Stitching and sisterhood

Green Bay craft store celebrates 30 years

By Eva Westein

Contributing Writer

GREEN BAY – On July 10, The Stitching Bee will celebrate its 30th anniversary.

Owner Kendra Buntman started out working for another small business called The Thread Crossing and after it closed, Buntman started her own business in the same location, calling it The Stitching Bee.

Buntman’s love for needleworking comes from various women in her family, including her mother, aunt and grandmother, who all spent much of their free time needlepointing, quilting, cross-stitching or crafting together.

“I would come home from school and the three of them would get together with me and we’d get together like once a week and have our own little stitching time and that really inspired me,” explained Buntman.

The Stitching Bee is a specialty craft store that focuses on counted cross-stitch, which is a specific type of needlework.

Cross-stitch businesses were seeing an increase in popularity a few years ago.

However, when COVID-19 hit, many of them struggled, but The Stitching Bee was one of the few Wisconsin-based businesses to survive the pandemic.

Kendra attributes the business’s continued success to the loyalty of her customers and the strength of their continued relationships.

“My customer base is huge. I go all over the place. We send to Europe, we send to people in the service, we send to people in Florida or wherever people are in the winter… They’ll still call in and we’ll still mail to them,” said Buntman.

This dedicated and personal service from The Stitching Bee is likely what has allowed the small business to continue to thrive, especially during the pandemic when other businesses didn’t.

During COVID-19, customers would continue to call orders in, and Kendra would fill the orders and place them outside on the porch for a no-contact pickup.

“I felt like a McDonalds person,” Buntman added.

Not only have Buntman’s customers continued to support her business over the past 30 years, but they have also continued to build relationships with her through the various stitching groups that The Stitching Bee has hosted over the years.

Some meet every other week, some meet once a month and some meet every week.

Once a month, The Sitching Bee also hosts a nighttime stitching group, which sometimes gets big enough that they have to go over to the village hall and stitch because there isn’t enough space for everyone.

“Those have been really popular and those people stick together,” noted Buntman. Another popular event that The Stitching Bee community participates in is going on an all-day stitching retreat. “Our retreat is simply to share, as women, our crafts and tell stories and have a good time.”

It’s this kind of community that surpasses the surface-level customer/business owner relationship that most would expect from big-box stores. In fact, Kendra’s favorite part of owning a small business is the people.

“They’re all my friends… we’ve shared our children or weddings or deaths or illnesses for 30 years we shared all of that, so we’re a really tight little community,” Buntman said, “and it’s all women and how wonderful to have had a women base for 30 years we’ve managed to hang in there, that’s a lot.”

The Stitching Bee can be found at 2304 Velp Ave., Howard.