[3][6] Kartsotis, previously a founder of Fossil Group, wanted to create a high end American watch manufacturing brand to rival Swiss watchmakers at a lower price point.

[6][18] The company's headquarters and watch factory are housed within the College for Creative Studies (CCS) on the fourth and fifth floors of the Alfred A. Taubman Building in Detroit, a former automotive research lab.

Each purchase included a hardcover book created exclusively for the project, offering an in-depth look at Oscar de la Renta and his work.

[37] In 2014, Shinola released The Black Blizzard titanium wristwatch in 48mm and 42mm sizes, as well as the next Signature Series limited edition, The Henry Ford Pocket Watch.

[60] Shinola, in partnership with a Detroit real estate company, opened a 129-room, eight-story boutique hotel as part of a multimillion-dollar development project in January 2019.

[65] Shinola Pet was a collection of American-made dog beds, toys, leashes and collars produced in collaboration with photographer Bruce Weber.

A portion of the pets' toys were produced in partnership with Empowerment Plan, a Detroit-based charity organization that employs local women who are living in shelters, training them to manufacture sleeping bag coats for the homeless.

[72][73] Detroit-based journalist Jon Moy has suggested that the choice of Detroit as the location of Shinola's factory was a calculated act of "opportunistic marketing" intended to yield feelings of nostalgia on a purchaser's part.

"[74] That said, the company has invested intensely in its Detroit-based employees, flying in watchmakers from Switzerland to train them,[75] paying significantly above minimum wage and retaining its workforce even as the broader manufacturing sector is criticized for outsourcing,[76]" per the Chicago Tribune.

Michigan State University economist Lisa D. Cook said that operations like Shinola's factory in the city help fill the void as Detroit's car makers downsize.

In 2014, the men's style site Complex compared Shinola to a "trust fund kid that decided one day he wanted to start a company and had his dad buy him all the cool stuff."

In 2013, in a review of its new store in Tribeca, the New York Times described Kartsotis as a "mid-price watch mogul looking to go luxury under the cover of charitable business practices".

[78] In her article "Bougie Crap", for Infinite Mile, Professor Rebekah Modrak writes:[79] Texas-based Bedrock Manufacturing notoriously attached their Shinola venture to Detroit after test studies showed that consumers would pay three times as much for a product associated with the tenacity of a bankrupt city[80] ...participants in the CCS/Shinola union enact the racial and class divide at play in the gentrification of a Detroit that's "rising from the ashes"...

The evidence that Modrak has compiled is damning, presenting examples of overtly racist Shinola advertisements from the 1930s, all the way through a shockingly tone-deaf campaign shot by photographer Bruce Weber.

"[82] A New York Times article about the brand begins with Kartsotis recalling the dire state of the Cass Corridor neighborhood, and his disbelief that a luxury store could succeed in the area.

He charges: “Shinola and other entrepreneurs market themselves as white knights, swooping in to save the noble savages.”[74] Despite this, Kartsotis claims he is not in the business to make a profit, but rather to stimulate the local economy by paying workers, on average, $3 above minimum wage.

[85][86] Following the legalization of recreational marijuana in Michigan, Shinola released the Twenty After Four watch line in partnership with rapper Common and actor Woody Harrelson in 2020.

[89] Also in 2021, the company launched the Most Likely to Succeed watch line, with $40,000 in proceeds going to Money Matters for Youth, a nonprofit that teaches children financial literacy.