Mary S. says, "I couldn't be happier! I have been looking for a coffee cozy for my French press since our visit to Ireland, 2 years ago. Imagine my delight in finding you right here in Colorado Springs! Your response to my request was immediate and your friendliness and warmth was so welcome. I use my Kup Kollar and Koffee Kozee almost every day and as good as your word, they are perfect in keeping my coffee hot! I'm thinking of putting the Kup Kollar in my golf bag this summer to keep my water cold too!"

After one of the worst ice storms we've had in NC in a long time, we were without power for 24 hours. The power came on about 4:30 and the first thing I thought of was hot tea. It was still hot 2 hours later! Good thing because the power went off again at 5:45 that evening. We drink a lot of hot tea and it's wonderful to be able to enjoy it for several hours without having to reheat it! And the Tea Tabards are so attractive and easy to wash! I just bought one for my mother-in-law for Christmas. She was quite impressed with mine when they visited.

Thanks for creating such an attractive and practical product!

We saw you at the holiday show here in Denver a few weeks ago. We bought a few Kup Kaps from you that day. I like mine so much I decided that my tea drinking friend and her British mom need one also.

Business keeps coffee cups cozy BY GINA GRATE The Slice, January 5, 2005 After 20 years as a stay-at-home mother of two, Irene Luckett embarked on a new mission that began with a pot of lukewarm coffee. Luckett’s husband, Perry, asked her if she could design a tea cozy to keep the coffee in his French press warm. An expert seamstress, Luckett accepted the challenge. The design worked so well — keeping the coffee in the French press hot for up to an hour— that he began brewing an idea. “Do you think you could market this?” he asked. “I thought he was kidding,” Luckett recalled. She had never thought of owning a business. But the idea intrigued her. That was eight years ago. Now, the Holland Park resident spends at least 50 hours a week building her company, Koffee Kompanions. She’s selling her coffee and tea cozies through retailers in 26 states and on her Web site. She’s also created new products: heat-holding caps to place over mugs of coffee or tea, insulated cup jackets for to-go lattes or iced tea, even jackets for pints of ice cream to keep fingers warm and frozen treats cold. Her daughter’s old bedroom is packed with shelves of cozies in tight, neat rows. Her son’s old bedroom is her office. The basement is her design room, stocked with paints, color markers, and yards of fabrics and threads. In the corner is Luckett’s shipping headquarters, where she packages and mails orders from her Web site.

Holland Park resident Irene Luckett draws designs for cup and saucer buttons that adorn her Kup Kaps, one of the products she’s designed for sale through her business Koffee Kompanions. Her cozies and Kup Kaps keep hot beverages hot and cold beverages cold. A manufacturer molds and hand paints the buttons to match each fabric Luckett uses.

Throughout the home, the air is laced with the aroma of fresh-brewed coffee — for Perry. Luckett doesn’t drink the stuff. Being a mom was the best possible preparation for starting a business, she said. She became an expert at organizing, being flexible, and dealing with finances while raising two children. As a seamstress, she made most of her clothes and house-hold accoutrements.

Running a business was similar to motherhood in another way — she learned through trial and error as well as suggestions from others. It was a customer who asked for a cozy to put on a pint of ice cream. Luckett took her name and number, promising to work on a pattern (eating a few pints of ice cream along the way). Ladies in Oklahoma asked for an insulated jacket large enough to fit on a 32-ounce cup of iced tea. Her son suggested adding a loop to her French press cozy so it could hang from a hook.

Luckett experimented more when she was unable to sew enough cozies to keep up with orders. In 1997, she sought a factory to speed things up. Luckett preshrank her fabrics. At the last minute, she recognized the factory didn’t. Going back to the sewing machine, Luckett adjusted all her patterns. She wrote detailed manuals to guide the factory in manufacturing her products.

Starting a business forced Luckett to overcome a fear of computers. She took a computer proficiency course; her first scribbled note reminded her how to turn it on.

“Now I live on the computer. That computer is my lifeline,” she said.

Persisting through trial and error led her to cozy patterns that work. Each cozy has an inner lining of Thinsulate — a lightweight, fabric insulation originally made for ski clothing. Luckett picks out her materials at fabric shows. She’s learned that soccer-themed fabrics sell poorly, and cat- or music-themed fabrics are extremely popular.

“Customers think it’s wonderful; they love it,” said Trudy, a clerk at Boonzaaijer’s Dutch Bakery on Centennial Boulevard. “Of everyone who buys them—nobody has ever brought it back.”

Luckett gave a “Kup Kap” to Lynn Ellen Braley when she first started making them. Braley, who uses the cap every day, said it still looks new and keeps her tea hot for up to an hour. She asked Luckett if she could carry the tea accessories in her home accents store, I.R.I.S., on North Tejon Street, when she opened a year ago. The caps and tea cozies have been reliable sellers.

“Once you use it, it becomes part of your hot beverage routine. You find you can’t live without it,” Braley said. Most customers who have tried out the Kup Kaps return to buy more as gifts, she added.

Retailers from other states found Luckett through her ads in coffee and tea industry magazines, or by meeting her at industry conventions. Although retailers in more than half of the United States carry Koffee Kompanions’ products, Luckett isn’t content.

“I’d like to have a national presence, and right now I have a presence in just certain places.”