The last day for the 3 Bees women’s clothing store in the Center Mall is Dec. 27, according to Barb Schramm. (Photo/Nancy Hanson)

Moorhead Business

Nancy Edmonds Hanson

You could say that Barb Schramm is buzzing around her boutique at the Center Mall these days. That’s because The 3 Bees is in its final weeks, forced to close by Roers Development’s plans to demolish and rebuild the downtown Moorhead landscape.
“We’ll be open Monday through Saturday until Dec. 27,” the owner says. “I’ll take the last three days to pack up what’s not sold in our closing sale and move it back to my home. All kinds of friends have offered to help me move.
“Then I’ll take a nice month off before setting up for online selling.”
Barb’s return to her basement on Rivershore Drive takes her full circle. The retired opera singer, who sang with German operas and symphonies for 22 years, started her boutique in 2014. “I had continued to order my own clothes from Europe after moving back to Moorhead in 2007,” she says, explaining her unexpected entry into retail. “Friends kept commenting on them and asking where I found them. I did a lot of sewing and liked fashion, so I decided to give this a try.”
She began to order for others as well as her own closet, to her friends’ delight. That developed into The 3 Bees – Barb’s Basement Boutique – a successful home-based business that grew to include accessories and shoes from across the pond.
Along with ordering for the friends who became her customers, Barb occasionally set up a pop-up shop at vendor and craft shows. It was one such show at the Center Mall in 2021 that piqued her interest in opening a storefront. “I noticed all the empty stores, and asked whether I could rent from month to month,” she says. “It has gone well.”
When Corinne Stefanson closed her beloved shop, The Classic, after 47 years, Barb moved her stock of European-manufactured dresses, blouses, pants, jackets, jewelry and shoes into its spot next to Puffe’s Jewelry. “It’s been a great spot for me,” she asserts, and has thrived over the past year. The decision to close the store and reconfigure her approach to sales was prompted by her landlord’s mandate to clear out by the end of December.
What to do next? “I’m at the point where the store has been very successful,” the 1967 Moorhead High School graduate observes. “I wouldn’t have retired so soon or as drastically if I hadn’t been forced out.”
So she is not retiring – just changing direction. In addition to online sales, which she has already dabbled in, she plans to offer pop-up shops at vendor shows and other events throughout the community. That has already proven to be a good strategy; in the past, she has already done pop-ups at Touchmark, One Oak Place, the Fine Arts Club’s fall festival and, she says, “all kinds of churches.”
Clients will also be able to make appointments to consult with her in the home where she and husband Roland have lived since her return from Europe. “Customers can call to find a time to come over,” she says. “The tea will always be on.”
Fashion was never part of Barb’s plans in the days when she was growing up in the same house where she and her husband now live. After graduating from Moorhead High, she headed to Northwestern University in Chicago to major in voice and music education. That let to her first job as choral director in Fairfax, Virginia, in the largest high school in the U.S. She stayed in education, putting in three years in a Connecticut high school before returning to Northwestern for her master’s degree. She went on to teach at Northern Michigan University – a full professor at 26 – and completed a doctorate at the University of Michigan.
While apprenticing with the Des Moines Metropolitan Opera, the mezzo soprano was encouraged by the conductor and stage manager to move to New York for professional opera. She did just that, trading service as a nanny and housekeeper to her voice teacher’s family in return for five voice lessons a week, room and board, and $15 per week. “With that money, I bought five standing-room tickets to the Metropolitan Opera every week,” she remembers.
That led to connecting with the director of the Opera Orchestra of New York and performing at Carnegie Hall. A patron funded her studies in Graz, Austria. “I freelanced for three years,” she remembers, citing work with the Theatre of the West in Berlin and a world premier in Leipzig. “And then I ended up staying for 22.”
Barb and her German husband returned to her home town to care for her parents, Vic and Eunice Schramm. After their death, they remained in the home that Vic – a local builder for 50 years – had designed for their retirement. She went on to teach voice full-time at Concordia College for seven years while also an adjunct instructor at Minnesota State University Moorhead.
Her retirement in 2014 was the cue for starting her business, selling the same distinctive European designs that she had worn during her career on the continent.
These days, she drives to Detroit Lakes each week to direct the Lakes Area Chorale, a mixed choir of 60 voices. She is also active in First Congregational Church, attending services in the same sanctuary where she sang her first-ever solo at the age of 3.
“When we decided to return to the States, there was only two places I considered,” she reflects. “One was New York. The other was Moorhead. This community is truly special to me.”