The Story
A dance business raised, not just built
In 1981, a high school dance coach in Brainerd, Minnesota, placed a small newspaper ad for a youth dance class. Within 24 hours, roughly 120 children had signed up. That coach was Cindy Clough, and the response was the first sign that Just For Kix was going to be bigger than a side project run out of the family home.
More than four decades later, Just For Kix is one of the Midwest's best-known names in youth dance - not because it chased trophies, but because it built two businesses at once. On one side, it runs community dance instruction: more than 200 program locations across roughly a dozen states, engaging over 20,000 dancers a year in kick, jazz, lyrical, hip hop, ballet and tap. On the other, it is a retailer, designing and selling the dancewear, costumes, shoes and custom team apparel those dancers wear. Few companies in the space do both at this scale.
"We never would have thought it would wind up this big. Never in a million years."Cindy Clough, Founder & Executive Director
What Just For Kix actually does
The company is organized around a handful of connected activities. Its youth dance programs are the heart - locally run classes built on a team-first philosophy that emphasizes teamwork, technique and confidence over pure competition. Around that sit summer dance camps for preschoolers through high school teams, the "Together We Dance" events, and a performance tour that places dancers on the field at the ReliaQuest Bowl, a nationally televised college football game. Then there is the shop: a full e-commerce and catalog operation at shop.justforkix.com selling dancewear and costumes.
That combination is the point. A dancer who enrolls in a Just For Kix class is a natural customer for a Just For Kix leotard, costume or team warm-up. Instruction feeds retail; retail funds and reinforces instruction. It is a quietly durable model, and it is unusual - most dance brands pick a side.
Who it serves
The core customers are young dancers and their parents, along with dance teams, studios and school programs. On the retail side, that widens to a nationwide online audience of dancers who may never set foot in a Just For Kix class but buy its shoes, tights and costumes. The company mails more than a million dancewear catalogs a year - a reminder that even a digitally-run business (its store runs on Shopify Plus) still leans on the tactile ritual of flipping through a catalog with a dancer at the kitchen table.
"Change lives, one dancer at a time."Just For Kix mission
The problems it solves
For families, Just For Kix lowers two barriers at once: access and cost. It brings structured, technique-focused dance instruction to smaller communities that might not otherwise have a competitive studio, and it pairs that with affordable, trend-forward gear so parents are not forced to choose between quality and price. For dancers, it offers a path - from a first preschool camp to high school team competition - inside a single, familiar system. And it folds in lessons that outlast the choreography, using class time to teach kids about bullying prevention and character.
How it is different
Three things set Just For Kix apart. First, vertical integration: it is both the studio and the store, which is rare in youth dance. Second, its team-first culture - the company leads with teamwork and confidence rather than a competition-only identity, a philosophy rooted in founder Cindy Clough's own coaching career leading the Brainerd Warrior Dance Team to ten state championships and a National High Kick title. Third, longevity and ownership: it has been run by the same founding family for more than 40 years, with Clough still serving as Executive Director, her husband Steve on the business side, and their daughter Alexandra lending her name to the in-house Alexandra Collection.
Where it fits in the market
On the product shelf, Just For Kix competes with national dancewear retailers like Discount Dance, Weissman and Revolution Dancewear, carrying big brands - Capezio, Bloch, Body Wrappers, Under Armour - alongside its own lines. On the instruction side, its rivals are independent local studios and franchises. What almost no single competitor matches is the pairing of large-scale community instruction with an owned retail catalog and custom teamwear line (MOVE U). That's the niche Just For Kix has occupied for four decades: not the biggest costume house and not the fanciest studio, but the one that does both, affordably, for the everyday dancer.
