Two gold-lettered staples of North Main Street have come upon divergent crossroads, potentially leading to their closures, after decades downtown.
The business owners, Mark Knipe of Mark Knipe Goldsmiths and Andrew Hatch of Lotions ‘n Potions, said they’re calmly planning for changes more than a month away at their shops, which have been located on the ground floor of Main Street for 28 and 10 years, respectively.
Each entrepreneur believes his business still fills an important niche in Concord, but as of yet, no definite succession plan is in place as Knipe moves toward retirement and Hatch and his wife relocate to focus on the service aspect of their business.
Knipe and Hatch, who spoke separately about their businesses, have the same hope for their shops: that they’ll continue to serve the loyal customer bases developed over a combined 38 years.
For Knipe and his wife, Heidi, that path appears more clear. Two longtime employees of the goldsmith – its manager and gemologist – are trying to find a way to take over.
“We’re hoping our two people, who are very experienced and have a lot of connections in the industry, are going to be able to continue in some way,” Knipe said.
Hatch said he’s hoping someone will come forward who wants to keep offering his specialty bath and body products on Main Street.
“I feel it would be a running start for somebody with that kind of idea in mind,” he said. “I know that a lot of people will be sad to see our signature lines disappear if they weren’t here. . . . We would dearly love to retain a home for them, so we’ll see.”
Knipe, 73, has been working full-time as a jeweler since 1973, first out of his Contoocook home, then on South State Street and finally from 2 Capital Plaza since 1988.
He said he never planned to retire as soon as he reached 65, but for the last two years, he’s been trying to work out a succession plan.
“It hasn’t come to anything definite yet,” he said. “Right now, we’re selling off inventory and we’re going to review the situation in January. . . . We have a lot of custom work that we’ve committed to do, so we’re going to finish that up and see where we are with that.”
After growing up in Pennsylvania, Knipe said he moved to New Hampshire in 1967, when he got a job teaching at Concord High School. He’d only been to the city once or twice before his job interview, he said, although he’d long visited his family’s lake house in the Granite State.
“I said, ‘I go here in the summer to go to the lake. I go here in the winter to ski. Why don’t I live in New Hampshire?’ ” he said.
Teaching art at the high school for six years, he coached football and track and started a jewelry program. His former students have become customers and employees at his store, which he opened after he made the full-time shift to jewelry and the business became too large for his home.
While the number of jewelers nationwide is in decline, Knipe said he’s been able to compete by emphasizing custom work.
“The niche that we developed was custom jewelry, have it your way or you think it up and we’ll help you design it,” he said. “That’s been a big part of our business, but you can’t survive on just that, so we’ve tried to represent other brands or designers that are compatible with what we do.”
The two employees who Knipe hopes will take over the business have worked there for nine and 12 years, one as a manager with an extensive background in the fashion industry and the other a certified gemologist.
“We’re not going to move to Arizona or anything, so I would still like to help out and be of some use,” Knipe said. “My wife and I, Heidi, just don’t want to be the boss and deal with all the FICA and 401(k)s and health insurance and all that.”
Knipe said almost all the one-of-a-kind pieces designed at his shop have been sold in his retirement sale, but he’s offering what he called “very aggressive pricing” on some of the remaining inventory.
Hatch said he first came to Concord only to file paperwork registering the name of his business. But then he was “charmed by the downtown,” he said, and eventually opened up shop at 25 N. Main St.
That was in 2006, when according to a “gap analysis” of Main Street, a bath and body store was among the top five businesses that planners wanted to attract to downtown, he said.
Hatch said he positioned his store as “a unique skin-care experience,” offering rare lines of products but also services, such as facials, waxing, pedicures and makeup.
“The combination of what we’ve got is quite unusual,” he said. “That’s really why we started it in the first place.”
But now they’re trying to pare back, as Hatch dedicates more effort to his career in the energy sector and his wife, Julie, focuses on her skin-care and makeup services, which she’ll offer at Simplicity Salon, 27 S. Main St.
“We feel the partnership at Simplicity is ideal,” he said. “She wants to do that very well and not have quite such a broad range of responsibilities. With retail, we feel there’s almost too much to do – to try to do everything at once and do it well.”
Other service providers who operate within Lotions ‘n Potions will contact their clients about their future plans, Hatch said.
Hatch said he doesn’t expect any changes at the business until the end of January.
“It hasn’t been an easy decision. Julie and I both care immensely for the downtown,” he said. “It’s leaving us with a heavier heart in the knowledge we will be departing as Main Street moves into this whole new, exciting period.”
Holiday decorations, carolers, a s’mores station and Santa – it must be Midnight Merriment.
The Intown Concord event that invites residents to stay up late downtown and welcome in the holiday shopping season begins at 5:30 p.m. Friday.
It’s the 24th annual event – but the first on the new-look Main Street – and more than 2,000 people are expected to attend, according to a press release issued by Intown Concord.
A full listing of events, which are scheduled through midnight, is available at intownconcord.org/events/midnight-merriment.
(Nick Reid can be reached at 369-3325, nreid@cmonitor.com or on Twitter at @NickBReid.)