Located in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Motivation has those chilly college kids looking hot. Owned by Mike Moeller and HipHopDX’s good pal Mick Boogie, this boutique has truly hit the ground running. Extensive inventory, a carried out mission and a relatively untapped market. Moeller, who blogs at www.mtvtn.blogspot.com, spoke to The Evil Collector about his store, his plans and how to jumpstart a store.

TEC: Tell us the history of the store. How’d you come up with the name?

MOTIVATION: Well there’s not too much history yet, we just opened our doors in late October of last year, but we are already getting known across Michigan and the Midwest. I had been toying with the idea of opening the store and planning it for a few years now though, it had always been my “Motivation” I guess, but that’s not really how the name came up. I presented the idea to Mick this summer and got him on board, then literally in a span of four months we did everything from securing the location to getting all of the top streetwear brands on board to opening the doors to the public! It was craziness at times but well worth it. How the name came up was just Mick and I are two young, highly motivated, and successful entrepreneurs. ­ I’m 26 and this is my second business, and he’s a few years older and has his DJing empire ­ and so the name is a reflection of our state of minds. Hopefully the store and our stories also provide some “Motivation” for others and show young people that if you put your all into something you can make it and do things at a higher level than most.

TEC: What makes Motivation unique?

MTVTN: In our area, there’s just no store like it. From the limited clothes we carry, to the look of the store, to the way we market the store, no one has seen anything like it in Ann Arbor and the surrounding areas. There was never anything that promoted streetwear culture or a place where kids that are into hip hop or that are into skateboarding or that are into sneakers could just come, chill, and relate. I think what sets us apart from streetwear stores in other areas is that we have really tried to integrate music and DJing into what Motivation is all about. In our first three months that we’ve been open, we have had in-store meet and greet sessions with Lupe Fiasco, Trey Songz, and Matthew Santos. Our customers got to meet all of these huge artists and really connect with them in an intimate setting. We’ve also already had in-store DJ sessions with major DJs like Mick Boogie (my partner in the store), DJ Benzi, Dj Graffiti, and DJ Mo Beatz. When you come to Motivation, you know there’s a good chance you can connect with an artist who is putting out quality music, and we want that to be a part of the experience.

TEC: Describe Michigan clientele and your most popular products…

MTVTN: Well, we are located right smack in the middle of the University of Michigan’s campus, so our main clientele are the university students. The city of Ann Arbor basically revolves around the university and its students. We get a lot of both men and women in the store because we have a big selection for the ladies, which you don’t find too often in many streetwear boutiques. Being on campus is also nice because a lot of the students come from all over the states so we get to meet a lot of interesting people. A decent amount of our student clientele are up on streetwear trends and some just come in because we have some crazy tee shirts, and so we get to educate them on streetwear which is nice. The other part of our clientele is just a lot of the educated streetwear consumers in Michigan. We get people traveling from all parts of the state and even neighboring states to check us out because the clothing we stock isn’t readily available in Michigan or the states around us.

As far as popular products, we carry all of the top streetwear brands so everything moves decent but we have really been killing it so far with everything from Crooks & Castles, The Hundreds, Rocksmith, Married to the Mob, 3Sixteen, and a new brand called Dope Couture. Crooks & Castles though especially, anything we get from them flies off the shelves, we’ve been out of basically all their t-shirts since the second week after we opened! We do really well with fitted hats too, as most of the ones we carry are the limited collaborations our brands do with New Era, so look for us to expand our selection of them this spring to accommodate the demand!

This entry was posted on Monday, March 17th, 2008 at 10:38 pm and is filed under Store Watch. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.