Charli McKiry knew she had to visit Dittrich Furs one last time.
Even if that meant waking up early enough to bring herself and her mother down to the New Center fur store at 6 a.m. and waiting in line for five hours in 30-degree weather.
The Detroiter patiently waited on a recent Friday for her turn to be allowed inside the shop to peruse its extravagant fur coats, hats and accessories.
At least McKiry, 41, had something to keep her warm while she waited–a floor-length, mahogany brown mink coat and matching headwrap that she bought from Dittrich in 2015.
“They’ve been a part of my life and will forever be a part of my closet,” she told BridgeDetroit about the store.
McKiry was in line for Dittrich Furs’ second retirement sale since the store announced in January it would be closing after more than 100 years in business. The first sale, held on Jan. 13, attracted hundreds of customers, with a line stretching from the store on Third Avenue to W. Grand Boulevard. The second sale on March 6 saw much of the same. Company President Jason Dittrich, 54, said the first customer got in line at 3:50 a.m.
Seeing the overwhelming response from new and old customers alike has been emotional, he said.
As of Thursday, the store’s restock merchandise was down to 15%. Pre-owned and vintage fur fashions are still available for purchase. Accessories are selling for as low as $10, while people can buy a mink coat for about $400, Dittrich said.
“There’s a lot of love,” Dittrich said. “The whole thing is bittersweet.”
Started by Dittrich’s great-great grandfather Emil Dittrich in 1893, the company marked its 133rd anniversary on Feb. 21 and is set to close on April 30. Dittrich and his brother and CEO Shawn Dittrich, are retiring to spend more time with their family.
As one of Detroit’s oldest businesses, Dittrich Furs has become embedded in the city’s culture, especially its Black culture. During the late 1970s, Black-owned station WGPR-TV advertised in the Detroit Free Press its TV specials with the businesses, such as a Dittrich Furs fashion show.
Wearing a piece of fur exudes elegance and style, and no one knew that better than Aretha Franklin. The Queen of Soul, who died in 2018, was a loyal customer at Dittrich Furs and fellow New Center shop Silver Fox Furs. In 2015, at a Kennedy Center Honors tribute to Carole King, Franklin wore a brown Russian sable coat purchased from Dittrich Furs, dropping it to the floor in the middle of singing, “You Make Me Feel (Like a Natural Woman).”
McKiry, the customer, said Dittrich Furs is a part of Detroit fashion because “their furs are fly.”
“You can’t have gator shoes, gator boots and not have no furs,” she said. “It’s part of a fashion statement and it’s a part of our culture.”
Dittrich Furs commercials also made an impact, with the famous jingle, “Dittrich Furs from the Dittrich family,” becoming a line Detroiters would sing for years to come.
Dittrich Furs commercials were one of the inspirations for the short-lived, but beloved Comedy Central show “Detroiters,” co-created and starring metro Detroit natives Sam Richardson and Tim Robinson. Richardson said the store’s commercials were his “absolute favorite” during a 2017 appearance on Conan O’Brien’s late night talk show “Conan.” The comedian played a clip of the classic Dittrich commercial featuring a woman horseback riding while wearing a fur coat.
“Tim (Robinson) and I based this show on the love that we had of local commercials we grew up watching that are so iconic to us,” Richardson said on the talk show. “I think everybody in Detroit knows those commercials so well.”
Building a Detroit powerhouse
Emil Dittrich, a furrier from London, first opened a small shop on Witherell Avenue in downtown Detroit. He bought pelts directly from trappers and made them into scarves and collars for wool coats, according to the Dittrich Furs website.
After World War I, Dittrich Furs outgrew its original location and moved to a building on Woodward called the Fisher Arcade. Emil Dittrich and his three sons, Francis, Harold E. and Alfred Dittrich ran the company at this location until it moved to its third space at 2341 Grand River in 1928.
Harold E. Dittrich eventually took over the business, bringing in his three sons Robert, Donald and Harold M. Dittrich.
The quality of its products is a priority for Dittrich Furs. In a 1941 ad in the Detroit Evening Times, a customer claimed she was shocked that a squirrel fur coat she bought in the 1930s was still in good condition, especially since the Dittrich family told her it was perishable.
“If Dittrich Furs were made deliberately to wear out in a year or two, someone might sell more furs coats; it probably wouldn’t be the Dittrichs!” the ad said. “For, ambiguous or not, the Dittrichs are artless enough to believe that the more dependable their furs, the more they will sell. A Dittrich fur may cost less than you expected to pay, afford comfort and satisfaction longer than you expected it to wear.”
In 1942, Dittrich Furs completed the expansion of its Grand River Avenue location, which included expanding the showroom to 4,000 square feet and the shop and cleaning facilities to 5,000 square feet. Additionally, a 4,000-square-foot fireproof refrigerated storage space was added.
By the 1950s, Dittrich Furs was one of more than 100 furriers in Detroit. Some of the other fur shops in town included Annis Furs on Library Street behind Hudson’s and Robert’s Furs near the Capitol Theatre Building.
Today, there’s only a handful left in the metro area: Wolverine Furs in Eastern Market, Silver Fox Furs in New Center, C. Grantston Bullard in Sherwood Forest, Elmars Furs in Oak Park and Bricker-Tunis Furs in West Bloomfield.
