Springfield Leather Company expands store on Glenstone

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The majority of Kevin and Becky Hopkins' customers are something of a captive audience: more than half of them are inmates in correctional facilities all over the United States.|ret||ret||tab|

The Hopkinses own the Springfield Leather Company, 1463 S. Glenstone. They purchased the store in March 1999 when they learned that Tandy Leather, then owner of the store, had decided to close all of its retail locations.|ret||ret||tab|

The inmates mostly buy leather dyes and hardware to make such items as wallets, belts and purses.|ret||ret||tab|

"Prisoners can qualify to be in a craft or hobby area," Kevin Hopkins said. "They use our tools to make products and then sell them to the other inmates."|ret||ret||tab|

Hopkins said he wrote a letter in 1999, to the few inmate customers the store had at the time.|ret||ret||tab|

"I told them we wanted to start a lea-ther supply inmate business," he said. "We sent them a list of sale items. The next month, we went from 10 customers who are inmates to 20 customers. Today, we have over 7,000 customers, both men and women, who are inmates. We saw some trends in the leather industry, in 1999 that indicated there would be a slowdown. We wanted to do something about that."|ret||ret||tab|

The rest of the Hopkinses' business comes from customers in their retail store and orders that come from their Web site, www.springfieldleather.com. |ret||ret||tab|

The Hopkinses have 3,700 square feet of store space and they are expanding to a total of 6,500. Heinz |ret||ret||tab|

Construction is the contractor on the project, and the architect is Richard Hardy.|ret||ret||tab|

Part of the additional space, 1,500 square feet, is being added to the back of the store. This area will be used for the expanding mail-order business. Con-struction on that addition already has begun. |ret||ret||tab|

"The workers are in the process of pouring the slab," Hopkins said. "They've done the plumbing, and the cement block has been laid." Springfield Leather Company also is expanding into the space just south of the store, 1465 S. Glenstone, which now is occupied by Steno-Craft Business Machines.|ret||ret||tab|

The Hopkinses will use the extra space to expand their retail sales department.|ret||ret||tab|

Hopkins said he's pleased about the need to have extra store space.|ret||ret||tab|

"We have the best business problem we could possibly have," he said. "We have more business than we can do."|ret||ret||tab|

Right now, the Hopkinses employ 12 people. Nine of them work solely on the mail-order business and process 80 to 100 mail orders a day.|ret||ret||tab|

Hopkins said he believes the store is growing physically and in sales numbers because of its targeted advertising plan and a greater Internet presence.|ret||ret||tab|

While Springfield Leather Company is expanding its existing site, there are no plans to add a second store in Spring-field, or anywhere else, at least for now.|ret||ret||tab|

"I'd be content just to feel I had a grasp on this store," he said. "We're so busy it's incredible."|ret||ret||tab|

Springfield Leather Company is open 9 a.m.-6 p.m. Monday through Saturday.[[In-content Ad]]