Claims of unpaid bills piling up for The M Den
Claims of unpaid bills are mounting for Ann Arbor-based The M Den, known for decades as the official sports merchandise retailer of the University of Michigan athletic department.
The M Den, which has multiple stores in Ann Arbor as well as downtown Detroit and 12 Oaks Mall in Novi, has been facing lawsuits and threatened lawsuits from several vendors and financing firms, including legal proceedings from Briarwood Mall for nonpayment of rent.
In one lawsuit, a sportswear manufacturer in Kansas claims that The M Den and its co-owner and president, Scott Hirth, of Carleton, owe more than $4 million.
In another, a New York-based firm claimed The M Den owed $437,000 in March after The M Den allegedly defaulted on a merchant cash advance agreement.
And an attorney for Briarwood Mall in Ann Arbor — the location of one The M Den store — sued The M Den in March for nonpayment of rent. Details of that case in 15th District Court, since dismissed, were not immediately available Thursday, and the mall's attorney declined to comment.
In addition, the publisher of a small company in Wisconsin claims The M Den owes nearly $26,000 for recent shipments of books that chronicled the U-M football team's 2023 national championship season.
Peter Clark, publisher of KCI Sports Publishing, which has five employees, said the special edition book, "Blue Breakthrough," was done in collaboration with the Detroit News, so some of the money is also for the newspaper.
Clark said KCI will move forward with a lawsuit if The M Den continues to ignore its bills. He said he is surprised by The M Den's apparent money woes, considering the amount of U-M merchandise it must have sold in the past year.
“You just had a national championship season. What we keep trying to figure out is: Where’s the money going?" Clark said in a phone interview Thursday.
News of The M Den's mounting bills was first reported by the Detroit News.
A person who answered the phone for The M Den on Thursday afternoon referred all comments to Hirth, who didn't respond to an email.
A representative for U-M also did not respond to Free Press messages Thursday.
The M Den's website touts its position as "the official retailer of the University of Michigan Athletic Department," and the athletic department's website displays a link to The M Den as the "official team store."
“It’s just unfortunate," Clark said. "You don’t expect to have to worry about getting paid from a company that is the official merchandise retailer for the University of Michigan.”
The M Den was started in 1976 by Scott Hirth's late father, David Hirth, and his father's friend, Doug Horning. The pair bought the former Stein & Goetz Sports Goods, which they later refocused to U-M sports apparel and rebranded as The M Den.
The M Den has been the official merchandiser of the U-M athletic department since the early 1990s, with the exception of a short break in 2009, when The M Den lost the contract to Dallas-based eSports Partners Inc. The M Den regained the contract the following year amid fan complaints over the new company, including with filling orders.
$4M+ bill
The Kansas-based sportswear manufacturer, Branded Custom Sportswear, in December sued The M Den and Scott Hirth in federal court, claiming more than $4 million in unpaid bills for merchandise. Lawyers for The M Den and Hirth have denied the allegations, saying a big batch of merchandise was late to arrive, and when it did, in early December 2022, football season was already mostly over.
The lawsuit brought by the New York financial firm, Alpha Equity Fund, was withdrawn in April. But several days later, another firm, Friesing Investments, brought a lawsuit against The M Den. That case is pending in the 15th District Court in Ann Arbor.
SEC settlement
Unrelated to The M Den's business, in 2008 Scott Hirth was ordered to pay $418,150 as part of a settlement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that concerned business activities at what was then Ann Arbor-based ProQuest.
The SEC alleged that Hirth, then a finance executive for the company's information and learning division, had inflated the company's earnings from 2001 through much of 2005. Hirth and ProQuest did not admit or deny the SEC's allegations.
As part of the settlement, Hirth was to be permanently barred from being an officer or director of a public company and from working as an accountant before the SEC.
Contact JC Reindl: 313-378-5460 or jcreindl@freepress.com. Follow him on X @jcreindl
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Claims of unpaid bills piling up for The M Den
