If you build something 2,700 times a year and don’t become proficient, you should find something else to do. That’s the opinion of Rich O’Connor, owner of Rich’s Custom Seats in Kingston, who has reached that threshold for more than two decades. He knows something about proficiency.

“I live, breathe and sleep motorcycle seats,” O’Connor said.

After 35 years in the upholstery industry, O’Connor has built a reputation as an artist, drawing in customers from hundreds of miles away. But he also fell in love with Kingston and wanted “a better facility for my customers, my employees and myself” after 27 years in a tough neighborhood in Seattle, he said.

The move was good for Kingston as well.

“We’re bringing between 10 and 14 meals a day to Kingston that wouldn’t be here. The average customer spends $100 in Kingston while they’re here, between fuel and a meal and souvenirs,” O’Connor said.

O’Connor discovered his specialty in the late 80s when the automotive upholstery market became soft. He saw a need for custom motorcycle seats and custom-fitted seats to make motorcycle riding more comfortable.

Although custom motorcycle seats are the shop’s specialty, O’Connor’s shop also can do a complete range of automotive upholstery from minor repairs to complete restorations to custom interiors. Automotive work has always been a part of his business, he said, but with the shop’s reputation for the specialized work, its ability to do automotive gets overlooked.

If you need that sort of work done, though, O’Connor suggests waiting until November. During good weather, the shop books months in advance. Right now the wait is six weeks for custom-fitted motorcycle seats, but as the weather changes, he said, cycling customers are less inclined to make the long ride for the perfect seat — at least until spring.

The first element of the shop’s success lies in the depth of O’Connor’s experience. He has ridden motorcycles for 40 years, ridden “hundreds of thousands” of miles, including endurance races.

“Doing endurance riding has helped me to better diagnose what does and doesn’t work,” O’Connor said. “I don’t understand how anybody can build a motorcycle seat if they don’t ride bikes.”

The second requirement: do the work repeatedly.

“You have to do thousands and thousands of seats,” O’Connor said. “I don’t know much, but I know all about motorcycle seats. Doing 2,700 a year gives you experience.”

After learning his trade by apprenticing, O’Connor understands the value of having employees specialize to learn a job thoroughly before they progress. Of the seven employees, one strips seats, one grinds the seat pan and installs gel pads, one does patterns, one fabricates metal and so forth, but O’Connor personally does “all the fittings for all the customers because you can make the most beautiful seat in the world, but if it doesn’t fit the body, it’s pointless.”

The third requirement, and most important in O’Connor’s view, is to have the customer test-drive the seat.

“I can make a seat any shape in the world, but the one thing I can’t do is be their body down the road. So after someone test rides the seat, they can give me input so I can adjust it perfectly. And there’s no better place to test ride motorcycles than over here,” he said.

Rich’s Custom Seats is the only shop in the state that fabricates custom-fitted seats in any number.

“If you’re not building a thousand seats a year, you really have no business doing it,” he said. “There are other shops that do a good job doing the same thing, but the closest place is California.”

People think of a custom motorcycle seat shop as a factory, but O’Connor believes his shop is more like an art studio because each seat is a one-off design and fit.

He also has Kelly Cheney, who has degrees in art and apparel design plus more than 15 years of sewing professionally.

“I know exactly what the seat’s going to look like,” O’Connor said. “It was done when I saw the pan of the seat. The seat is already done in my mind. I’m just applying that knowledge.”