Due to freeway construction, the company moved into its current location at 7373 Third Avenue in 1965. The new building was built to fit the Dittrich family’s specifications, such as an underground, two-story refrigerated fur storage vault, constructed from poured concrete and protected by a bank vault door. The storage facility was built to securely preserve 16,000 fur garments during the summer months. The new space also included a large shop that employed at least two master furriers and up to a dozen seamstress finishers.
Master furriers and seamstresses are still a part of the business today, Jason Dittrich said. But as the store prepares to close, operations are winding down.
“We still have a crew in the shop, but the services aren’t open to the public anymore,” he said.
In 1977, Dittrich Furs expanded its footprint, opening a store on Woodward in Bloomfield Hills. The company also boosted its TV presence, with an iconic commercial featuring two skiers decked out in fur coats debuting that year.
The 1980s brought more success, including a 1986 expansion of its Detroit location and the debut of Dittrich’s famous jingle composed by Dan Yessian.
Even with the rise of animal rights activism in the 1980s and 1990s, including the creation of People For the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) in 1980, Jason Dittrich said the movement didn’t really hurt sales at Dittrich Furs.
“It never really affected us that much because Detroit is a fur town,” he said. “And now people are finally starting to realize, which furriers have known all along, is that fur is a natural, biological product. It’s sustainably sourced, it’s biodegradable, whereas fake fur is a petroleum product, it’s nylon.”
Dittrich Furs from the Dittrich family
During the 1970s and 1980s, Jason Dittrich’s father, Harold G. Dittrich began overseeing the business. He and his brother Shawn Dittrich worked in the store on weekends and summer vacations, doing everything from sweeping the floors to filing paperwork, Jason Dittrich said.
“It was a lot of fun and it taught me a lot of different things like how to run a business, how to deal with people, how to manage money,” Jason Dittrich said. “It taught me a lot about ethics, too.”
While he had other interests, Jason Dittrich eventually decided to follow in his father’s footsteps and help run the family business. He worked his way up the company and for the last 30 years, Jason and Shawn Dittrich operated Dittrich Furs alongside their father. When Harold died in 2021, Shawn became CEO and Jason took on the role as president.
Two years later, the brothers decided to close its Bloomfield Hills location and consolidate operations in Detroit. All employees at the Bloomfield store were able to transfer to Detroit, Jason Dittrich said. Currently, the company has 24 employees.
“My grandfather, my father and my brother and I, we’ve always had the firm belief of hiring full-time employees as opposed to part-time, and we absolutely never lay anyone off if we can avoid it,” he said. “One of the only times we’ve ever laid anyone off was during COVID.”
Jason Dittrich credits the businesses’ longevity to one simple rule–do the right thing.
“Treat people the way you want to be treated and that applies to more than just the fur industry,” he said.
He added that one of the things he’s going to miss the most about operating the store is interacting with customers every day.
“That’s gonna be the hardest part,” he said. “You meet a lot of people from all walks of life and everyone has an interesting story to tell. And we have multi-generations of customers where we knew their parents and their grandparents.”
The end of an era
During the retirement sale on March 6, Lequel Moore, 54, talked with BridgeDetroit as she stood outside a little before 10 a.m. She made the trek to Detroit from Ypsilanti, arriving at the store at 7:30 a.m. As a first-timer to Dittrich Furs, Moore wanted to treat herself and see what the store had to offer.
“I am looking for a full-length mink and possibly a three-quarter length mink. I want to take advantage of these good prices,” she said.
Around noon, former Dittrich sales associate Cheryl Jackson was busy on the showroom floor helping a woman find a fur coat.
Jackson said she decided to come back to the store one last time to assist staff members with the sale. The Detroiter applied to Dittrich Furs fresh out of design school in 2010 after seeing an ad in the newspaper, staying on for eight years.
Jackson said it was fun learning about all the different fur types the store offers, from fox, raccoon, beaver, rabbit to lamb.
“People can take a picture of a fur and I can spot it from a mile away,” she laughed.
Jackson’s coworkers even held a baby shower for her in 2017 when she was pregnant with her daughter Danni, who’s now eight years old.
Jackson said she enjoyed helping customers, whether they were buying their first fur or their tenth.
“When I worked here, I was able to get a sense of how much people value fur,” she said. “I loved watching them purchase their first fur or seeing generations (of customers) coming in here. I liked seeing people happy.”
In another part of the store, Fannie Thigpen, 84, was going through a rack of vests in all different styles and colors. She wanted to purchase one for her daughter in Georgia.
The Southfield resident has only been to Dittrich Furs a few times over the years, but thought the sale would be a good excuse to get her daughter’s vest along with a fur headband for herself to wear for her church fashion show.
“I’m gonna miss their advertisement,” Thigpen said. “I love the one where they’re on the horse. Everyone’s been so nice. I’m going to miss the store, period.”
Editor’s note: This story has been corrected to say Jason and Shawn Dittrich have spent the last 30 years operating Dittrich Furs.
This was a great article on the fur company that’s been around over 100 years. They will close their doors April 30, 2026 Thank you Micah for the information you posted in your article.