DETROIT – Designer Brands Inc., parent company of Designer Shoe Warehouse or DSW, is set to pour $2 million dollars to help Michigan’s first and only historically Black college.
Formerly known as Lewis College of Business, Pensole Lewis College of Business and Design will reopen May 2022.
Dr. D’Wayne Edwards, founder of Pensole Design Academy in Portland, Oregon has designed shoes for Brands like Nike and Air Jordan. It was his idea to reopen the college after it closed in 2015.
Under a new will be the first HBCU with a focus on design.
The investment is for a shoe-making facility, the first Black-owned footwear factory in the country. They’ve named it JEMS by Pensole. JEMS stands for Jan Ernst Matzeliger Studio in honor of the Black footwear pioneer who received a patent in 1883 for a manufacturing process that inspired methods still used today.
The facility will produce the designs of PLC graduate students, then those shoes will be sold exclusively at DSW.
“We (Black people) represent less than 3% of designers in the footwear industry, and then less than 5% in the design industry as a whole,” said Edwards.
Bill Jordan, president for DBI said that’s why their investment is so important.
“These designers are going to have a chance to actually work through that whole process. And so yes, it’s educational to do a sketch on a piece of paper, but to actually bring it to life and see how that works,” Jordan said.
Edwards said it will add to Detroit’s rich design and manufacturing legacy while also showing the next generation unique career opportunities.
“Detroit kids who may be watching this or hear about it. They could be one of those people next year that has product in store,” Edwards said.
Jordan said, “This partnership is going to spawn a whole new class of design talent that we’re going to see in the footwear industry for years. And guess what, you got your chance in Detroit to get that product in their first run.”
The factory will start producing shoes in September but it will be in New Hampshire. The goal is to move production to Detroit in the next three to four years.