One by one they lined up in the chilly Thursday morning drizzle to enter Florine Mark's modern Farmington Hills home on the first day of the three-day estate sale for metro Detroit's beloved Weight Watchers entrepreneur.
Once the massive wooden front door opened at 10 a.m., though, that sense of calm burst into a Black Friday kind of chaos. Shoving, jostling, you name it. Some 50 or so people had already lined up.
Some argued that numbers scribbled on pink Post-it notes supposedly guaranteed they wouldn't have to wait. Earlier, I saw a woman, who some said was not an employee of the estate sale company, jump out of her car to hand out a No. 23 on a note to one woman who arrived before 8:30 a.m. that morning. Who knows why? But she was first in line at the door when I saw her there before 10 a.m.
Let the shopping — and, yes, the chance to reminisce about a warm-hearted woman who touched many lives — begin.
A lifetime of clothes, shoes, artwork and memories
The event was billed online as the "Once in a Lifetime Estate Sale of Florine Mark."
Terri Stearn, an art appraiser and co-owner of Le Shoppe Estate Sales in Keego Harbor, said Wednesday evening that she's never seen anything like this sale, which includes artwork from both Mark's home and the Weight Watchers offices in Farmington Hills, dinnerware, glass goblets, sets of china, and a massive selection of suits, animal print jackets, workout clothes, furs, hats, lingerie, shoes, suede boots, belts and bags.
A 1970 George Segal "Girl On a Chair" was near a rack of fur coats. The furs were priced at $400 and the Segal was priced at $4,000 on Thursday.
The estate company has worked six months on the Florine Mark estate sale — including already selling some clothing to a retailer that specializes in vintage clothing in Los Angeles and New York. A few suits, Stearn said, are heading to The Henry Ford museum in Dearborn for a special exhibit.
Even after all that, when you're blinded by all those clothes, you'd still think you're walking into Saks Fifth Avenue instead of Mark's living room.
All those Escada suits, a classy high-end designer brand built in the late 1970s, priced on Thursday at $80. Those size 6 Diane Von Furstenberg dresses at $60. Racks and racks of colorful sweaters and jackets, and, of course, a decent selection of black pants that show up in every working woman's closet. Except I spotted one pinstripe Valentino, which clearly isn't in everyone's closet.
She had every color in every shade in every style.
I had to ask Stearn bluntly: Is all that stuff really hers? All those St. John belts priced at $40 and others at $20? The mostly size 8 shoes at $30? She said yes.
"I just think she didn't get rid of anything since the 1980s," Stearn speculated. "She kept it all."
How big was her closet?
Not surprisingly, Mark's color-coded closet was bigger than some starter homes. Stearn once saw that closet when she was appraising some artwork years ago, and Mark made her agree at that time to not disclose anything about the massive size or selection.
But now after Mark's death, Stearn told me that she felt it was OK to discuss. She estimated that the closet was 2,000 square feet. It will be remodeled into extra bedrooms. The house isn't up for sale. One of Mark's daughters will own it, Stearn said, keeping it as a gathering place for Florine Mark's much-loved big family.
"The family wants everything gone at this point," Stearn said.
Her large family, which includes seven children, their spouses and a long list of grandchildren and great-grandchildren, had a chance to relive their memories and take what they'd like from the home after Mark died in October 2023 at age 90.
A key step in any estate sale, Stearn said, is making sure the family takes what they want early in the process. That way your sister from New Mexico doesn't step in a day before the sale only to grab a chair or an antique mirror after the item has been featured online to promote the sale.
How the Florine Mark estate sale works
Items, Stearn said, are priced to move. No refunds, sold as is. A service charge of 3% was being added to all payments made by credit card, or PayPal. Delivery can be arranged for a fee. Estate sale aficionados expected more wheeling and dealing on the weekend.
Only a smaller group of people — say 15 to 20 — were to be let in at once, especially when it came to viewing the jewelry and clothing.
The estate sale was to run through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at 31550 Franklin Fairway in Farmington Hills. It's possible the estate sale will add Sunday hours, depending on what's left.
Big signs were posted on walls to disclose the pricing. Evening gowns, $100. Miscellaneous sweaters, $20. Shawls and ponchos, $30. Security cameras were installed to avoid theft. No bags, large purses, or backpacks were allowed.
A mannequin dressed in one of Florine Mark's pink suits greeted you inside the hallway.
Estate sales typically break down to a 65-35 split. The client keeps 65% and the company running the estate sale gets 35%, according to Deborah Slobin, also a co-owner of Le Shoppe Estate Sales.
Slobin, who has been in the business 12 years, said the company also has a consignment store, called Le Shoppe Modern on Orchard Lake Road in Keego Harbor, where many good pieces of art and other higher-end items that don't sell in the estate sale will go and be up for sale later. The company also hosts quarterly auctions where items that weren't sold in an estate sale can later be sold.
Estate sales, Slobin told me, are booming, as some people die and others downsize.
Slobin readily admits: "Most estate sales don't have this much clothing."
I asked her how many items were up for sale, but she could not give me an answer.
How much anyone might want your old clothes could be subject to debate. Someone who died after a long life in their 90s often might not have designer duds or clothing that younger people would want to wear, maybe a few special handbags. Some shoppers cannot fit into a size 6.
Many people, though, still have treasures in their likely much smaller closets, that someone will be thrilled to get.
One woman who died in her 50s, Stearn told me, had some amazing clothes in an estate sale, including super high-end items that she bought on RealReal, an online marketplace for unloading pre-owned luxury goods.
