(gentle music) - [Announcer] Envista is pleased to support Working Capital.

Switch to empowered, switch to Envista.

Learn more at envistacu.com.

- GO Topeka's Entrepreneurial and Minority Business Development is proud to support Working Capital.

We share the vision to assist local entrepreneurs with growing their business.

- [Announcer] Additional funding is provided by The Friends of KTWU.

- Hi there, and welcome back to another episode of Working Capital, a show that introduces you to people that have the entrepreneurial spirit and have put it to work by opening their own businesses.

In today's show, we talk with some relatively new entrepreneurs.

They have taken their interesting and innovative ideas and put them in the marketplace.

They have taken that nagging feeling of business inspiration and turned it into actual products and services.

Stay with us as we explore the mind of the local business entrepreneur.

It's all about business, and this is Working Capital.

(exciting music) Hello there, and welcome to Working Capital.

I'm Eugene Williams, your host.

As consumers, I am sure all of you will agree that we are consuming products and services a lot differently than we have in previous years.

And of course, that is really true in the retail sector.

In today's economy, you just download an app to figure out your size, order your garments online, and miraculously they appear on your front stoop within about 10 days.

The same thing is true for our favorite foods.

We download an app, peruse the menu of choices, make a selection, and miraculously, our favorite food appears within the hour.

In this show, we'll talk with some entrepreneurs who are operating in this new environment of consumer behavior.

First up, a young lady that is making strides in the apparel industry.

Let's take a look.

(upbeat music) I found this quote on Facebook.

I just found my new fave, a hidden gem in Johnson County.

Finding urban clothes in this area can be hard, but I'm glad I found this store.

I'll be back.

Demetria Jackson is the owner of Danae and Dakota in the Kansas City area.

Welcome to Working Capital.

- Thank you.

- I'm reading and I'm doing research on you and everything, and I find this glowing testimonial about your business and stuff.

Tell me about you.

Tell me about you and how you got started in business.

- Well, I always knew that I wanted to be in fashion.

I used to have relatives say go shopping for me, such and such has a sale.

I started at an early age with putting outfits together, and then as I grew up, I realized that that's what I wanted to be in.

That's the line of work that I wanted to do.

- That's pretty cool, that's pretty cool, and they actually paid you to go out and find stuff for them?

- Uh huh.

- That's pretty nice.

That's real nice.

Now you and I were talking before we started the show and you said to me that when you were in about the, I guess maybe middle school, seventh or eighth grade or something like that, you knew then that you wanted to be an entrepreneur.

Tell me about that.

- I did.

I realized that structure was not for me.

I'm a free spirit, so I needed to explore.

I need to be able to move when I want to move and just be free as a bird.

- Yeah, well you know, the way that I kind of found your business, my wife and I were shopping and stuff.

My wife loves to shop, and she's one of those free spirits too.

Anyway, and so she stopped in at your place and everything.

And so I'm walking around, lost like any man would in an apparel store for women, and I'm looking around and I'm saying man, this is some very unique stuff.

I mean, really unique and everything.

So tell me, when you decided to go into business, what was the first step?

What did you have to do?

- Decide who I wanted to target.

That's the first step.

Second step was to figure out where it was going to come from, how I was going to bring it in front of the consumers to make a purchase.

I started out of the trunk of my car, traveling to beauty salons on Saturdays.

I would have bags and I would travel in and say hey.

They'd say, what you got for me this week?

So that's how it all really started.

- Now tell me about your apparel line.

You got everything from, 'cause I'm looking at the way you are dressed today.

You got everything from jackets to I'm assuming scarves and necklaces and all kinds of stuff.

Did you always have an interest in all of that type of stuff?

- I want to say I just started out in footwear, and I have to give that to my very first retail job was Bakers, and that was in Oak Park Mall, and so that had my eye on footwear.

I used to have the top buyers from Bakers come into the store, show up with the bag and say which one do you think will sell?

