2020 Catalog | Springfield Leather Co.

BRANDNEWS

As I sit here to preparing to write my contribution to the 2020 Brand News, my immediate thought was to

With our website still being active, as well as our phones, social media, etc. we were busier than gophers being buried in soft dirt! For the next 30 days or so there were roughly 15 people in the store working 7 days a week, then a few more folks were called back in, bringing the head count to approximately 20. Nearly everyone here was now working in positions we have never worked in before. Even Becky was back! She and Kevin working alongside each other, just like the old times, was so nice to see. Boy have I missed her smiling face! Thank you, Beck.  During this time, we processed, on average, 400 to 600 orders a day, that meant that there were approximately 2,800+ orders being processed and shipped per week! We acquired, on average, 60+ new customers a day! A DAY… placing orders! THE PHONES WERE CRAZY! In April alone we gained 1,928 new customers! We were doing more business (and work) with 15 – 20 people, than we were doing with 90+ employees! We ultimately became designated as an Essential Business because of the work we do with the Federal Prison System, as well as the State Facilities, and because we are essential in providing the supplies to keep other small businesses going. This enabled us to offer curbside service! Curbside opened a whole new world. And we were able to bring on a few more people. SLC management made sure we had all the caffeine and sugar we could possibly consume… in addition to that, lunch was provided for us every day. By providing us with lunch ($200 - $400 a day), Rusty reasoned that he could help us stay healthy by reducing any exposure we would have otherwise risked had we all been going out for lunch, and help support our LOCAL businesses. Which is pretty cool. There were no breaks. Walking into 1,000+ orders a day has become the norm. Eventually, the Stay at Home Order was lifted, but rather than open our doors right away, Rusty and the team decided to keep them closed an extra week to make sure once we opened the doors, it would be as safe as possible for everyone.

talk about the global health crisis that spread around the world like wildfire. Maybe talk about the impact this has had on everything, literally everything we had taken for granted in our everyday lives.

It’s no doubt that 2020 has hit us hard… and it hit some harder than others. The devastation at home and around the world is felt in the hearts of all of us. And the world has been following the whole situation through the eyes of the media. Heroes are everywhere. I would like to use this opportunity to share my experience of working at SLC, and witnessing unlikely heroes in action, during the mandatory Stay at Home Order of Missouri… But first, a bit of context. As an employee, it’s quite easy to take our fellow co-workers for granted. But it’s even easier to take our management team for granted. I mean it’s simple, they tell us what to do and keep everyone in line, as well as keep us up-to-date on all the goings on in the store and in the leather world, and everything just runs smoothly along because of it, right? Wrong. I have never given much thought to the decision- making aspect of their jobs, and until recently, I did not realize just how difficult some of those decisions actually are. For instance, March 25th. That was the day that we had the gut-wrenching store meeting where Rusty, struggling through his tears as he announced that we were all being laid-off, and that they weren’t sure of what the future was going to hold. Lindsey took her turn to thank all of us and ended up in tears as well. Liz could not speak at all, I am not even sure I saw Tony… Kevin, always optimistic, said kind words of encouragement... but even still,

you saw the emotion in his eyes. Even Chris struggled

to keep a dry eye. I walked away feeling even more sorry for

And we began calling a few more people back

in. There went our free lunches!  On the bright side, we were able to qualify for the Payroll Protection program, which meant that even

the situation they were put in, than worrying about my own. And just like that, it was over. In one afternoon, our staff was reduced from 90+ employees to 12 employees working in-store, just to keep the lights on (as Rusty said), and 3 of us working from home helping with customer service…

though the rest of the employees could not come in to work, they were still able to receive their paycheck. At the time of writing this, we have

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