This profile is in active compilation — some details are awaiting a cited source.

Missouri Sewing Machine Company is a family-owned sewing machine dealer and repair house founded on Truman Road in 1932 by Walter and Anne Catenhauser, who got started during the Depression by stripping the paint off old treadle machines and fitting them with motors. Ninety-four years on it is owned by Curt Catenhauser and operates five stores, all inside the Kansas City metro, with bench technicians for household, industrial and school machines.

Description

Missouri Sewing Machine Company is the Kansas City metro’s oldest sewing machine house, and one of a small number of surviving businesses in the region that keeps full-time repair technicians on a bench rather than treating service as an adjunct to retail. The company’s own job postings distinguish between a household machine technician, an industrial machine technician and school-machine repair — three separate skill sets, and evidence that the service side is a real department rather than a counter.1

The flagship store is on East Truman Road on the eastern edge of downtown, a few blocks from where the business started in 1932. Four further stores sit in Lenexa, Overland Park, Independence and the Northland — five locations in total, every one of them inside the Kansas City metro.2

The retail side carries Janome and Baby Lock machines, sergers, sewing cabinets and quilting and embroidery equipment, and the company runs classes and open-sew days alongside the machines.1 It also operates a mail-order business.3 The company describes the shift in its customer base plainly: the trade is no longer chiefly about mending and simple garment-making but about home decorating, embroidery and quilting.3

Goods and services

  • Sewing machine repair — household machines1
  • Industrial sewing machine repair1
  • School sewing machine repair — servicing school programme machines1
  • New machine sales — Janome and Baby Lock lines, sergers1
  • Sewing cabinets, including dual-rail electric cabinets1
  • Classes and events — open sew days, instructional sessions1
  • Mail order3

History

Walter and Anne opened Missouri Sewing Machine Company at 927 Truman Road in 1932, in the depths of the Depression. New machines were scarce — the metal shortage had squeezed supply — so the couple made stock by knocking the paint off old treadle machines and fitting them with motors to make them saleable.4

Their son, Bob Catenhauser, went to work for Singer at nineteen before coming into the family business.4 The company grew from a two-employee storefront to a multi-store operation with about twenty employees; the Crossroads Community Association’s profile, written when the business was around seventy years old, records four locations at that time and looks ahead to “the next generation joining us.”3 Five locations are on file as of the current Better Business Bureau record, with Curt Catenhauser as owner.2

The business has now been trading for 94 years under the same family. Its social presence carries the founding year in the handle itself — the company’s YouTube channel is @Mosewing1932.5

Sources

Footnotes

  1. Missouri Sewing Machine Company — official site — asserts: the company’s current trade: new Janome machines, new Baby Lock machines, sergers, sewing cabinets and dual-rail electric cabinets, classes and open-sew days; and three distinct repair functions advertised as roles — household machine technician (mosew.com), industrial machine technician (mosew.com) and school machine repair (mosew.com), alongside household machine repair (mosew.com). The site’s sitemap (mosew.com) carries a last-modified date of 2026-08-05, retrieved 2026-08-14. Freshest evidence of current operation. Note: the site’s about and contact pages are JavaScript-rendered and returned no readable text to either WebFetch or curl in this pass. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8

  2. Better Business Bureau — business profile, Missouri Sewing Machine Company, Kansas City, MO — asserts: legal entity name Missouri Sewing Machine Company; business start date 1 January 1932; BBB file opened 21 May 1999; principal Curt Catenhauser, Owner; five addresses — 12046 W 95th St, Shawnee Mission (Lenexa) KS 66215; 3010 S State Route 291, Independence MO 64057; 9324 W 75th St, Overland Park KS 66204; 210 NE Barry Rd, Kansas City MO 64155; 1011 E Truman Rd, Kansas City MO 64106; phone (816) 471-1276; category sewing machine repair; 94 years in business. The profile also records that the business is not BBB accredited and carries a B- rating attributed to unanswered complaints — recorded here for completeness, not as an editorial judgement. ↩ ↩2

  3. Crossroads Community Association — “Missouri Sewing Machine Company,” Explore the Crossroads directory — asserts: address 1011 Truman Road, Kansas City, MO 64108; phone 816.471.1276; a family business; growth from a small Depression-era storefront with two employees to four locations and twenty employees “over the past 70 years”; a large mail-order operation; the shift in customer demand from mending and simple garment-making toward home decorating, embroidering and quilting; commercial and computerized machines; an expressed expectation of the next generation joining the business. Note: this profile text is dated by its own “past 70 years” phrasing to roughly 2002 and its employee count and location count should be treated as stale. Retrieved via curl 2026-08-14 after WebFetch returned HTTP 403. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  4. Missouri Sewing Machine Company — company history, mosew.com/about, as surfaced in search indexing of that page — asserts: during the Depression year of 1932 Walter and Anne opened Missouri Sewing Machine Company at 927 Truman Road; wartime metal shortages meant few new machines were available, so they knocked the paint off old treadle machines and fitted motors to them in order to make sales; Ann and Walter’s son Bob Catenhauser first went to work for Singer at the age of nineteen. The page itself renders only via JavaScript and could not be read directly by WebFetch or curl on 2026-08-14; this text was recovered from search-engine indexing of that URL and must be re-confirmed against the rendered page before publication. ↩ ↩2

  5. Missouri Sewing Machine Company — YouTube channel, @Mosewing1932 — asserts: the company’s own channel handle carries the 1932 founding year. Companion Facebook page: facebook.com ↩

Categories

On the record — ks.city/registry/missouri-sewing-machine-company · record updated 2026-08-14