A company from small-town Idaho is making big gains: Cheekys recently ranked high on the Inc. 5000 national list of fastest-growing private companies.
The apparel and accessories brand caters to rural, country lifestyles, so it's natural they're based in New Plymouth – the World’s Largest Horseshoe, home to about 1,500 people. The recent list shows Cheekys has grown more than 1,400-percent over the last three years, landing at number 356 on the list. While this growth is monumental for the local business with far reaches, they say their purpose runs deeper than the numbers.
The sassy and fun Cheekys creates, imports and manufactures affordable apparel and accessories for more than 3,500 retail stores catering to rural and country lifestyles around the world.
“Anything you could imagine a country girl might want to get her hands on,” founder Jessi Roberts said. “Just something she can connect to and she’s like, I need that, and we’re like let’s give it to you - and let’s make it affordable.”
Cheekys has grown exponentially since 2011, when the company started in a little storefront and warehouse in downtown New Plymouth.
“I had four kids to feed my husband and I lost a business during construction - the whole bust - and we had little tiny savings - about seven grand - and we used it to start the very first Cheekys and retail store,” Roberts said.
As Cheekys has grown, the company has outgrown facilities in town, so the company now occupies about 25-percent of downtown New Plymouth, recently buying up empty retail space.
“One by one, people end up moving to Fruitland or Payette or Ontario, and it makes me sad. I love this! It's one of the oldest cities in Idaho, period,” Roberts said.
They are buying up the empty buildings in hopes of revitalizing their downtown; their ultimate dream is to have a retail facility again and a restaurant downtown, making it a destination. Once they consolidate their operations, the hope is the buildings they’ve rebuilt or revamped downtown will be taken over by other small business owners – aiding in a thriving business community there.
The Roberts were planning to build a 20,000 square-foot warehouse on the property where their houses is located, but decided against it.
“As we started seeing these buildings become available, we thought, well, if we could make these work in the interim and grow a little slower but actually provide something for our community, then we wanted to do that instead,” Roberts said. “It’s really important to us that we employ locals and that we are pushing as much out of this town as we're bringing into it. So our long term goal is to revitalize this downtown.”
On the property where their home sits outside town, they’ve built warehouses for production and their automatic press.
“All of the apparel production is done here. We don't just print on regular blanks; we import our blanks, some of them are made in Haiti with American fabrics,” Roberts said as she showed us that facility.
There are now 30 employees who work for Cheekys, but the company collaborates with small businesses and topographic and design artists across the globe. Most of their prints and designs are hand-drawn.
“I just don’t think people realize we have this beautiful ant hill in New Plymouth where all these amazing people are working and just behind some tinted windows,” Roberts told KTVB. “Our purpose is to create a great product and build long-term relationships. So I want our product to be affordable, but I actually care more about who we are doing business with than anything else.”
Along with caring about who they buy from and who they sell it to, Roberts said, the company cares very much about their employees.
“I want them to be able to buy homes, I want them to be proud owners of our company as much as they possibly can and fulfill their dreams – which they can do inside this business,” Roberts added.
More than the business' success is the success of its founder Jessi Roberts. Now running a multi-million dollar business, her journey was far from easy. Roberts was homeless for part of her childhood, and didn't graduate high school. She says she didn’t have a great example for a mother, but had a wonderful father and grandparents.
“I'm a huge advocate for education, and it just wasn't something I was fortunate enough to get to do. I was a single mom for a long time and I did everything it took to give my son the best life I could give him that was different than mine,” Roberts told KTVB.
The building blocks of her foundation transferred over to her company's foundation.
“It isn't all about being big; it is about taking care of those that are feeding you,” Roberts said. “It isn't just ‘from that to this’. It is all the things: all the lost businesses, I lost a home in Mountain Home - it was awful. All those things just really taught me it isn't about getting that bank loan super fast, it isn't about capital. It is about putting profit first… and if you have $10 figure out how to make do with $10… It’s about figuring out how to make do with what you got.”
More than a brand, it’s about authenticity - as authentic as its local employees and owner in New Plymouth.
“I wanted something fun and sassy and I wanted something different,” Roberts said. “It’s about staying rural and being real.”
Roberts has a book coming out soon called "Backroads Boss Lady."