November 4, 2004

Lee, left, and Jim Sinclair stand before a statue of Christ in the Seattle's Kaufer's store.
Owner Lee Sinclair, seated, gathers in the Kaufer's Seattle store with his sons, Mark, left, and Jim; daughter, Michele, seated, and daughters-in-law Patrice, left, and Alina.

SEATTLE—Some 11 years ago, when Jesuit Father Richard McCaffrey was looking to order a steeple for his parish’s new church in Bethel, Alaska, he knew exactly where to turn: Kaufer’s Religious Supplies.

Thumbing through their catalog, he found a manufacturer that made steeples capable of withstanding 100 mph winds – just what he needed in his inland community not far from the Bering Sea.. He ordered the tallest model available, a 29-footer made of fiberglass.

Though the upper part of the steeple was to later topple in a 90 mph windstorm, it survived the fall and was reattached with longer rods that will ensure “it won’t go anywhere,” Father McCaffrey said by phone last week from Fairbanks, where he is now pastor of another parish.

“It’s sitting on the church right now,” he said.

Count the priest as another satisfied customer – one of many who’ve relied on Kaufer’s for rosaries, holy cards, books, statues, vestments and a slew of other religious items over the decades. The business will celebrate its 100th anniversary next Monday.

“I’ve done business with Kaufer’s for about 35 years,” said Father McCaffrey, who regularly orders communion breads, liturgical vestments and religious publications. “I like the service that Kaufer’s gives.”

Today the supplier of religious goods operates retail stores in Seattle, Tacoma, Spokane and San Francisco. It boasts a mailing list of close to 10,000 names, a Web site (www.kaufersonline.com), and an almost 600-page catalog. The catalog and Web sales account for 75 to 80 percent of the business, the owners said.

Kaufer’s religious incense -- a secret blend which the company had been making for 80 years -- is sold to churches and other customers all around the U.S.

But in addition to serving customers -- many of whom have become friends -- Lee Sinclair and his son, Jim, are most proud of the fact that the business has remained in the family’s hands all these years, and is now in its fifth generation. The company’s four stores have three owners – all members of the Kaufer and Sinclair families. Their children and their spouses serve on the management teams.

Philip A. Kaufer, or “P.A.K.” as he is known today, launched the business in 1904 in Tacoma.

The son of Bavarian immigrants, he had published a successful newspaper in Minnesota, the <I>Red Lake Falls Gazette,<P> before heading west with his wife, Lizzie, and their three children. According to Kaufer’s family history, he sold the <I>Gazette<P> to the sister of famed aviator Charles Lindberg.

Strong in his Catholic faith, Kaufer was known for his dapper dress, love of music, fine singing voice and talent for composing sacred music. His compositions, including “The Little Flower Mass” and the “Ave Maria in Honor of Our Lady of Fatima,” were used in dioceses around the country and sold throughout the world.

His Tacoma store was intended to be a general store, according to the family history. But soon the store’s inventory of religious articles and books was outselling other items, so he opened a church goods store in Seattle, reportedly supplementing the business by peddling religious articles outside of churches from the back of a horse-drawn wagon.

His brother, Louis, joined him in the business. Eventually, P.A.K.’s three children also went to work at the stores, including his two sons, Leonard and John, who spent their entire careers with the business.

Leonard, who was Lee Sinclair’s father-in-law, spent decades calling on churches and schools in seven states. John spent much of his career on buying trips to Italy, and in the process became fluent in Italian, French and German.

A year after its founding, Kaufer’s published its first catalog. It’s believed to be the oldest catalog west of the Mississippi.

Regular customers at the Seattle store in those early days included a future saint, Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini, who established a hospital and an orphanage in Seattle prior to her death in 1917.

“P.A.K. was always very fond of her…because she was so business like,” Lee Sinclair said. Upon completing her shopping in the store, she’d instruct the cashier to “mark it down,” meaning record the transaction on her tab. “Our credit (customers) started pretty much from her,” Sinclair said.

Generations later, Kaufer’s was mailing orders to Calcutta to another religious superior headed for sainthood: Mother Teresa.

