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July 14, 2025
MARINETTE – More so than making a huge profit, Steve Hemstock said owning and operating Knights Autoworks & Upholstery in Marinette (1316 Marinette Ave.) is about what he and his wife, Kelly, can teach their 11 kids.
“What Kelly – also my business partner and the company’s vice president – and I do is find places for all 11 of our kids,” he said. “I won’t speak for their futures completely, but if it’s my will, they would stay close to us. We want to find a place for our kids to excel… so very little of [running our business] has to do with how much money we’re making.”
Hemstock said his wife – “a saint” – homeschools the kids.
“They get to see everything about what we’re doing, not only the trade of how we’re building it and the hard parts of the prototyping, patterning and design, but also what’s happening with the front end – how we’re talking with customers, what our estimate process is, what our delivery schedule is like, etc.,” he said.
Hemstock said Knights specializes in custom interior and manufacturing upholstery and is known for customizing car interiors – including unique designs for supercars and yachts and restoring classic auto interiors.
“Additionally, about four or five years ago, we became a used car dealership [followed shortly by a service department],” he said.
The 51-year-old Hemstock said multi-generational businesses are interesting to him.
“When I see other company owners, I always ask them, ‘How did you come into your company? Are your children with you?’” he said. “Hopefully, there will be something that succeeds and I can pass down to our kids… I think about this all the time – morally and ethically, are we doing the right thing? Yes, we are.”
Evolving business
Hemstock said his entrepreneurial journey has taken a few twists and turns along the way before landing him as the co-owner/operator of Knights.
He said he got his start in the upholstering trade in Milwaukee almost 25 years ago.
“We started with car dealerships,” he said. “I’d go around with my truck and sewing machine – that work took a lot of effort, and it was a lot of pressure. Basically, we were trying to make $100 a car and would do 80-100 cars per month – it was really tough work.”
Hemstock said it was high-volume work with low-profit margins.
“We were in the aftermarket business, so we were taking cloth seats out and reupholstering them with pre-made leather seat covers,” he said. “For example, if you bought a Toyota Camry, you couldn’t get leather seats in it, so the dealership would call us, and we’d put a leather interior in. [After expenses and everything], we’d clear about $100 a vehicle.”
First starting out, Hemstock said he basically had to beg some car dealerships to give him an opportunity.
“I would even do it on consignment,” he said. “I would pay for it and would say, ‘Put it on the show floor – I’m confident you’ll pay me for it when it sells.’ That’s how we did it.”
During that time, Hemstock said Knights’ best year was “$1.4 million in revenue.”
Hemstock said eventually, “we were called up to the ‘big leagues,’” and that came with a new business approach.
“When the Ford GT came out in about 2005, we went into higher-end vehicles,” he said. “We got rid of that high-paced portion of our business and went into the craftsman part of our business. People who have those cars are willing to pay for the service. If you end up doing a job for somebody who really appreciates it and is willing to pay for it, that’s far more rewarding than the cookie-cutter, high-stress, low-return thing we used to do.”
Hemstock said they went from doing 100 cars per month to one or two cars per month.
“Though it was really tough work to start, I felt that was necessary,” he said. “I learned a lot about business, how to take care of people and how to function. Do what you say and say what you’re going to do. That has paid huge dividends for us. It doesn’t have to be more complicated than that.”
Hemstock said reupholstering higher-end vehicles scares a lot of people away.
“If you’re a Milwaukee Bucks basketball player, and you want your Jaguar done, we would make it right for you,” he said. “Nobody wants to touch a Ferrari or a Lamborghini – it spooks everybody. So, the only ones who are left [to do that work] are the guys who really know what they’re doing and are confident.”
Though one needs confidence in upholstering higher-end vehicles, Hemstock said you can’t focus on only those jobs.
“The bottom line is, you have to be able to deliver,” he said.
Hemstock said he’s fully aware of the pressure of working on supercars, but it doesn’t scare him.
