Meet Deborah Slobin | Co-owner of Le Shoppe Modern, Estate Sales, & Auction House

We had the good fortune of connecting with Deborah Slobin and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Deborah, we’d love to hear about how you approach risk and risk-taking
I think about risk as a necessary facet of both life and business. While the common sentiment, “big risk, big reward” is rather cliché, as with most cliches, it contains quite a bit of truth. Risk has played a huge part in my life and career.

When I was in my early 20’s I moved cross-country from Michigan to Florida on my own to start a new life. I made my way up through the food distribution business until I was one of the top salespeople in the state, selling high-quality meats to luxury hotels and Michelin-star restaurants. After working in that business for nearly 25 years, I moved back to Michigan to be closer to my aging parents and started over yet again. In 2013 I co-signed a lease on a 3,000-square-foot commercial building to start a resale business from scratch with a few friends. In less than a year we knew we had something and haven’t stopped growing since. In 2015 we partnered with an established estate sale company to open a much larger showroom, and started our auction house, expanding our one business into three.

It was a risk for me to move away from my friends and family at such a young age, it was a risk for me to move back and transition careers so many years later, it was a risk for me to break into a new industry with so little experience in that industry, and it was a risk for me to grow and expand our business beyond what I knew we could handle, and yet we have found success. You could say that the major ebbs and flows of my life have been defined by the risks that I’ve taken, but I couldn’t imagine it any other way.

Can you give our readers an introduction to your business? Maybe you can share a bit about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
We own and operate 3 sister businesses to provide an all-purpose liquidation solution for anyone inheriting, liquidating, or downsizing a home or estate. We host estate sales in clients’ homes, in addition to off-site and online estate sales hosted out of our warehouse space through our estate sale company Le Shoppe Estate Sales. We run quarterly auctions that take place both in person and online to a global audience through our auction house, Le Shoppe Auction House. We operate a 25,000-square-foot resale consignment showroom filled with iconic 20th-century furniture, fine art, and home decor, Le Shoppe Modern.

Please excuse yet another cliché, but we got to where we are one step at a time, and it was not easy. We started with a business loan and an empty 3,000-square-foot commercial building. A year later we partnered with an established estate sale company to open a new location for our retail space, growing to 10,000 square feet. Another year later we opened our auction house and expanded our retail space to 17,000 square feet. We grew our staff, expanded our presence online, and a few years later expanded our retail space to include a clearance warehouse, growing to nearly 25,000 square feet of showroom space. We’ve now been in business for ten years and are always on the lookout for our next opportunity.

We’ve gone through growing pains, staffing changes, rebranding, theft, a near-catastrophic flood in our showroom from a burst pipe, and the biggest lesson we’ve learned along the way is to just keep going, learn from your mistakes, don’t let them defeat you.

There are many things I’d want the world to know about our brand and story. We’re a business that thrives on diversity, creativity, and collaboration. We are a women-owned and run business; all three co-owners of our sister businesses are women. We are always on the lookout for new inventory, so if you have any fine art, designer furniture, or funky vintage home décor that you’re interested in selling, please reach out to us any time. We welcome any and all guests to our showroom, we have items of every price range and have many great deals to be found.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
My real list would be far too long to include here, as there are so many incredible experiences to be had in the Metro Detroit Area, and in Michigan generally, so I’ll have to give you the cliff-notes version. For places to eat and drink, I would recommend Mabel Gray in Hazel Park, SheWolf Detroit, Seldon Standard, Eddie V’s in Troy, and Ima Izakaya. For places to visit and hang out, I would recommend the Heidelberg Project, the Detroit Institute of Arts, Cranbrook Art Museum & Institute of Science, and of course our showroom, Le Shoppe Modern!

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
While there are many members of our extended community who deserve a ton of credit and recognition, I would be remiss if I didn’t dedicate this answer to my incredible partners and staff. Julie Sundberg has been my business partner from the very conception of our business and currently heads both our estate sale division and our internal packing and shipping department. Terri Stearn is a highly accredited art appraiser, a co-owner of our auction house, and brings honesty and credibility to our business which is sadly lacking in the fine art world at large. Linda Ruben has been with us since our first year in business, an antique dealer in her own right, she is responsible for staging our showroom into the beautiful vignettes you see here. Harry Nouhan, Moshe Krupnik, and Trista Maltby are our three senior employees, each going above and beyond their individual responsibilities to meet the needs of our business through myriad changes; we would not be anywhere near as successful without them. Sophie Dwoskin and Ben Marino, our two photographers, and graphic designers are responsible for all the beautiful listings of our inventory you can find online, and the photos you see here. Last but not least, a final shoutout to the one external party we might not be here without, Hebrew Free Loan, who loaned us the seed capital to open our original store over ten years ago.

Website: www.leshoppemodern.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/leshoppemodern/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/le-shoppe-modern

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leshoppemodern

Image Credits
Sophie Dwoskin & Ben Marino