Bluegrass Moms | Spencer County native has updated the calling card for the digital age

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Spencer County native has updated the calling card for the digital age

By Mary Meehan

Posted: Wednesday, Oct. 06, 2010

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• Lori Cheek launched her Web site and line of cards earlier this year.

Want to get cheeky?

Go to Cheekd.com. For $25, you get a deck of 50 cards and a month of service, or for $5, five cards and a month of service. Additional monthly service is $9.95. A purchase allows you to have an ID number and post a profile and a picture, so people who have been "cheeked" can check you out.

Think of it as the old "I-like-you-do-you-like-me?" note, formatted in the digital age for grown-up use. And cocktails might be involved.

Or, as creator and Kentucky native Lori Cheek puts it, it's a "bridging of the gap between dating on- and offline."

Cheek's Web site, Cheekd.com, takes dating from the real world to cyberspace and back using a kind of calling card for the new millennium.

The idea came to her a few years ago, when she heard a cute story about a guy who'd spotted a girl he liked and scribbled "want to have dinner?" on a business card.

"I just thought it was kind of a bold move," said Cheek, a Spencer County native and University of Kentucky graduate. But "I thought it was kind of cheesy to give them your message on a business card."

She thought, why not create cards with flirty messages that send the desired to a Web site to see a profile and picture of the desirer? The idea for Cheekd.com was born.

But bringing it into the real and digital world took time.

A creative sort — Cheek studied architecture at UK — she had no trouble coming up with a design and hundreds of catchy lines, including "I am totally cooler than your date," or "I'm making it easy for you." The lines are printed on cards with a sleek black design.

"Forget the little black dress," she said. "We are all about the little black card."

The cards are black because it adds a note of mystery and, she said, you can't write on it and mess up the intended aesthetic.

There was just one problem: Cheek didn't know how to get the clever cards into customers' hands. "I didn't even know how to set up a company," she said.

After 18 months "of walking in circles with this genius idea rolling around in my head," she found business partners who did.

There are some rival sites, Flipmedating.com for example. But Cheek, and Cheekd.com, are on the pop culture radar.

Oprah has called. (Or at least her people have requested a deck of the cards.) The responses to a story this summer in The New York Times nearly crashed Cheekd's server. The cards have even been featured in a Russian magazine, Snob, aimed at the international glitterati.

They've also evoked a bit of a cult following in some cities, especially New York, where the Taylorsville native has lived for 15 years. There are physical meet-ups in New York once a month where cards are sold at discounted prices and adult beverages are consumed.

"It's a lot easier to give them away after a cocktail," she said.

Cheek, who considers herself not only the face of Cheekd.com but representative of the target market, is not shy about passing out cards. She tucked one into the pocket of fashion mogul Russell Simmons (of Phat Farm) and passed one along to actress Uma Thurman. (Some of the cards just say "Hi".)

Although the appeal of the cards is universal, Cheek is not sure they'd be as titillating in a place, like her hometown, where everybody knows everybody. But her new Cheekd crew has helped her make connections and made her feel even more at home in New York.

"It almost feels like Taylorsville," she said.

And she is proof that the cards work. She saw a cute guy in the Hamptons and dropped him a line. Now they are dating.

Cheek sees Cheekd.com as infinitely better than traditional online sites, such as Match.com or eHarmony. First, she said, online, you can pick only from the limited number of people who are registered on the site. With Cheekd.com, "you can shop the whole world."

Plus, perhaps more importantly, you can't PhotoShop your look in real life. What you see is what you, presumably, get.

Reach Mary Meehan at (859) 231-3261 or 1-800-950-6397, Ext. 3261

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