And I chose.

- We've already determined that you don't work in a corporate setting very well, because buyers can do very, very well.

- They can move around.

I actually have degrees in design and merchandising, so I can do that if I would like to, but I'd rather work for myself.

- Yeah, yeah.

How did you know that you weren't fit, and that's the wrong terminology.

How did you know that you weren't the right type of personality for the corporate environment?

- I don't like to be told what to do, and that's just straight forward.

I just do not want anyone to tell me when I'm supposed to be somewhere, where and what time.

I just like to be free.

I was like, corporate America is not for me.

- Is this your very first business?

How many businesses have you had?

- I've had two businesses.

This is a business that's been going on for 10 plus years.

It has different names of course, and we ended up with Danae and Dakota at this time because it's inspired from my daughters.

It's my daughters' middle names, so every time I look at the name, I know I have to keep going.

I have to leave something for them.

- Yeah, yeah.

When I came in the store, I'm walking around and everything.

I'm just kind of looking and kind of following my wife around, but once again, I noticed that everything was just so unique.

And when I say that, I don't mean unique in the sense of kind of out there, different, but I mean unique in style.

- I try not to be trendy.

I don't like to go with the trends.

Trends don't last.

I want you to be able to come into my store and buy something today and wear it again five years from now.

You may accessorize it differently, different shoes, jacket, earrings, jewelry, to make it look different, but I want lasting fashion.

- It is time for a break.

Stay with us, 'cause when we come back, we'll continue the discussion with Demetria Jackson.

We'll be right back.

You're watching Working Capital.

(exciting music) Welcome back.

We are talking with Demetria Jackson of Danae and Dakota about being an entrepreneur in the new consumer environment.

When we left for break, we were talking about trends and that type of stuff, and you were saying that you want people to be able to wear your fashions for at least another five years or so.

I think about what I've seen in your store, and you're an artist.

Even though you say the stuff about design and those things, which is kind of more of a scientific, and you talked about your consumer base and all that stuff.

Do you consider yourself an artist in the way that you look at things?

- I do.

You have to be unique.

You have to bring out fashion for someone else.

You have to know how to look at a person and say what they will look good in and what size they wear and go from there.

- When you start putting things together, do you put them together for you, or do you put them together for who you think will be interested in it?

- I put them together for who I think.

I would like for things to be different.

When you walk into my store, I don't want you to go to the store next door and see the same thing.

So when you walk into Danae and Dakota, you're gonna say this is different, and I'm going to say welcome Danae and Dakota, how may I help you today?

- One of the things that I've noticed about, and I'm gonna call it the mall atmosphere, in the last few years is that there are a lot of things that are changing in the industry and places in the mall.

I mean, you put a place in a mall during the pandemic.

Tell me about that.

- That's that not corporate going way for you.

You go against the grain sometimes being entrepreneurs.

So yes, I opened up in November of 2020 in the middle of the pandemic.

I'm not afraid to lose.

- Yeah, yeah.

Tell me about the heart of an entrepreneur who has, it's a fearless approach.

- You have to be fearless.

You have to be willing to lose.

- Yeah, yeah.

So in order to gain, you gotta be willing to risk pretty much everything.

- You have to be able to put it all on the table.

You're going to hold them or you going to fold them.

- Oh gosh, I love this.

What is some of the advice that you have gotten over the years with you being in business and doing so many different things?

- Well, from the consumer, they tell me keep doing me.

They love what I do.

Don't change.

Just keep doing you.

From other businesses, they recognize, they said, I see you.

I see you.

That means you're up a level, you're on their radar.

So it's all good.

- You came on the scene real quick, and I'm just talking about from a placement perspective.

You came on the scene really quick, and it was like, wow, this place is here.

Didn't even know that it existed before this.

- Exactly.

I get customers every day that say how long you been here?

'Cause they think they missed it.

And I was like, well no, I'm just new.

They're just like, well I love this store, and that I'll be back.

