What Is The Foundry? Inside Pontiac’s Small-Business Marketplace and Creative Hub
Meta description: Discover The Foundry by History Loves Company in downtown Pontiac, Michigan—a nearly 9,000-square-foot marketplace, small-business incubator, creative hub and community space built to help local entrepreneurs start small and grow downtown.
If you have followed History Loves Company for a while, you have probably seen pieces of The Foundry.
You may have seen vendors moving in, displays being built, events taking place, vintage pieces arriving, new businesses setting up shop or behind-the-scenes footage of us trying to figure the whole thing out in real time.
But The Foundry is much more than a collection of vendor spaces.
It is an experiment in entrepreneurship, preservation, downtown revitalization and community building.
And it all starts in downtown Pontiac, Michigan.
What Is The Foundry?
The Foundry by History Loves Company is a nearly 9,000-square-foot marketplace, small-business incubator, creative space and community hub located at:
35 W. Huron Street
Downtown Pontiac, Michigan
The idea is simple:
Start Small. Grow Downtown.
Traditional retail can be expensive.
For someone starting a business, opening a storefront may mean taking on thousands of dollars in rent, utilities, inventory, insurance, signage, furniture, staffing and build-out costs before they know whether customers will respond to their idea.
The Foundry is designed to lower that barrier.
Instead of needing an entire store, a creator may only need a small vendor space.
A wall.
A display.
A table.
A corner.
The goal is to give entrepreneurs a place to test products, build a customer base, improve their presentation and learn what works without immediately taking on the overhead of a traditional storefront.
And if one of those businesses eventually outgrows The Foundry and opens its own location somewhere in downtown Pontiac?
That is exactly what we want.
Why We Built It
History Loves Company has spent years telling stories about historic homes, architecture, neighborhoods, preservation and the rise and fall of American downtowns.
We have documented places that survived.
Places that disappeared.
Places that were neglected.
Places that came back.
Eventually, one question became difficult to ignore:
What are we doing to help create the next chapter of these places?
It is one thing to talk about revitalization.
It is another thing to participate in it.
The Foundry is our attempt to do both.
It is a place where history and new ideas can exist together.
Vintage goods can sit alongside products created last week.
A first-time entrepreneur can operate a few feet away from an established business.
A local artist can meet a collector.
A maker can test something new.
A customer can walk through the door looking for one thing and leave having discovered something completely unexpected.
That sense of discovery is a major part of what we want The Foundry to become.
Why Downtown Pontiac?
Pontiac has an extraordinary history.
For generations, it was one of the most important industrial and commercial centers in Oakland County.
Automobiles were built here.
Businesses grew here.
People came downtown to shop, eat, work and be entertained.
Like countless American downtowns, Pontiac changed dramatically during the second half of the twentieth century.
Retail shifted toward malls and suburban shopping centers.
Highways changed travel patterns.
Industry changed.
Downtown foot traffic declined.
Buildings emptied.
But the architecture remained.
The street grid remained.
The history remained.
And most importantly, the potential remained.
If you believe historic downtowns deserve another chance, you cannot wait until every storefront is full and every property value has already climbed.
Someone has to arrive earlier.
Someone has to turn the lights on.
Someone has to try something.
The Foundry is our attempt to be one small piece of that process.
No single business is going to transform an entire downtown.
But activity creates activity.
One occupied storefront is better than a dark storefront.
One successful event gives people another reason to return.
One entrepreneur may eventually become two.
Then three.
That is how momentum begins.
Nearly 9,000 Square Feet of Ideas
The Foundry has grown into nearly 9,000 square feet of interconnected uses.
There is retail.
There are vendor spaces.
There are offices.
There are creative and media spaces.
There is room for events, classes and collaboration.
And there are dozens of individual businesses, concepts and creators operating within the larger Foundry ecosystem.
Rather than walking into one conventional retailer, visitors experience a collection of different ideas under one roof.
That means the experience can change every few feet.
Candles.
Vintage clothing.
Jewelry.
Natural products.
Art.
Collectibles.
Handmade goods.
Home décor.
Local merchandise.
Creative concepts.
And plenty of things that are difficult to put into a single category.
That is intentional.
We want The Foundry to feel like discovery.
Meet the Businesses Inside The Foundry
The businesses and creators that have been part of The Foundry include:
- Lovely T Candles & More
- Be Naked
- Caribbean Creepie
- Pandy Manufacturing
- Pontiac Built
- Dars Bars Naturals
- Aromabuds & Blossoms
- Tenth & Tuesday
- Everly Rose
- Vallée Natural
- Twinky's Elegant Beauty Essentials
- The Kingz Jewels
- Vintage on 4th Ave
- MI Scentsations
- Sweet Sinister
- Grip Tape Tatts
- Wild Apes Vintage
- Jagged Originals
- Foundry Cycle Works
- Wussah
- The Hatchery Co
- Pressed Petal
- Mugs & Other Jugs
- Zoe Morrison
- Reptilian Garden Cafe
- Perry Street Empowerment
- Woogz Made It
- Pouring TLC
And the community continues to evolve.
Some businesses are established.
Some are brand new.
Some are experimenting with a concept for the first time.
