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBack around the time of the ‘Imported from Detroit’ campaign, the brand guys were looking to support the campaign with inspired, high-quality wearables. They decided Detroit Shirt Company<\/a> was the obvious choice because three of the execs already had our shirts and loved the quality,\u201d Drysdale recalled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That quality likely gained them a customer named Ralph\nGilles, then President and CEO of SRT\u00ae<\/sup> Brand and Motorsports. <\/p>\n\n\n\n