- It's very colorful, and like I say, it's very stylish.

So talk about, how do you define style?

- Style is within you, on the outside of you and just all around you.

For me, I don't go with what the color is for the season.

If it's cute, that's what we get.

That's part of being, purchasing for the trend is going with what everyone else is doing, so you have to be against the grain.

- A little bit counter-culture, so to speak.

I like that, I like that.

Is it pretty costly to be in the type of business that you're in?

- It is, because you never know what's going to sell, so you may lose on something that you just purchased because it's not gonna sell.

It's not selling as well as you thought it would.

It's costly because you have to put in in order to get out.

- Right, yeah.

It's a huge investment.

- Yes it is.

- How much time do you spend doing back room stuff, Because if you're a creative type person and doing fashion, a lot of people aren't into doing the books and all that stuff.

- That's what they don't discuss with entrepreneurship, is everything you have to do outside of the front office.

- Yeah, yeah.

How many hours a week do you spend on your business?

- It's undetermined, really.

You never know.

With me doing it just by myself, you never know.

I go to sleep still thinking about my business.

I wake up thinking about my business.

So yeah, I can't put a number on there because I'm always doing something with business.

- Well, that's a great way to punctuate our interview.

I want to thank you so much for being with us.

- Thank you.

- That's really good.

Well, it's time for another short break.

When we return, we'll pivot a little bit and talk with another local business traversing the new consumer environment.

You're watching Working Capital.

Welcome back.

When Stacy and Quint Cook decided to try their hand at selling smoked cheese at the annual Apple Festival, they had no idea of how successful they would be.

Let's take a look.

(upbeat music) Well, welcome Stacy, welcome Quint.

Good to see you guys again.

It's been a while.

- Thank you.

- I think the last time that we all got together was after some kind of business event or whatever it was, and we talked a little bit about your business and we talked a lot about marketing at that time.

So for our audience that's out there, let's talk about you two.

How'd you meet, and then we'll get into how you got into business and stuff.

So tell me about you two.

- Quint and I met when we were teenagers in high school at a church youth group.

We started dating in high school.

We got married shortly after high school, and we've been married for 15 years.

- Congratulations to you.

Now who's the entrepreneur in the group here, which one of you?

- She is.

- She is, huh?

So you provide all the marching orders, and he does all the marching?

- I would like to think it happens that way.

It doesn't.

Growing up, my aunt owned a party store and my family, my grandma and grandpa owned it before my aunt.

So growing up I've always been part of small business.

I've gotten to see it work.

- In the opening piece, I said that you guys did something at the Apple Festival.

Tell me about the Apple Festival and how that kind of became the jumping off thing for Stumpy's Cheese.

- If you back up just a little bit before Apple Festival, I was working full-time at a real job, and I got a bonus opportunity every year.

The company was kind of going downhill.

They cut our bonuses right before Christmas, and that was what we depended on for Christmas money for our four kids, so we just kind of looked at each other like what are we gonna do?

So she said everybody that tries your smoked cheese loves it.

Why don't we try to sell it?

So I told her she was crazy, that nobody would buy smoked cheese, but she signed us up for Apple Festival, two day show.

We took a whole lot of cheese to get us through the weekend.

At that time we were just doing Colby jack, pepper jack and cheddar, and we sold all of it on day one.

So we stayed up all night and we smoked another big round, went back the next day and we sold it all on day two.

- Isn't that something?

That's fascinating.

So you were just kind of doing this for fun, for family and friends before.

And so you had this thing that happened in your life.

I won't call it a life changing event, even though I guess it could be articulated that way, around Christmas, and that's what kinda got you into the business, huh?

How did you know that this was a business opportunity?

- When we were driving home that day and we were completely out of cheese, we had empty coolers and a pocket full of cash.

And we thought, we proved our concept.

We were talking about all the different reactions from the customers, that so many of these people had never even tried smoked cheese, and there were so many people that just love cheese that we thought, oh my gosh, let's do it again.

