Springfield Special Products sticks to vinyl adaptation

Constant innovation has served Springfield Special Products well over the last 20 years. What started with production of vinyl bags for holding dry materials has turned into a multifaceted family-run enterprise with revenues approaching $1 million. The company creates and sells the bags along with trucking tarps and straps, RV skirts and the newest signature product, The-Blob.

Bag business

Ivan Paul “Jack” Hunt started the company making reusable industrial-grade bags when he moved here from Texas in 1985. Gus Littiken was a financial partner at the time.

“We were making a bag that no one else in the U.S. made,” said Vice President Lorie Latimer, Hunt’s daughter who has worked for the company since 1986.

“Most all of the other bags on the market you use them once, and then you throw them away,” she said.

Hunt is now retired, and the company rests in the hands of Latimer and her husband, Steve, who bought Springfield Special Products in 1991.

These Food and Drug Administration-approved reusable bags hold up to eight tons of various materials – from onion soup to blasting compounds for salt mines – acting as fabric silos, Latimer said. They could be used for up to seven years.

However inventive Hunt’s initial design, it was soon apparent that a bag consumers needed to replace at the most every five years was not going to sustain his company for long.

“It was pretty much starving us in the beginning – we needed to find something else. So we got into the trucking end of things,” Latimer said. “We started working with companies like Prime, building tarps and tie-down straps, and then we got into working with contractors making manufacturing slings.

Everything we do here has spun off of the bags because we use vinyl for both bags and tarps, and webbing that we use in the bags went into the slings.”

Unusual requests

The versatility of the vinyl materials has led to a number of interesting opportunities. Steve Latimer, who serves as president, has designed a number of oddities for customers through the years.

“Probably one of the most unusual jobs was designing elephant boots for the Dickerson Park Zoo. We’ve done netting for boat hulls, a whirlpool for a horse’s leg,” he said.

Lorie Latimer added, “We make industrial-grade ski tubes for camps, slings for injured cows – you wouldn’t believe some of the requests we get in here.”

Here comes The-Blob

One such oddity has turned into a business staple -– The-Blob. The-Blob product line started in 1986, when a Kanakuk Kamps staff member brought an unusual item to Springfield Special Products.

Kanakuk’s Construction Maintenance Coordinator Vicki Grisham said, “It originated as a very old army blob – it was a bladder out of something. They repaired it, aired it up and that’s how The-Blob got started, as a fun thing at camp. All of my kids have been to camp, and they rank it as one of the most fun things.”

Springfield Special Products improved upon the design, and The-Blob – a large, colorful, air-filled pouch – was born. Lorie Latimer describes The-Blob, now a trademarked product, as something “you just have to see.”

For liability reasons, The-Blob is sold exclusively to camps. At these camps, The-Blob is situated under a high platform. One child sits near the end of The-Blob, and another leaps onto it from a platform above, launching the other child into the water. “They love doing it. It’s a fun part of the overall experience of camp,” said Grisham.

Springfield Special Products has sold around a thousand Blobs to camps all over the world, including Camp Barnabas in Purdy and some in Japan and Greece, Latimer said. Walt Disney even commissioned one for the movie “Heavyweights.”

Latimer said that due to factors in the economy, when one area of business falters another steps up.

“Specializing has kept us going all of these years. We just try to keep something different going all of the time,” Latimer said.

During the next 20 years, the Latimers hope to pass the business on to their children. Their daughter, Sarah Osburn, has worked for the company for 13 years. Osburn began in production and now manages sales and marketing.

“They started me in the back making minimum wage. I had to prove myself to them and to the staff,” she said.

“I’m so glad they did that, because now I feel comfortable doing pretty much everything.”

Son Eric Latimer, a captain with the Springfield Fire Department, also assists his family as needed by attending local trade shows and helping with computer problems.

“It’s a family business,” Lorie Latimer said. “Hopefully in another 20 years Steve and I will get to retire, and Sarah will run the company. We hope one of these days the grandkids will even want to come in.”

Springfield Special Products is preparing to launch a new Web site complete with an online catalog and a new product line – an RV skirting kit.

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