After majoring in Fine Art at the University of Minnesota in 1984, Trudy was working for her Aunt and Uncle who had a custom frame shop in Bloomington called The House of Frames.
On Trudy’s first day working at the frame shop she loved it so much that she decided that one day she would open her own shop. She convinced Michael to join her. Michael was working at a company doing sheet metal fabrication and thought it was a good idea.
They worked on their business plan for months and started looking for a retail space to lease. They resisted being in a mall because they wanted to have a parking lot close by.
One day when Trudy was working at the House of Frames, a man came in selling raffle tickets for his swim team. They got to talking and he told her that he had a Video and Tanning store in the Kenwood neighborhood and that there was a space for rent in his building. They didn’t know exactly where the Kenwood neighborhood was but the space sounded perfect so they got the address and went for a look.
The space was exactly what they were looking for and there was a parking lot! They worried that it was a little hard to find but were determined to make it work.
They spent two months renovating the space and on February 1st, 1986 they opened up their doors. When they first opened Trudy did the sales and the framing and Michael worked his full-time job and would come to the shop after work. After 9 months Michael worked at the store full-time and started doing a lot of the framing. In 1990 it was decided to move the frame production off site and have framing sales in the Kenwood Location and move the framing to a workshop in St. Louis Park.
In 1994 they opened a second store in Linden Hills. It was fun having two stores and a workshop but it brought with it some real challenges! In 1998 the workshop was moved to a 4000 square foot space near International Market Square. In 2004 they decided to close the Linden Hills store because they were growing so large that they decided they liked it better when it was smaller and more hands on.
In 2018 they went a step further and downsized to just one location at the Kenwood store. They closed for a month and somehow got everything, the sales and production, under one roof. It has been a really great move! Now the sales people can frame again and the framers can help out with the customers. They can cut a mat or glass while you wait and Michael no longer has to travel back and forth from the store to the workshop and he now has more time to work with customers and do frame installation.
If you haven’t seen the updated space please come by for a visit.