So we started booking more shows, and one show after another, we kept selling out.

- One of the things that entrepreneurs, those people that are interested in doing kind of what you guys have done, one of the things that they're always interested in is how much does it cost to go into business.

Without giving us any real hard line specifics, can you talk a little bit about what your startup cost was like once you finally decided that you wanted to be in business like this?

- Yeah.

We've always felt, we really like to stay debt-free.

That's always been something that we live personally and business-wise.

We don't like to go into debt, so we did everything step-by-step.

We started small.

We had a little bit of savings we put into it, and then the business has just funded itself.

It has gotten expensive.

Of course, as you grow, it takes money to grow, but the business funds itself for the most part.

- Had we known what it was gonna entail completely upfront, it probably would have deterred us a little bit, but we just kind of, we jumped in and we did what we knew, and then we learned something new and we'd have to get a little deeper in.

Oh, there's this license you need and that license you need and now you gotta jump through these hoops.

So we did that step by step and we just kind of learned as we went.

- You know, that's another aspect of this entrepreneurial kind of thing that people do, and that is okay, there's the formality portion of it.

Do I have a business plan and do I have financing and all this type of stuff.

It doesn't sound like you guys went through any of that stuff.

- We did it backwards.

- I'm gonna assume that you probably would not recommend that to anyone.

- We like to learn things the hard way, and that has been our entire life.

We like to do things the hard way.

I think if you have an idea, I think you prove your concept first and then I think if you've proven your concept, then you can come up with what money you need to start it up.

- I like that.

We're getting ready to go to break, but before we go to break, I want to ask you this.

Stumpy's, where'd you come up with the name?

- I also own a stump grinding business removing tree stumps, and that first show, the Apple Festival, the form said what is your business name?

And we just kind of looked at each other, we don't have a business name.

So I jokingly said, 'cause I joke about everything.

I said, how about Stumpy's?

And we laughed about it and then we wrote it down thinking it was a one day deal.

- And now you gotta walk around with that name.

That's great.

Well, it's time for another break, but there's a lot more to come.

We'll be right back.

Welcome back.

We have Stacy and Quint Cook of Stumpy's Smoked Cheese with us.

Now before we went to break, we were talking about kind of how you started the business and stuff like that.

Tell me about the geographic area that you cover.

- We go as far north as Holton.

We've got a couple stores in Holton, and then we go out west.

We've got Saint Marys, Rossville, and then a few stores in Manhattan, and then south we got Wakarusa, Carbondale and Osage City.

If you go east, we've got Lawrence, couple stores in Lawrence and then Leavenworth.

The bulk of our stores are right here in Topeka.

- You know your territory, don't you?

- I drive it every week.

- When you started the business, it was just the two of you.

And how are we doing now, still just the two of you?

What's the deal?

- We don't have any employees, per se.

We have a lot of friends and family that are amazing and help us out every single week.

- [Eugene] Isn't that nice of them?

- [Stacy] We have a really great support system, and so we rely on them.

I know we will be hiring this year because we know we can't do it all ourselves.

We've had a lot of help.

I'll make that clear, our helpers are amazing.

We know that it's too big of a business to do by ourselves, but we will be actually hiring here coming this year.

- Do you thank your helpers with hey, great gratitude, do you thank them with cheese, do you thank them with cash?

- We thank them with cheese, yes.

- You're doing a lot of smoked cheeses after the fact just for family and friends.

- Well, they do a lot of sampling while we're building platters and stuff, too.

That's a perk.

- Of course, yeah.

- Let's talk about growth.

Before we started the segment in the show, I asked you guys about how the pandemic had impacted your business.

Talk about that a little bit if you will, Stacy.

- We've had to pivot.

We had no idea.

We really relied on festivals, since we're still a newer company.

We've only been doing it full-time for just over a year, so we relied really on our festivals to meet our customers face to face and make connections through that way.