“If you make a mistake on anything like that, it could cost you thousands,” he said. “One time when I was younger, I wiped a car off with the wrong rag. It probably cost thousands for that guy to buff his whole special car out. If a guy drops a screwdriver over a windshield on a special car, how much will that mistake cost you – $5,000?”
Learning through trial and error
Hemstock said he guesses there are upholstery classes/training out there, but that’s not the route he took.
He said two of his uncles were in the business of upholstering, so for him, it was more about following in their footsteps.
“My Uncle Mike had an upholstery shop, and when I saw a Porsche 911 they were working on, with the top removed and door panels and seats out of it, I thought that was the greatest thing ever,” he said. “My uncle told me not to go into upholstery because there was no money in it, but obviously, I didn’t listen to him.”
Over the years, Hemstock said he’s mastered the art of upholstery through trial and error.
“[Upholstering] has a way of giving you a ‘bloody nose,’ but you get back up, and you do it again – and then 10 more times, you keep getting up … that’s all there is to it,” he said. “You never stay down and say, ‘Oh, I did it wrong. It cost me five grand this time, so I’m not doing this anymore.’”
Hemstock said there are a lot of leather suppliers out there – the key is knowing which will work best for each project.
“We get our leather from all over the place,” he said. “It just depends on what somebody might want. For example, if we are working on airplane seats or something of that nature, the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) has specific requirements.”
Traveling north to Marinette
Though he grew up in Marquette, Michigan, Hemstock said his wife is originally from Green Bay.
When he eventually moved to Milwaukee, that’s where he met Kelly.
“We started having kids and then decided to move to Marinette to start a church with our church group,” he said. “That’s what put us here 15 years ago. I never had any intention of having a car dealership or business – we came to Marinette to start a nonprofit.”
After doing that for about 12 years, Hemstock said he stepped down in “the interest of keeping a balanced life,” with all his efforts now focused on Knights.
Though they are the bigger pay-day jobs, Hemstock said Knights Autoworks & Upholstery doesn’t just work on supercars.
“A guy recently had me do his giant boat,” he said. “He wanted something special and custom. We also do a lot of work for Cruiser Yachts.”
With the “designers of the world” wanting artisanship, craftsmanship and hand-stitching, Hemstock said they don’t rely on a CNC machine to cut everything out.
“They want real, live people working on these things,” he said.
Hemstock said Knights also works with the local community.
“We like to be available for our local people,” he said. “It’s rewarding being available for the local community. I just had a guy come in, [and we worked on his] UTV seat for a couple of hundred bucks, and he loved it. He goes and tells everybody how awesome it was to come into Knights, and maybe he comes back to buy a car… Maybe he comes back and uses our service department to service the brakes on his wife’s car.”
Though the local business he does for the community doesn’t make up a huge segment of the business, Hemstock said for him, it’s about more than revenue.
“If someone brings a pontoon boat in, and we make it right for them, they’re a customer for life,” he said. “I really like that part of it, and my kids are also here. When our children are at work with us, they can’t just be working on Ferraris all the time. They need to learn how to do all this.”
Hemstock said whether it’s a $20,000 pontoon boat or a $250,000 used Ferrari or a used Lamborghini, each job is important.
“It’s their stuff, and they like it,” he said. “We put forth that same effort, and you get the same integrity you would get if we’re working on either of those projects.”
Also a car dealership
Adding the used car dealership a handful of years ago, Hemstock said he also gets a lot of satisfaction from matching a person with a car.
“If I can place somebody at the right payment in a good car and will check all their boxes at the right banking institution, then we really did do a service for our community,” he said. “We’ve [sold] almost 600 cars since we started. We’re in a small town, and this is a small store, but I think we’ll reap great dividends as time goes on and as our base broadens. Very few people ever leave here unhappy.”
Since the car dealership’s inception, Hemstock said a service department has been added.
“I think some of the biggest challenges are making sure we stay in the black,” he said. “It has never been easy to do – it’s still not easy.”
