Thomas Wolfe was wrong, you can go home again. John Hepworth's the proof.
After 30 years as a retail clothier, Hepworth has returned to Bountiful's Main Street, where he launched his first business nearly 30 years ago. This time he's staying for good.Or is he?.
"Come to think of it, I've said that about every store I've opened," quipped Hepworth from his latest location at 144-148 S. Main, where he and his wife, Mary, run Johnstown LTD, a clothing store with women's fashions on one side and men's on the other.
But his intentions are to stay put this time, Hepworth assures. "They say three moves is as good as a fire . . . I don't know, somehow this place just feels right."
He should know. Hepworth launched his first store here in 1969, a men's apparel shop located just a few doors north of his new facility.
That store, initially dubbed The Raiment ("What a goofy name that was," reflects Hepworth) was quickly changed to Hepworth's, and he began to build a clientele who favored traditional menswear over polyester shirts and bell-bottoms - a fashion statement that will forever mark the '70s as a decade of questionable taste.
When the ZCMI Center opened in downtown Salt Lake City, Hepworth heard the siren song of the big time and moved Hepworth's to the glittering new mall, where he stayed for 12 years.
When a man offered to buy Hepworth's from him in 1985, Hepworth thought about it for maybe five minutes and then handed him the keys. "I think I overworked myself during those years," he says now.
He must have, because the would-be retailer who bought the store lasted only a year and then Hepworth's was no more. Hepworth, meanwhile, went to work on the wholesale side of the business.
But Hepworth found he was not a company man, and 1986 found him once again as a sole proprietor of Johnstown LTD, a new men's shop in the equally new Eagle Gate complex on the northeast corner of South Temple and State.
Hepworth's old customers, along with a lot of new ones, found him there, and Johnstown soldiered on until last June. That's when a disagreement on lease terms with the landlord convinced Hepworth it was time to move on again. Johnstown was closed.
Meanwhile, back in Bountiful, Mary Hepworth had been doing a nice business selling women's clothes at a shop close to where it all began 30 years earlier. Next door was another store that was closing. And it was kismet.
"It was a slam dunk," said John Hepworth, who prefers sports metaphors to literary ones. "We spent the summer fixing the place up and we now have 1,500 square feet in each store."
More importantly, business has been booming. "Our sportswear business is up 800 percent . . . we had a very good Christmas season," he notes.
Is he getting rich?
"Let's just say that you have to really like this business. You have to enjoy competing."