Jim Preste Cheer Factor is a Family Affair by Brenda McDonald Necessity continues to be the mother of invention. When faced with ill-fitting performance clothing for his small-framed daughter, MSU alum Jim Preste, '73 F&TV, founded a clothing company that specializes in custom-fitted and -designed athletic warm-ups. "Ashley would be given cheerleading warm-ups with pants that were always too long and never fit her," Preste said. "Her mom would hem them and customize the outfit. People would ask who did the work." This planted a seed in Preste's mind. He was looking to take his career in another direction after spending more than 27 years in the marketing/public relations business and founding his own firm, Alpine Marketing. "I talked to athletic directors and coaches who said warm-ups never fit their teams, and the only option for fabric was nylon, which kept the kids cold," he said. "They also hated seeing so many teams in the exact same style of warm-ups at competitions. They wanted custom warm-ups that they could design." Jim's wife, Sandy, had a background in fashion design and art and continued to make custom warm-ups just for Ashley until three years ago when a cheerleading team called and asked for custom warm-ups for 35 kids. With that, Cheer Factor was born. "We got a label made to put in the warm-ups, and then we started getting calls from other teams who said they saw our name," Preste said. "Coaches were starting to send referrals to us. Our apparel was in five states. We stepped back and said, 'This is a business.'" Five months ago they created a Web site, www.cheerfactor.com. Now their products are in 28 states. "Many of our teams are state, regional or national champions in cheerleading, dance, gymnastics or volleyball, which has positioned us nicely in the market," noted Preste. They have headquartered the 6,000-square-foot corporate office and design studio in Rosemount, about 20 miles south of Minneapolis. They have nine employees who work with Sandy primarily on design. Jim handles marketing. "Coaches work with our people to build the design from the ground up," Preste said. "Sandy creates the initial fashion designs and develops the production pattern, and we do an initial sewing. Then we send it to the coach. We have no standard off-the-shelf warm-ups because we build them from scratch." Their turnaround time for apparel is an industry record three weeks. "Everyone else takes from six to 12 weeks," he said. Their clothing is also unusual in that it is not sewn in a foreign country. It is made in the United States by a contract sewing firm in Minnesota. "You can't anticipate what you might need in a custom piece of clothing if it's being sewn offshore," Preste said. Preste acknowledges that established warm-up manufacturers like Nike and Adidas are formidable competition. "But we'll continue to carve out a viable niche as a respected brand because every day there's another call or e-mail from another coach who understands that we are truly different," he said. Preste credits the guidance of several MSU film and television professors back when he was a student with the success he enjoys today. "I didn't apply myself much in Professor (Fred) Gerber's class," he said. "But he would always tell me that I had a lot of potential and I could do whatever I wanted to do. When you're in your formative years, you need someone to tell you those things."