Hidden Gems of CLT: Colsenkeane Leather Goods & Provisions

CHARLOTTE, NC. — WCCB Charlotte’s Alexandra Elich visits Colsenkeane Leather Goods & Provisions on this week’s Hidden Gems of CLT.

Spending most of his career looking at a computer screen, at 40-years-old, Scott Hofert was looking for something different. “I had a lot of friends who would go off to work, and they would make something with their hands. I’d come home at the end of the day, and I worked with people and had meetings, but I have nothing to show for my work in terms of something tangible,” Hofert says.

He always loved leather, so he figured why not experiment and have some fun with a new hobby as a leather smith. In 2010, Hofert bought some leather hide tools and started fiddling around with them on his back porch with this two sons.

“Me in 10 million other people purchased an iPad from Apple, and the iPad shows up, and I have nothing to wrap it with. So I googled iPad cases; they didn’t exist at the time.”

Cue lightbulb moment.

“So I thought I go to my little table on my porch, made a little case for it, and my wife said you need to put that on Etsy and I did, and it lit up, and we were selling them faster than I can make them.”

Hofert started taking orders from his shed, then stitching orders on business trips. He knew it was time to move to something bigger. His first location in Plaza Midwood in 2012, then moving to the location in Elizabeth on East 7th Street in 2017. Calling it Colsenkeane Leather Goods and Provisions, the name combining his two son’s names.

Hofert says what he loves about leather; it can wrap meaningful things and be pervasive in all aspects of life.

“The casing is more meaningful than what you’re carrying at times. Because your technology or computers going to change, but that that could be with you your entire career. Think about leather is it changes with you and it shows how you use it.”