BOB BENKERT CELEBRATES 50 YEARS OF THE CLAYMORE SHOP
He’s always the best-dressed guy in the room, and always the most personable and charming! In fact, for the past 50 years, the impeccably dapper Bob Benkert has been the style icon for fashionable Michigan men in the affluent Detroit suburb of Birmingham as owner of the 4,000-square-foot Claymore Shop. He later opened a (now-closed) 2,000-square-foot branch in Petoskey, as well, one of 10 stores he opened during his career.
Key brands at the Claymore Shop include the best of the best such as Oxxford, Samuelsohn, Peter Millar, Southwick, and Ralph Lauren. In fact, Benkert was one of Ralph Lauren’s first accounts in Michigan, and had the exclusive Polo franchise in Birmingham for 13 years. In addition to running the store and buying the clothing, Benkert even recorded his own radio and TV commercials.
But it’s mostly his genuine bond with his customers that has enabled the Claymore Shop to stay in business for half a century, through recessions, precarious stock markets and the vicissitudes of the local auto industry. (In many cases, Benkert is now selling clothing to the sons, and grandsons, of his original customers.) What’s more, Benkert was recently honored with the Birmingham Bloomfield Chamber’s 2015 Business Person of the Year award, where he was cited as “a man of great integrity and a true business leader.” Indeed, the list of local charities he and his wife Janice (J.J) support is a long one.
Quietly battling leukemia for the past couple of years, Benkert has never let his illness slow him down. He has continued to manage the store and service his customers while shopping trade shows in New York, Las Vegas and Florence, always seeking out the best in luxury menswear, always connecting with vendors and retail colleagues and always sharing his passion for life (as well as for his prized possession—a vintage Hacker-Craft mahogany runabout named Gatsby!)
J.J., to whom he proposed in 1983 in Newport Rhode Island at a Black Tie gala for the America’s Cup, shares how heroically Bob is now handling his illness. “He jokes about preparing to order his ‘Angel suit’,” she says. “He recently sent me to the Claymore Shop to pick up a specific pin dot robe with matching pajamas, topped off with a bright red ascot. When his feet are cold, he doesn’t request socks, he wants pale gray cashmere socks. We all should be so fortunate to have figured out at age 26 exactly what we want to do and then do it for the next 50 years, loving every single day of going to work. So I don’t worry about the future; it’s in God’s hands. And we have been very blessed.”
We love you Bob Benkert and thank you for raising the bar for all of us!
