Video: The Smile Brand on YouTube.

Wayne Ramocan is an artist for the Smile Brand, a Detroit-based apparel and accessories company that believes the world can be changed by spreading joy one smile at a time.

The Milwaukee Junction district was the launch pad of Detroit’s auto industry. Today, it is the home to the Smile Brand, a company with aspirations matching those of the titans who built global businesses there. We are helping to enhance the neighborhood through art and smiles.

The Smile Brand will open its first bricks-and-mortar location in Milwaukee Junction Saturday, Oct. 24. Our intent is to share smiles with the world, while supporting art, community and the transformation of this place.

We funded the store, located inside an existing art gallery, through Kiva Zip, a micro-loan platform that allows everyday people to fund small businesses. Knight Foundation and the Detroit Local Initiatives Support Corp. provided matching funds, which tripled the amount raised through crowdfunding.

The complex now consists of the Smile store, the gallery and “The Coliseum,” a Knight Arts Challenge-winning theater space and cultural hub. Since 2013, artists from the gallery have painted murals, hosted design competitions and transformed the formerly vacant block into a destination worth visiting. The gallery has become a hub for the community and a bastion of culture. Founder Phil Simpson, commenting on the gallery as the new home for the store, said, “It’s more than art, people feel free here. This is a safe space for people to be inspired, create and express themselves.”

Businesses today must consider how they are contributing to the places and people around them. As an artist, Simpson naturally considers his effect on his surroundings. In 2013, he painted smiling faces on blighted homes in his Eastside Detroit neighborhood. The paintings helped to put a smile on his neighbors’ faces and friends demanded shirts with the same images. It was then that he realized the potential of the smile. With a windfall of attention, the following year he took the Smile Brand everywhere with a pop-up store and appearances on television and at music festivals.

Now the smiles are at work in Milwaukee Junction. Decades ago the first Ford Model T was built at the neighboring Piquette Avenue Plant. Other auto companies joined Ford in the neighborhood, but when the economy dried up, they left the area, leaving behind blighted buildings and vacant land. But Simpson had a vision beyond the blight. He believed Milwaukee Junction would be a good fit for a permanent store location. Nearby, significant changes are taking place, including a hospital developing large swaths of land and the opening in 2016 of a new streetcar line and its operations hub, the Penske Tech Center. For Simpson, the location provides “the perfect opportunity for growth and to make a difference.”

Music, automobiles and military equipment have proven that Detroit has perfected the art of making and exporting goods to the world. We intend to have the same global effect while contributing to the Milwaukee Junction community.

From the new location, our company will manufacture and sell dry goods and home accessories. Smile products are made in the store providing employment for students and supporting artists in their careers. This past summer, our company hosted an intern from the College for Creative Studies and hired the student as an employee. It is fitting that artists inside of an art gallery run the Smile Brand. “As artists, we are frequently aiming to move people through our art,” Simpson said. “Our products will do the same.”

The future for Milwaukee Junction is bright. With new businesses opening, a coming streetcar line and the bolstering of culture through art, we have found the perfect home for our company to share smiles with the world.

If you’re interested in the success of cities, consider applying to the Knight Cities Challenge, a $5 million initiative to make the 26 Knight communities more successful. For the latest information on the challenge, be sure to follow @knightfdn and #knightcities on Twitter or sign up for our email newsletter. You can send questions to [email protected]. And you can peruse the winners of the first Knight Cities Challenge and apply – by noon ET on Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2015 – at knightcities.org.