twin city sidewalks: After 58 Years, J.W. Hulme Disappears from West 7th and St. Clair

2019-08-26

After 58 Years, J.W. Hulme Disappears from West 7th and St. Clair

[The old West 7th factory.]

Last year, I was happy to finally lead a bike tour of "factories" along St. Clair Avenue, which I'd been thinking about for quite a while. It's a street that boasts a surprising number of manufacturing institutions, both large and small, and it was fun to visit a bunch of these places in an evening.

Well as sometimes happens with my tours, they can be a bit of a "kiss of death." Businesses, bars, or institutions occasionally disappear right after I bring a group to visit them. In the case of the St. Clair tour, it was J. W. Hulme, a leather bag manufacturer that had been on the corner of West 7th and St. Clair since 1960. They announced they'd be closing their factory last October, right after the tour. They stayed open for a few more months, but the building has been in mothballs for the last half a year.

Here is some info about J.W. Hulme that I'd found out in my research:

The company was named after John Willis Hulme, who started his first business in 1905 in downtown Saint Paul making a bunch of different canvas items. The company specialized in canvas awnings and tents.
The building on West 7th was built in 1960 when J.W. Hulme expanded. As a publicity stunt to celebrate the new factory the to camp out on the roof of the building for a weekend using Hulme material whenever possible.
In 1988 a bookkeeper “swindled” $33K from the company.
In the 1990s through the early 2010s, Hulme specialized in high-end canvas and hunting gear that was made specifically for Orvis, the fly-fishing brand.
J.W. Hulme was bought by an awning and canvas company guy named Gary Buermann in 2002. In 2005, a new CEO named Jen Guarino a former brand manager turned around the company. They received a boost when a couple of very influential people promoted the bags, and they were sold at places like Barneys Department Store in New York. With lots of debt, a private equity firm bailed them out in ’09.
As recently as last year, they employed dozens of highly-skilled sewers making their leather goods.

Sad to see a Saint Paul business close! It was a good run for J. W. Hulme, though. You can still visit their retail location on Grand Avenue, though their bags are now made elsewhere.

[Historic clippings follow.]