You could call it a cheesy way to make money.
Kevin McKee, a lifelong Chicago Bears fan from Mundelein, has temporarily abandoned his beloved home team to make some cash peddling cheeseheads.
McKee has started a mail-order business out of his home to sell the foam hats shaped like Swiss cheese wedges that are adorned by and usually associated with Packer fans.
Only McKee has found a new market: borderline Bears fans who are hungry for some serious football action and trying to cope with divided loyalties.
With the Bears finishing among the worst teams in the National Football League this season, McKee said, his cheeseheads have become hot sellers, especially in suburban Chicago.
In three months, he said, he has sold more than 1,000 hats to a mixed clientele, including Bears fans turned Packers fans, Wisconsin natives living in northern Illinois and plain old Packers fans.
Does he feel like a traitor? Not at all, he said.
“I’m really a Bears fan,” he insisted. “But in light of how the Bears have done, I’ve found it interesting to follow the Packers. . . . I think we’re just kind of jumping on the bandwagon with people having fun.”
And making money, in his case.
“We already are profitable” said McKee, who sells the hats for $20 apiece.
Among his customers is Amy Turner of Grayslake, a Bears fan who bought a cheesehead a few weeks ago for her sister-in-law and brother-in-law, both Packers fans who live in Milwaukee.
Turner bought the hat as a Christmas present for her in-laws. But come Super Bowl time, she said, who knows? She could be sporting a cheesehead too.
“Why not cheer for a good team?” said Turner, who acknowledged feeling a bit let down by the Bears’ performance this year. “At this point, I just want (the Bears) to get a good draft pick.”
With less than $1,000 in startup costs and little overhead costs, McKee’s three-month-old business has fared well so far, he said. He boasted of being the only cheesehead provider in Illinois.
The Illinois secretary of state’s office did not know of any cheesehead providers in Illinois and had no registered companies on file with the word “cheesehead” in their names.
A full-time accountant, McKee, 36, runs the mail-order business from his house with his wife, Maureen, who works full-time in the public relations field.
From 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., they tend to their other jobs. But when they get home, they sell cheeseheads.
They sell through classified advertising in newspapers, then take orders for the hats via an answering service. They then fax the orders to the Wisconsin firm that manufactures the hats. McKee declined to identify his supplier for fear that customers might bypass his firm and go right to the source.
So far, McKee is having fun with his sports memorabilia business. He is finally his own boss, a perk he said he especially savors, and he has achieved one of his longtime goals: to have his own business.
“I always felt I had an entrepreneurial streak in me,” he said.
It just took the Bears’ lousy season to bring it out.
