Cindy Clough Dances Just For Kix
If you plan to spend the day with Just For Kix founder and director, Cindy Clough, you'd better be well rested and have your dance shoes with you. Running a performing arts conglomerate in the mid-west like Clough's takes energy, dedication, and a belief that dance is the road to health, creativity, and positive self-esteem. The company motto puts the emphasis on team work, and as the head of a group that employs 500 people annually, Clough knows the value of team effort. JFK started out as a part-time business in her home in 1981, and has grown to represent a wide range of dance instruction and catalog and retail sales that ranks Clough among the foremost entrepreneurs in the dance business today.
Clough can be found in the corporate offices during the day. The hours are filled with non-stop meetings organizing JFK camps and dance intensives across the west. She constantly works on choreography to fill the need of her camps and dance studio in Brainerd, Minnesota. Later, she answers emails and selects products for her very successful catalog business and checks in on the new retail store she opened next to her studio. It's run by her daughter-in-law, Dana, and has added a new dimension to the already vibrant catalog sales.
"Having been a cataloger for years, the retail side is more fun in terms of product," says Clough. "In catalog you cannot be as trendy unless you are the manufacturer. Styles come and go so fast, so you can't put them in print, or they will be gone by the time clients wish to order them! The store is fun in that it has new and trendy items. It services our local and surrounding studios."
After a full day in the office, Clough changes hats (and shoes) and heads off to the studio to teach or coach the dance team at the local high school. "Often times I feel like when many of our employees are going home for the day, I start my second shift." But this schedule is how Clough has come to be known as a definitive source of quality dance instruction, coaching, merchandise, and special events like camps and half-time shows. Since 1987 she's been organizing and choreographing mass-performance half-time shows for big time events like the Orange Bowl, the Hall of Fame Bowl, and the Outback Bowl.
Yearly, Clough organizes an amazing performance tour that enables hundreds of dance teams, cheer teams, studio dancers and their coaches to experience the thrill of performing before a college football audience in Tampa, Florida at the Outback Bowl. Performers and coaches participate in outings, rehearsals, and a show before an audience of thousands. Dancers from all over the country converge on Tampa in January to perform in not only the bowl game half-time show choreographed by Clough, but also in the annual JFK National Competition. This is the only performance tour that offers a competition and a major half-time performance.
If directors aren't sure about participating, Clough has an irresistible offer for them. They can attend a familiarization tour in June prior to the bowl game completely free of charge. Clough and company will guide directors on a three-day tour of the hotels, excursions, and performance locations that their dancers will experience during the tour in January.
"We recruit directors from all over the country to participate in our travel opportunity to the Outback Bowl," explains Clough. They go to Florida for the three-day weekend and pay nothing. Our goal is to have them bring their dancers back for the bowl. All food, hotel, and fun is free!" (Coaches have to pay their own transportation fee to Florida and back, but are reimbursed if they decide to bring dancers to the bowl in January.)
Clough's dance background began in baton twirling and high school dance team. She became the director of the award winning Kixters dance team at Brainerd High School in 1976. "I had a natural gift for choreography and music and my strong point has always been creating routines," says Clough. "My training was done in the school of hard knocks. I had to study technique and form. I really had the cart before the horse when I began and had to go backwards to learn technique." But Clough doesn't want other dance team coaches to feel behind on technique, so she organized dance team camps in 1981.
"Our camps were started to service people such as myself," continues Clough. "We bring together experts to help average dance coaches around the country learn." After over twenty years of running dance camps in six western states, Clough has begun a new project, also to answer her own needs but to share the concept with others. Beginning this year, the JFK studios in Brainerd will host week-long intensives in the summers for young dancers.
Classes, camps, intensives, tours, competitions, retail, mail order, choreography, business, marketing, writing, and employees keep Clough on the go year round across the country. But she always keeps her company's goals in mind. "We try to treat each and every customer how we would want to be treated. Being dancers ourselves, we know how important getting your order in time is, so we try to go above and beyond," Clough says about sales. "In our youth dance programs our director goals are to treat every child as we would hope to see our child treated. We also try to exceed our client's expectations rather than just meet them."
Customer service in every area keeps the numbers growing at JFK. Student population is in the range of 20,000 in schools across Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, and Wisconsin. Her company has recently reached new milestones with the introduction of a custom line of dance wear named after her daughter, the Alexandra Collection and just over one million catalogs distributed annually. Even though dance has undergone many changes since Clough began in 1976, she trains a keen eye on those changes so her company can respond quickly and with innovations and programs designed to place JFK at the forefront of the industry.
"I feel our 'athletes' are getting stronger and more technical," claims Clough on the future of dance. "I also think music cycles and it comes around again. So sometimes it's fun as an older coach to use a piece of music for the second go round and see how different we doing things now than back then. The choreography is definitely harder now."
Clough's family is part of the puzzle and helps her stay grounded. Daughter Alexandra is a senior in high school and teaches in the studio with Cindy. Her sons, Joel and Jerad, exercise their business degrees by working on videos, managing the studio's coffee bar, and maintaining the JFK website. Husband Steve coordinates the finances and marketing. Brother-in-law Bob directs catalog sales. Clough says we put fun into what we work and we're almost always together for every function. The staff is also part of the family and provides a great network for us. We relax by going to the lake for down time.
Contact Clough at www.justforkix.com, 1-800-450-DANC, or dance@justforkix.com