March 7, 2024

A clothing and home store based in Minneapolis is expanding to downtown Sioux Falls.

It’s a homecoming of sorts for founder Mike Pickart, who was born in Sioux Falls and went on to become a well-known retailer in the Twin Cities.

He founded the store Combine in 2018 in the Uptown area and will be adding a second location at Cherapa Place in partnership with property co-developers Anne and Dustin Haber.

Photo by Caitlin Abrams

“I think it’s going to be really fun,” Pickart said. “A new development like that feels so fresh and so exciting for Sioux Falls.”

Pickart, who went to Axtell Park Middle School before his family moved to Lennox and he graduated high school there, grew up shopping with his father at Norman’s Men’s Wear in Sioux Falls. It sparked a love of fashion that led him to a decades-long career in retail ownership.

He and business partner Karen Heithoff owned and operated the store Intoto from 1990 to 2010, which “really took me to different places in my life because almost all our buying in the end was in Paris and Milan,” he said. “At one point toward the end, we figured we had been in New York over a year if you added all our buying trips together.”

The high-profile store regularly drew professional athletes and their families to shop, and celebrity clientele from Prince to Janet Jackson.

Pickart’s approach to business “really has been about the customers,” he said. “That’s really the basis of what I do even today.”

The chance to begin a new retail concept led him to create Combine, which symbolizes combining “your whole lifestyle in this store,” he said. “What will be really great about Sioux Falls is it will be kind of like an elevated general store of things you need in your life. If I’m in the market and find the best potholder for your kitchen, that will be there.”

Fashion still will be a center of the store, though, including luxury goods that are “really comfortable and well made and great fabrics,” he said. “We have great designers. We carry collections from Japan, from Italy, from a lot of California designers and even a really incredible Irish knitwear line I love. It’s really a mixture of things from around the world.”

The Habers have shopped at the store in Uptown Minneapolis and came in one day last year to talk about the possibility of expanding to Sioux Falls.

“It was a really exciting thing because I had heard about the development of Cherapa Place … and once I saw it and their enthusiasm and excitement, the whole thing just felt right,” Pickart said. “I felt these are the people I could do this with. … They’re the best, the whole family. Sometimes you get the rare opportunity to jump into something with no fears and no reservations, and I have to say with them I have that feeling.”

For the Habers, “it was an opportunity to bring something elevated in a new way to Sioux Falls,” Anne Haber said. “We’re bringing lines to Sioux Falls people have seen and heard of, but they currently don’t exist here. We don’t want to have the same lines as other people, so we’re going to be intentional with what we bring in.”

The store itself will be less than 1,500 square feet and carry fashion for men and women along with home furnishings and decor. It will be located inside The Bancorp Building, where iv club recently opened.

“It’s not a big store. It’s very well edited,” Haber said. “We may only get two sizes of one piece, or one handbag, or two scarves, so you don’t have to worry about other people looking like you. We want to create that exclusivity.”

The ownership team recently went to New York for their first buying trip.

“They’re high-quality pieces,” Haber said. “I think fashion needs to be more sustainable. Some of this fast fashion is not good for the planet, and purchasing higher-quality pieces that last long is better for you, the wearer, because it doesn’t have the chemicals in it, and the planet because it’s not throwaway.”

The plan is to do buying trips twice a year but also work with regional and local vendors to source, including artists such as pottery makers.

Pickart hopes to open later this summer and said he won’t be surprised if a busload of loyal Twin Cities customers arrive for the grand opening – they’re already planning it.

“I just think it’s going to be a really exciting thing for Sioux Falls,” he said, adding that he considers the future location at Cherapa “just over the top, and if I’m really honest, I don’t even know of a project like that in Minneapolis. It’s amazing.”