How luxury watch manufacturer Shinola is helping to revive Detroit's fortunes

One of America's most interesting new brands has been a tonic for the city, says Rebecca Gonsalves

The Shinola store in an area of midtown Detroit once associated with drugs and prostitution. 'We want people to feel comfortable,' says Daniel Caudill, creative director of the brand. 'If you don’t want to buy a watch, then don't. But come in, hang out, and have coffee'

Wendy Blackwell's long, dextrous fingers have small slices of tape running across the ends. This is so she can closely grip the leather watch straps she is carefully stitching together . It is delicate, skilled work. Blackwell has not done this all her life, however. In fact, just a few years ago she was working in government administration. She tells me she never thought she'd get the sort of job satisfaction she does now. That's what lots of the staff who work in this building say: after years working in Detroit's automobile industry, most had lost their jobs as “Motor City” – once a heartland of US manufacturing – went into catastrophic decline in the early 2000s.

Those dark days seem a long time ago now. The factory floor where the watch straps are cut, sewn and finished thrums with concentration and the low-key chatter of a cluster of assembly-line staff. Blackwell and her colleagues seem improbably cheerful. There's a palpable sense of camaraderie here and a sense of pride in the work being done, at every step in the manufacturing process. But then I am standing in the factory of one of America's most interesting new brands, a company in the vanguard of the city of Detroit's gradual revival.

Shinola has been a tonic for the city. Its story begins in 2011 when the US venture-capital firm Bedrock Manufacturing set its sights on creating a new luxury brand. The idea was simple – to create something that would tap into the premium that American consumers were willing to pay for goods made in the US. A decade earlier Bedrock had purchased the name Shinola, that of a former shoe-polish brand established in the early 20th century, which had ceased production in 1960. The new company would make polish as a nod to the company's origins, but 21st-century Shinola would be a watch brand.

On the face of it, that might seem a simple decision to make. But finding the skilled staff and infrastructure was anything but simple in 21st-century America. The country's once-impressive manufacturing output has dwindled. And watches require a very specific set of skills and a tremendous eye for detail – there's a reason the Swiss have cornered that particular market. And so the hunt began for an American base to make the watches.

Detroit didn't seem to be that place back then – far from it.The city was a shadow of its former self. It had been built on the once-booming American automobile industry but, as surely as the car brought about the city's success in the middle of the 20th century, it helped bring about its decline, too. The population had steadily dwindled since > the 1950s, as newly affluent residents migrated to the growing suburbs which, thanks to a new road network, were easily accessible by car. As the number of residents declined, so, too, did the businesses that served them – sprawling out-of-town malls prospered while local retailers suffered.

In July 2013, the city filed for bankruptcy after recession had decimated the American automotive industry. There are fewer than 20,000 people in motor-manufacturing jobs in the city today. A 2012 census put the city's population at under 700,000 – less than half its 1.86m peak in 1950 – and certainly the wide avenues of neo-classical buildings, paid for with mountains of motor-company money, feel eerily deserted today. In a city built for cars there is a surprisingly small flow of traffic, even at rush hour.

But on closer inspection the green shoots of recovery can be seen poking through the cracked concrete. And what is perhaps most interesting is that the creative companies making the running here are using the city's industrial past as the starting point for its future.

Matt Clayson, director of the Detroit Creative Corridor Center, an economic development agency, has spent the past five years helping to smooth the path for companies that want to work in the city. He advises new businesses on what Detroit has to offer. “People think it's easy [coming to Detroit],” says Clayton. “That it's the yellow brick road, and the roads are paved with gold. But you have to be willing to roll up your sleeves, be patient, you have to listen and work. It makes the people coming here much more invested in the community, a community that has been discarded in some ways for many years.”

When he first met with the team behind Shinola, Clayson says, he quickly understood that something interesting was going on. “They said they wanted to build watches and asked if we could. We didn't build watches here, but we can build automobiles and if we can do that – the most complex consumer product that people ever buy in their lives – then we can build watches.” Clayson was the man who showed the Shinola team the technical and manufacturing infrastructure of the city,

Even after Shinola had been persuaded to come to Detroit, it wasn't all plain sailing. There was the hard slog of looking over 120 different disused workspaces until they found a suitable one. Home is now the fifth floor of the College for Creative Studies, where, by coincidence, Clayson's agency is also based.

In 2013, the brand officially launched. Not only has it had a huge impact on the lives of its 400 employees but also on the wider accessories market. In July this year it was one of the sponsors of the inaugural New York Fashion Week: Men's, alongside Amazon, Cadillac and Dockers – no small feat for a start-up.

In training its staff, Shinola not only provided new skills and much-needed employment but also hope and self-respect. Making a watch is a delicate, detailed process – creating a movement is almost scientific. It's done in a lab-like setting and you need real skill to make a strap.

“One of our biggest investments is in staff – training the masters of the future from scratch,” explains Jennifer Guarino, the vice president of leather. “Even though it's assembly-line production, in some ways it's artisanal. Leather is such an organic product that you have to see and feel the difference in each skin you work with. Staff retention is high now, but at the beginning it was terrible – we didn't understand the artistry concerned; we thought anyone from the auto industry would be able to do the job. There's a lot of pride in what they do here, and we're trying to show that factories don't have to feel like they used to feel. People here have names not numbers.”

The spirit of community so evident in the Shinola factory – where even the door handles are encased in leather – is replicated in the brand's flagship store on West Canfield Street. It's located in the Cass Corridor in Midtown, known for drug use and prostitution before being cleaned up by a developer prior to Shinola's arrival.

Now, alongside accommodation for college students, small independent stores are flourishing: down the street from Shinola, gift shops Nest and City Bird offer something for everyone, while on Cass Avenue, Nora and brother shop Hugh offer design-led interiors and homewares. Detroit native Jack White is bringing his record-label offices to the area. But that's not to say that everything is suddenly rosy: there is still crime and unemployment on a grand scale, and many areas, and residents, remain in a state of economic depression.

The red-brick building housing Shinola's diverse output (alongside watches, wallets and journals there are bicycles, leather basketballs and pet accessories on sale) also has a coffee shop in one corner and picnic benches out front. “We want people to feel comfortable,” says Daniel Caudill, creative director of the brand. “If you don't want to buy a watch, then don't. But come in, hang out and have coffee.”

That feeling of comfort extends to the brand's aesthetic too – there's nothing flashy about Shinola's designs. Instead, the quality of the materials and the way products are made is the focus. It's a strategy that seems to be working. On a Friday afternoon the store is buzzing, and it doesn't seem outlandish to think that the battered, but once-great city of Detroit may be on the verge of a Shinola-led renaissance.