That is part of what makes watching The Foundry grow interesting.
You are not walking through a finished idea.
You are watching businesses develop in real time.
More Than a Vendor Market
One misconception we want to avoid is that The Foundry is simply an antique mall or vendor marketplace.
Vintage and historic objects are absolutely part of what we do.
History Loves Company is built around the idea that places and objects have stories.
But The Foundry is intentionally broader.
We want makers.
Artists.
Collectors.
Entrepreneurs.
Performers.
Teachers.
Historians.
Small businesses.
Pop-up vendors.
Community organizations.
People with strange ideas.
Especially people with strange ideas.
The long-term vision is to create a place where someone can walk in on one visit and shop, then return another week for a class, live event, demonstration, history program or completely different experience.
The best physical spaces give people reasons to keep returning.
That is what we are building toward.
The Foundry as a Small-Business Incubator
The incubator side of the project may ultimately be the most important.
Across Michigan, there are talented people making products in garages, basements, spare bedrooms and kitchen tables.
Many have been told:
“You should sell this.”
Some already do.
But the jump from selling occasionally to operating a traditional storefront can feel enormous.
The Foundry is intended to shrink that gap.
Someone can start small.
See how customers respond.
Improve packaging.
Change pricing.
Experiment with displays.
Develop branding.
Make connections.
Collaborate with another vendor.
Build an online presence.
Learn what sells and what does not.
And then decide what comes next.
The ultimate success story is not necessarily someone staying at The Foundry forever.
It might be someone eventually saying:
“I need my own storefront.”
Imagine walking through downtown Pontiac several years from now and seeing a successful independent business that began with a few feet of space inside The Foundry.
That is the dream.
The History Loves Company Connection
The Foundry also represents the physical side of what History Loves Company is becoming.
History Loves Company began largely around historic real estate, architecture and storytelling.
Then YouTube became a much bigger part of the brand.
We began documenting neighborhoods, historic buildings, preservation battles, industrial sites, forgotten places and the forces that shaped American cities.
The audience grew beyond people simply looking to buy or sell historic real estate.
It became a community of people who care about places.
The Foundry gives that community a physical home.
It gives us somewhere to gather.
Somewhere to host people.
Somewhere to experiment.
Somewhere to connect online storytelling with real-world action.
You might discover The Foundry because you watched one of our Detroit history documentaries.
Or a Pontiac video.
Or a historic house tour.
Then one day, you can actually walk through the door.
That connection between digital storytelling and a physical place is something we think can become incredibly powerful.
What Does Success Look Like?
The Foundry has to work financially.
That matters.
A mission only survives if the organization behind it can keep the lights on.
But our definition of success goes beyond sales.
Success is a new entrepreneur making their first sale.
Success is a vendor building confidence.
Success is a person visiting downtown Pontiac for the first time in years.
Success is someone discovering a Michigan maker they had never heard of before.
Success is an artist filling a room for a class.
Success is a business eventually outgrowing us.
Success is another downtown storefront being occupied.
Success is preserving an old building by giving it a productive new use.
Success is making people curious about Pontiac.
And success is creating new memories inside historic places.
That last piece matters.
Preservation cannot only mean saving walls.
Historic buildings survive when people have reasons to use them.
Where The Foundry Goes From Here
The Foundry you see today is only the beginning.
There are countless directions this could grow.
More vendors.
More classes.
More events.
More pop-ups.
Live podcasts.
History programs.
Exhibitions.
Local artists.
Restoration workshops.
Home-history research classes.
Speaking events.
Documentary screenings.
Performances.
Community gatherings.
And perhaps someday, versions of The Foundry in other historic downtowns.
There are also concepts inside The Foundry that may grow independently, including Pontiac Built and Foundry Cycle Works.
Some ideas will work.
Others probably will not.
That is part of building something.
We want people to see that process rather than pretend everything arrived fully formed.
The Bigger Dream
At its core, The Foundry is a bet.
A bet that people still value local businesses.
A bet that people want experiences they cannot get by endlessly scrolling online.
A bet that historic downtowns still matter.
A bet that old buildings can become homes for new ideas.
And a bet that History Loves Company can become more than simply a media brand or real estate company.
It can become a community.
We do not want to spend the next decade only documenting places that used to be alive.
We want to help make places alive again.
That is why The Foundry exists.
Visit The Foundry
If you have never visited, come explore it.
Walk through slowly.
Look in every corner.
Meet the businesses.
Find something old.
Find something handmade.
Find something strange.
Support a local entrepreneur.
And see what we are building.
The Foundry by History Loves Company
35 W. Huron Street
Downtown Pontiac, Michigan
Learn more at TheFoundryHLC.com.
And if you are a maker, artist, vintage seller, entrepreneur, performer, instructor or someone with an idea you think might belong here, we want to hear about it.
You do not necessarily need an entire storefront.
You may simply need somewhere to begin.
Start Small. Grow Downtown.
Watch: What Is The Foundry?
In our full video tour, we take you inside The Foundry, introduce the businesses currently operating here, explain why we chose downtown Pontiac and share the larger vision behind the project.
Watch the full video on the History Loves Company YouTube channel.
