Shop switches to new location

Kathi Gripp is a walking, talking lamp encyclopedia. Table lamps, desk lamps, reading lamps, floor lamps. You name it, she knows it.

After 26 years at Schloeman's Lamp Shop, it's no surprise her expertise has earned her the nickname “Lamp Lady” when she encounters customers outside work.

Gripp has owned the longtime Omaha business, which has a regional clientele and reputation as a repairer and creator of custom lampshades, for 23 years.

She values consistency and tradition, which is part of the reason the store has survived challenges from the discount chains. So it's somewhat surprising that Schloeman's will be moving — for the fourth time — early next month, to South 120th Street.

“I'm not a very good changer. I like things the way they are,” Gripp said as she navigated the color-coordinated rows of shades at her shop one recent weekday.

The move from Loveland Shopping Center on 90th Street near West Center Road is intended to allay customers' fears about the store's future, Gripp said.

“We get a lot of people coming in worried because they're not sure if we're still open or not. There's not a lot of traffic coming through here,” she said.

Schloeman's has been a model of consistency throughout its 62-year history.

Lamps, often family heirlooms, regularly come through the store's doors for repair or a new shade for one reason: Customers trust Schloeman's.

The shop also has a reputation for creating custom lamps from objects as wide-ranging as urns, golf bags and trumpets.

“You don't go to Target or Wal-Mart for something like this,” said first-time customer Gus George, a retired Lutheran pastor from Ireton, Iowa, in Sioux County.

George and his wife, Sharon, made the 141-mile trek from Ireton to Omaha to find a new shade for their cream-colored Italian marble lamp.

Gripp and employee Pam Crowe scurried about the store, plucking different shades to best accent the Georges' lamp. Gripp and Crowe will have an idea what looks best, but most times it comes down to the first impression.

“Eighty percent of the time, it comes back to the very first shade they see,” Crowe said as two shades dangled from her hand.

After testing about 20 — some were too plain, others were too “busy” — the Georges finally came to a consensus: light tan with a slight flair — your standard lampshade.

“I like it for the coziness it gives to the lamp,” Sharon George said, standing next to the illuminated lamp that boasted the new shade. “But it wasn't the first.”

Gus and Sharon George smiled as they walked out the door with their lamp and new shade. Interactions such as this are commonplace for Gripp and her staff. It's the routine she has lived for the past 26 years, when she started working for Peggy Schloeman. Three years after working for Schloeman, Gripp bought the store.

“When I bought the store, Mrs. Schloeman had 10 lamps,” Gripp said. “We had 8,000 shades last time I did inventory. That's too many to choose from.”

Schloeman's started in 1947 as a small, word-of-mouth business Peggy Schloeman operated out of her living room in Spirit Lake, Iowa. Since then, the shop has operated at 40th and Dodge Streets, then 49th and Leavenworth Streets and, most recently, at the Loveland Shopping Center location.

Schloeman's will move early next month to 4229 S. 120th St.

Gripp isn't wild about relocating, she said, but other businesses are struggling at Loveland Shopping Center. Shops in strip malls usually rely on neighboring retailers to produce walk-in traffic, which Senor Matias Mexican Restaurant is doing now for Schloeman's, Gripp said.

Regardless of location, she said, the shop isn't likely to change its tradition of customer service and a staff with intimate knowledge of their product.

“Customers trust us,” Gripp said. “That's why we're still around.”

Contact the writer:

444-1414, ross.boettcher@owh.com