Katie Bowman Coleman, the second-generation president and CEO of Bowman Chevrolet of Clarkston, started her business career in the fashion world but quickly pivoted to automotive retail. From there, she set her sights on expanding her family’s business.
Early in life, the daughter of John Bowman wanted no part of the auto industry; she spent her high school days working at Saks Fifth Avenue. Following graduation from Denison University in Ohio, Coleman took a job at the Ralph Lauren Polo factory store in Jackson Hole, Wyo. From there, she went to the Ralph Lauren office in New York, then Sydney, Australia, and she finally came back to Michigan.
All the while, her father was asking her to work at the dealership. Finally, in 1993, she acquiesced. “I fell in love with it almost right away,” Coleman admits. “It was fascinating to me. A dealership has all of the same activity as a clothing store; it’s just that a car is bigger than a jacket.”
She took over the reins of the dealership at the end of 2011. Her father passed away in May 2012.
“I had a vision for expansion as soon as I started working here,” Coleman says.
In 2013, she added the Bowman Isuzu Commercial Truck franchise to the operation. Four years later, she acquired property on either side of the dealership. One side became an employee parking lot and the other half was transformed into a used-car facility.
Later, she purchased the former Randy Hosler Buick GMC showroom on Dixie Highway in Clarkston and changed the name to the Bowman Auto Center. It’s home to the Isuzu truck franchise, Bowman Pre-Owned, and the Bowman Chevrolet service department and body shop.
In May of last year, Coleman acquired Chevrolet of Clinton, which is a small community located west of Ann Arbor and just east of the Irish Hills. The business is now Bowman Chevrolet of Clinton.
“It’s a smaller community, but it’s been an important location for decades, starting in the 1950s,” Coleman says. “The opportunity came up and it was the right time and the right price, and I was able to grab it.”
When the Bowman team took over in Clinton, the location was selling around 30 vehicles each month. “Now we’re into the 40s, getting closer to 50,” Coleman reported late last year.
By contrast, Bowman Chevrolet of Clarkston sells between 250 and 300 vehicles per month. “We’re just getting started in Clinton, but things are going well,” she says.