Coming to work daily in a Catholic religious supplies store can’t help but enrich your faith, the Sinclairs said.

“You get to be reminded of your faith from the minute you walk in the door to the minute you walk out,” Jim Sinclair said.

Customers share their personal faith journeys and stories of conversion, he said, and it’s a “boost to your own faith.

“You hear about a lot of miracles that you’ll never read about.”

Lee Sinclair enjoys being summoned to the front desk to meet old customer friends he hasn’t seen in years. Sometimes the friends’ inquiries will get broadcast over the store’s public address speakers with the question: ‘Lee, how long you been dead?’

Because their business revolves around what customers want and what is happening in the Catholic Church at the time, the Sinclairs are among the first to notice trends among the faithful.

Mel Gibson’s movie, “The Passion of the Christ,” and related books and jewelry are currently in demand, though the jewelry is popular only among non-Catholic Christians.

Rosaries, which fell into decline after Vatican II, have rebounded, along with how-to-pray the rosary books. The four-volume Liturgy of the Hours, once the domain of priests, has gained a lay audience that apparently has time to use it now.

Jim Sinclair said they’ve seen a renewed interest recently in iconography. “We’ve sold hundreds of (icons) in the past year, which is a huge number for any one particular type of art.”

Kaufer’s has links to local religious artists, sculptors and craftspeople to serve specific requests from architects and others.

The Second Vatican Council changed the religious goods industry as well as the church. Publishers went out of business as the books they once reprinted each year no longer had a market. St. Joseph’s Missals and communion rails became obsolete. Sales of rosaries, votive candles and statutes plummeted.

Lee Sinclair recalls filling two dumpsters behind the store with books that would no longer sell. Before he knew it, collectors and Catholics of a pre-Vatican II mindset were out in the alley retrieving the books.

“I remember five of us upstairs (in the office) asking, ‘Where do we go from here?’” he recalled of the days following Vatican II. They decided to take a middle of the road approach, he said, retaining some of the old items while seeking out the new.

At one point in its history, Kaufer’s also had stores in Portland and Vancouver, B.C. Today, they hope to reopen a Portland store within a year.

The flagship Seattle store, located for more than half a century at Fourth Ave. and Stewart St., downtown, is the one longtime customers recall. Its address, 1904 Fourth Ave., made it easy to remember the business’ location and its founding year.

One of its most memorable employees was salesman Fred Koltai, a former Austrian police officer known for his gift of gab, which he delivered in a thick accent. “He was a big man…larger than life and with a personality to match,” Jim Sinclair said.

The downtown store was distinguishable by its elongated space (120-feet deep, 24-feet wide), and its balcony office from which a watchful John Kaufer would wave his finger at the clerks below and say, “Help that lady over there.”

“It was an awkward place to do business,” Lee Sinclair said. For one thing, they had a warehouse across the street and a second warehouse two levels below the store.
But customers frequently comment that the place “was quiet like a church, and smelled like incense,” he said.

“It still does today.”

Kaufer’s Seattle store is now located a few block south of Lake Union at 901 Harrison St. Unlike the old store, the warehouse adjoins the building.

Mark Sinclair’s, wife, Patrice, has taken over her husband’s job of making the religious incense.

When it’s time for a new batch, she dons a respirator and disappears into a room inside the warehouse to mix the 12 blends of Adoration Brand and Nativity Brand incense for which Kaufer’s is famous. Outside the door, 110-pound bags of Frankincense from Africa sit waiting to be mixed with floral scents, exotic spices and oils.

Like her predecessors, Sinclair uses a shovel to mix the 75 pounds of incense inside a worn wooden trough. It’s like mixing coffee beans, she said. Customers come to know the distinct aroma of the incense they burn, that’s why the ingredients must be of a consistent quality.
In another part of the warehouse, bottles of altar wine and boxes of candles await shipment. Come here during Lent and you’ll see 400,000 palms stacked on the floor.

From 50 to 300 packages of church goods are mailed out daily from the Seattle store.
One day’s shipment last week included an alb for a clergyman in Belize, religious medals destined for Italy, and altar bread for a Lutheran University in Hong Kong.
Everything, it seemed, but a church steeple.