But since festivals have gone away, we've more pivoted towards, we've gotten more retail locations, we started delivery services.

We've started doing baskets.

Our gift baskets have taken off like crazy, and so just by pivoting and doing different things throughout the pandemic, we've actually grown by 400%.

- Wow.

Now what does that mean when you say 400%?

What does that mean for your days, for your nights and for how you, I mean, because that's a lot of growth.

- Yes.

- We had to figure out how to be, what's the word I'm looking for?

- Not grow too big too fast.

- Yeah, and be more efficient with what we're doing.

- And we did have that.

I said we like to learn things the hard way.

We grew a little bit too fast at Christmas time this year and we weren't able to refill our retail locations the week before Christmas.

So we learned that we did grow a little bit too big too fast, and so we've had to take our foot off the gas a little bit.

I think it's just about being intentional about how you're gonna grow, because there's so many different directions to go.

It's just getting focused.

- How do you take your foot off the gas?

Because I'm pretty sure that with your type of growth, you've got a lot of folks who are asking you, hey, continuously bring me product.

I need to be serviced and that type of stuff.

How do you get them to back off a little?

Because I mean, you're growing your consumer base.

- The biggest thing is we paused adding retail locations.

Right now we're just adding one or two a month, whereas before we were just adding as many as we could.

We want to make sure that we can take care of the retail locations that we have, so we slowed down on that.

We haven't been delivering as much just to give us a little bit more time, and then we've asked for a lot more help from family and friends to come over and help us build things, give us a little bit more time.

- How do you two divide up duties?

What's your job and what's yours?

- She's the creative one, so she handles all the marketing and all the ideas.

I'm the one that smokes the cheese.

- He does a lot more than that.

Actually, he organizes our production days and things like that.

He does a lot.

- I heard you say that you do all the delivering as well.

So in a week's time, I'm sure that you're having to deliver to at least three or four different places, but at the same time, you're having to smoke some cheese too.

How does that part of the production work?

- We have our week divided up where every day we're doing something different.

Production days on Wednesdays, delivery days on Thursdays.

So every Thursday I make the rounds to all the different retail locations and I refill them.

We like to do that just so they're ready to go for a weekend.

A lot of them are liquor stores, so everybody's getting ready for the weekend, gonna relax a little bit.

We've got a schedule to where on Monday we make sure we got all the inventory we need.

On Tuesday I smoke.

Wednesday we package everything and get it ready for retail.

On Thursday we deliver it.

- And then we throw in parent-teacher conferences right in the middle of it all.

We also have all the kid duties to do also.

- That's what I was gonna ask you about.

That's kind of the last thing.

In 30 seconds or less, you got family, you got each other, you got your business, you're entrepreneurs and all this type of stuff.

How do you make time for all of that, as quickly as you can?

- Oh my gosh.

I don't know how we make time.

We include our kids.

I think we just include them in the business, and that way, even though we are still running the business, we're spending time with our kids.

We're intentional about our time.

We ask for help when we need it.

- Yeah, yeah.

It is a pleasure to have you guys on the show.

Really appreciate you guys being here.

Okay, that's our show for now.

I'd like to thank Demetria Jackson of Danae and Dakota and Stacy and Quint of Stumpy's Smoked Cheese for being on the show.

I'd also like to thank you for watching.

I do hope you have enjoyed watching and that you've learned a few things about these businesses and their owners.

And as always, if you know of a unique business or unique management technique, we want to hear from you, so give us a call or drop us an email.

We look forward to seeing you next time.

It's all about business, and you've been watching Working Capital.

(exciting music) - [Announcer] Envista is pleased to support Working Capital.

Switch to empowered, switch to Envista.

Learn more at envistacu.com.

GO Topeka's Entrepreneurial and Minority Business Development is proud to support Working Capital.

We share the vision to assist local entrepreneurs with growing their business.

- [Announcer] Additional funding is provided by The Friends of KTWU.