MartinPatrick3 came on the North Loop scene in 2008, a rare upscale retailer in the neighborhood. In the decade since, the men's store has helped establish the area as a destination, garnering write-ups in national media outlets such as Forbes and CNN for its unique mix of menswear, home goods and interior design services.
The store began as an extension of Walsh Design Group and ID Inside Design, the interior design company and home store of interior designer Greg Walsh. Those concepts were later folded into MartinPatrick3, which Walsh co-founded with Dana Swindler as a small boutique focusing on accessories, barware, furnishings and art with a male point of view.
"It feels like a lifetime ago," Walsh recalls. "Apparel wasn't remotely on my brain at the time." But when its customers began asking for clothing, the store experimented by picking up a shirting line. "It really took off," says Walsh — and marked the beginning of MartinPatrick's transformation into a full-fledged menswear store. MartinPatrick3 began carrying brands that were hard to find in the Twin Cities, such as Public School NYC, Railcar Fine Goods, Rodd & Gunn and Red Wing Heritage.
After Neiman Marcus closed its downtown Minneapolis location in 2013, it picked up luxury Italian suiting brand Isaia, as well as that retailer's top salesman in all of its men's departments across the country, Todd Fliginger. It also added an apothecary, a shoe salon, a fine jewelry boutique and a barber shop, expanding to 17,000 square feet — nearly the size of a full city block.
While much of the attention that the store receives is for its menswear, home goods and interior design are still integral parts of the MP3 equation. "There's so much cross-pollination," Walsh says. "Customers who shop the store become clients of the design studio, and a lot of our interior design referrals become customers of the apparel side of the store. "
Later this summer, the store will expand once again. The retailer is in the process of building out an additional 4,000 square feet of space, which will include a bigger barbershop, a VIP fitting lounge and a larger tailor shop. They'll knock down a wall and retool other spaces for more retail. At a whopping 22,000 square feet, the store will have expanded as far as the building's footprint will allow — something that's become a running joke among Walsh and his staff.
"What are we going to do if we can't expand?" he muses. "But I feel like we have a lot we can do with the space we have. We can keep fine tuning and reinventing. To be honest, I'm kind of relieved — we don't have to do another expansion in six months."
