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Luggage Is His Bag

Tribune photo by JAY NOLAN

Bob King's downtown business, Luggage Service, repairs baggage and sells a ariety of travel products. The business was started by his great-grandfather, and King's father taught him the trade. The shop has been at its Nebraska Avenue location for 45 years.

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By KATHY STEELE

The Tampa Tribune

Published: May 28, 2008

SEMINOLE HEIGHTS - Broken luggage is stacked on Bob King's backroom shelves, on layover from hometowns named Hebron, Ky.; Battle Creek, Mich.; and Frisco, Texas.

Tags with owners' names and addresses dangle from strings. Brief descriptions of their needs are typed or hand-scrawled on paper: replace wheel handle, dangling pocket slide.

King takes the airlines' mishaps or the normal wear and tear of travel and makes luggage usable again.

It's a skill not so different in the mechanics but a long time removed from the days of steamer trunks and leather-bound luggage. Then, people sailed on ocean liners and rode in railroad cars. Now, baggage is all about cloth and synthetics and plastic wheels, and people drive, fly and cruise.

"My dad was an old trunk-maker," King said. "We know the old ways."

Nearly 90 years ago, King's great-grandfather, C.T. Wilson, opened Tampa-Peninsular Trunk Factory in downtown.

Over the years, the shop, which also sold vegetables, moved from Franklin Street to Cass Street and back to Franklin before relocating to 4121 N. Nebraska Ave. as Luggage Service. That was nearly 45 years ago.

King stepped into the family business 40 years ago at age 22 at the invitation of his father, Wilson. He came to it after serving in the Air Force and jobs with Western Electric and a company rebuilding C-130 planes headed for Vietnam.

He didn't expect to like it.

"My dad was just a really good teacher," King said. "We clicked. My dad was a worker. I'm a worker. He brought me up that way."

Wilson King worked until age 85. When he and his brother, Lofton, took the company reins in the 1930s, they made trunks and crafted alligator luggage with hides from a Plant City tanner. That was when downtown "was the place to go," Bob King said.

But times change, and King is finding it hard to keep an aging mom-and-pop business going. The 12,500-square-foot building is up for sale or lease, with King hoping to lease up to 5,500 square feet.

"This building can be cut in half with a knife," he said.

He'll slice it anyway that works and shift his business into the remaining space.

Briefly, three doctors considered opening a kidney dialysis clinic, but the finances did not work for them.

King is awaiting the next offer.

Banged Up, But Still Rolling

In 2001, he had the worst six months of his life. He learned he had cancer. In the midst of treatment, he was in a bidding war for a contract to handle repairs on Delta Air Line's baggage claims.

On Sept. 11, terrorists struck, and the airline industry - the bread and butter of luggage repair shops - felt the shock waves.

King, who was still in cancer treatment, lost out on the Delta contract.

The Internet hurt business, too.

"I've had people come here to feel and touch luggage and then order nine pieces off the Internet," he said. "It's a great tool, but it's very devastating to locally owned businesses. Anyone who doesn't know that is not in this world."

Even the repaved and redesigned Nebraska works against him, King said. New sidewalks and landscaping reduced his parking from 20 spaces to seven.

His sales dropped from a high of about $2.5 million in 1999 to about $600,000 last year. He sold a second shop in Atlanta and pared his Tampa employees by about half to 15.

"I've never worked as hard in my life," King said.

Slowly, it's paying off. The past year, he made a profit.

"We never have gone bankrupt," he said. "I don't believe in that."

He enjoys his work.

"When you're finished with something, you can look at it and see something done," he said. "You've got people happy because they can't believe that you could fix it."

David Morrow recently brought in a less-than-1-year-old suitcase, still under warranty. King popped a new wheel into place and replaced a strap within minutes.

Westchase resident Florence Curley bought luggage tags. She found the shop a couple of years ago when an airline sent her there to pick out replacement luggage.

"This shop has everything that you can find anywhere," she said.

King's business today is more retail than repair. There's new and used luggage, travel kits, purses, backpacks, pens, reading magnifiers and outlet converters for foreign travel.

But one of his biggest customers is Gator Cases, which sends musical instrument cases for repairs.

The Old Days

In his father's day, there were contracts with Tamiami Trailways buses and with train stations and then airlines. The company built a reputation throughout the Southeast and did business with Atlantic Coast Line and Seaboard Air Line railroads.

"We were known worldwide," King said.

The King brothers survived the Depression.

"They'd get tin cans and pound them flat," King said. "They'd become the trunk covers."

King has seen his own bad times.

"I've made it through everyone going out of business, coming back in business and going back out of business," he said. "I'm hanging on by the skin of my teeth, but I'm ready for a new plateau."

Reporter Kathy Steele can be reached at (813) 835-2103 or ksteele@tampatrib.com.

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