Who was Florine Mark?
But Florine Mark isn't just another shopaholic. She attended one charity event after another, held fundraisers in her massive basement, spoke regularly on television, was the host of a radio show called "Remarkable Women," and ran a major business. I even saw her show up in glamorous style once to speak at a Weight Watchers meeting in a down-to-earth Royal Oak shopping center to honor a very popular Weight Watchers leader. The room was packed.
Some speculated that Mark had so many suits and clothes because she wanted to look fresh for various appearances and not just wear the same old thing. While some items, including one pair of sparkly, strappy sandals, clearly enjoyed their days on the dance floor, I did have to wonder how many times, maybe, she wore some of those George Simonton suits. Some items looked brand new, even if they were, perhaps, out of the 1980s.
Mark, a Detroit native, wasn't shy about telling audiences that she regularly traveled to meetings for a newly conceived Weight Watchers in New York in the 1960s. "There, she lost 50 pounds and found her life's work," according to a bio for her induction into the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame in 2004.
She talked about struggling so much with her weight before then, that once she nearly overdosed on diet pills. She lost the weight, kept it off, as the ads used to like to say, and went on to become at one time the largest franchise holder of Weight Watchers International.
She held her first Weight Watchers meeting in Detroit where 30 people attended, and ultimately became the president and CEO of Weight Watchers Group Inc. Her company, The WW Group Inc., once employed more than 4,200 people, according to the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame biography.
In 2003, Mark sold eight franchises in the northeast and central United States to WW International for a reported $181 million.
In 2021, Mark sold the last of her franchise business, which included Michigan and parts of Canada, to the parent company.
Her career included many milestones, such as once serving as the chair of the Detroit Branch of the Federal Reserve Board of Chicago. One of her passions, according to her bio, was the Seeds of Peace, a program designed to bring together children in conflicted countries, such as Arab and Israeli teenagers, to help foster feelings of goodwill and teach conflict resolution. She also shared her talents with the Children’s Hospital of Michigan, Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit and March of Dimes.
Why many went to the Farmington Hills estate sale
Some who came to the estate sale Thursday wanted to see a piece of Michigan history, and, OK, maybe get a small piece of jewelry where some items were priced from $18 to $52.
"Honestly, I came to see the house," said Lisa Glazer, of West Bloomfield, who arrived before 8:40 a.m. Thursday right after she dropped one of her teens at school.
"I don't really need anything."
Glazer, 54, who shops estate sales regularly, said she would buy something if she liked it.
Later after she got in the door, she told me she loved the "great shoe options" but the shoes were too small for her feet. She didn't see much jewelry that she liked, and the artwork was out of her price range.
Did she buy anything?
Glazer said she found a fake orchid in the kitchen that didn't have a price tag. When she went to ask about a price, she said, someone said, "How about a buck?"
She bought it.
Glazer was happy with her purchase, but she was frustrated with how rude some people were minutes after the door opened. "That sale was crazy," she said. "People were so obnoxious."
Some men, she said, pushed through the door and one even called her a nasty name.
Yet not everyone was there to rush the doors or even get their hands on a massive bronze for a few thousand dollars.
More than a few wanted to share a few more moments with Florine.
Marlene Rosenberg, of Birmingham, welcomed me into her car Thursday morning before the sale began so I could get out of the rain to talk about how she loved going to estate sales but also loved Florine.
"She was a go-go-go," Rosenberg said. "She loved life to the fullest, extremely positive. She was beautiful, too."
Rosenberg, 77, a retired hair stylist, has a foundation called Marlene’s Wigs with Love, which provides wigs to women diagnosed with cancer to give them "the confidence to thrive."
She remembers Mark sending her a beautiful card to celebrate her work with the foundation, a card she's kept. She remembers talking to her at various events, visiting her home for events, and sharing advice on how to deal with life's challenges.
She wanted to see, maybe, if she could get some chartreuse bowls that she saw online at the estate sale for her new Palm Beach home. Just a memory of Florine.
The buzz has built gradually for the sale, and some talked even before Thursday a good deal about the woman who dressed so well.
Slobin said she met one woman at the consignment store on Wednesday who told her that she planned to come to the estate sale because of her warm memories of Florine. The woman told a story of going through a divorce some 20 years ago and taking herself out for a spa day to cheer herself up.
Florine Mark, according to the story, was at that spa and saw the woman's sadness, knowing immediately that she wasn't in a good place. Mark not only talked with the woman but then told her that she was inviting her to dinner with her husband that night. Mark did all she could to build up that woman's confidence to keep going.
"I'm going to this sale just to buy a piece of her," Slobin recalled the woman telling her.
Bea Thomas, of Detroit, expressed a similar sentiment as she stood under a bright yellow umbrella in the rain, waiting for the doors to open Thursday.
It wasn't all about gawking at the stuff or picking up a deal on designer duds. For some, it was about reliving a moment when they met someone who truly seemed to care. Someone who held a hand and genuinely talked with them.
Thomas remembered meeting Florine Mark at Olga's Kitchen in Birmingham, perhaps when the restaurant first opened its doors. She saw her at various dinners over the years and remembered her kindness.
Thomas, 77, told me that she doesn't need any more clothes; she has plenty. But she did want to see if she could get something small, "something she looked at every day."
Then, Thomas said, "when I look at it, I'll remember her."
Contactpersonal finance columnist Susan Tompor:stompor@freepress.com.Follow her on X (Twitter)@tompor.
