When you’re perusing Cherry Republic’s roster of cherry-based goods, it’s hard to imagine a time when the store could’ve possibly sold anything else. But if you look all the way back to 1989, you’ll see Bob Sutherland, the brand’s founder, selling t-shirts emblazoned with the mantra “Life, Liberty, Beaches & Pie.”
Not long after the catchy swag started picking up speed, Sutherland launched the company’s first edible treat — the Original Cherry Boomchunka cookie.
Little did anyone know that this less-than-typical segue from t-shirts to cherry cookies would be the start of a thriving business, but Cherry Republic is now solidly synonymous with anything-and-everything-cherry in 2026.
From the launch of the first brick-and-mortar shop in Glen Arbor, Michigan, all the way to the brand’s post-2020 ecommerce boom, a lot has changed. Sutherland’s team has expanded from a one-man show to a buzzing team. Products encompass everything from salsas to candies to breads and beyond. Commerce has shifted and adopted new technologies and platforms.
Throughout every ebb and flow, though, Cherry Republic’s original mission has held strong: Life, Liberty, Beaches & Pie — a simple, memorable way of expressing who they are.
- Life (Local) — love for Northern Michigan and its people.
- Liberty (Self‑driven) — empowered teammates and heartfelt service.
- Beaches (Lightness) — purposeful work and fun.
- Pie (Generosity) — we give back (1% for Michigan) and welcome everyone.
(Plus, Cherry Republic has donated $2M+ to Michigan nonprofits over time and continues to advocate for farmers and stewardship of the land and water.)
When you take a good look at the company’s journey since its unique origin, one thing is abundantly clear: This success isn’t a fluke. In lieu of luck, you could draw a big, fat line linking Cherry Republic’s growth directly to its dedication to people.
At its core, the company’s hyper-focus on people is the thread that ties every stage of business, every innovation, and every win together since the very beginning.
And when it came time to push the envelope once again and expand its gifting channels? People were at the core of every decision along the way.
Read on to see what spurred Cherry Republic’s investment in gifting as a growth channel and the massive results that followed by delivering a gifting experience that seamlessly aligned with their customers’ gifting needs.
The Problem: Clunky Gifting Processes Couldn’t Keep up With Demand
Cherry Republic’s products are inherently giftable. These high-quality goods are an obvious pick for cherry-lovers, but the appeal also reaches far beyond initiated members of cherry fandom. Michigan expats, travelers to Northern Michigan, foodies, and those simply looking for a deeply memorable gift are some of Cherry Republic’s top gifters.
And when you take into account Cherry Republic’s extra steps to ensure maximum thoughtfulness — quality greeting cards, gift packaging that includes iconic cedar sprig and birch bark touches — it’s no surprise that there was high gifting demand.
With highly giftable products and an audience eager to gift them, you’d think gifting would be an easy channel to keep humming along.
The issue?
Even this gifting channel with perfectly matched products and customers was time-consuming.
The standard of white-glove gifting service the Cherry Republic team had been offering customers was amazing, but gift orders often required:
- hours of back-and-forth communication
- stacks of Excel spreadsheets
- multiple ticket touches
- turning to a relatively clunky tool that required hours to submit a single large order
It was a laborious blend that not only created bottlenecks in the gifting journey — especially during peak gifting seasons, like the Q4 holidays and summer tourism surrounding Traverse City’s National Cherry Festival — but also left the team at Cherry Republic feeling bogged down and behind.
“Corporate gifting was a beast. Team morale struggled because of the platforms and systems we had in place and the amount of training required for those,” says Amelia Sargent, Business Gifts Manager at Cherry Republic. “Plus, support was not as proactive or timely. We likely missed out on leads and lost customers to other companies that could just service them more quickly than we could.”
Despite a massive appetite for Cherry Republic’s ready-to-ship gifts, its tech stack (er, analog stack) was barely treading water. If the brand renowned for its people-first dedication wanted to keep up with demand, let alone scale this lucrative channel, something had to change.
The Solution: A Unified Gifting Platform for Cherry Republic’s Corporate and Consumer Gifters
With gifting demand — and tedious manual effort for each gift order — mounting, 2025 marked the year that Cherry Republic doubled down on gifting as a dedicated growth channel and made some big investments.
In April, a full-time Business Gifts Manager joined the Cherry Republic team to oversee and operationalize a streamlined process for the peak gifting seasons ahead. And after a hot tip to the company’s VP of Marketing from one of the brand’s consulting agencies, Zest was brought into the fold.
Once conversations were rolling with the team at Zest, a partnership seemed serendipitous for the struggles Cherry Republic had been encountering more often.
Unlike the tools and processes they had in place, standout benefits to a comprehensive gifting platform like Zest included:
- Ease of use for both customers and internal team members.
- Time savings with every gift order, whether consumer or corporate.
- Integrations with Shopify and Klaviyo, both existing tools in Cherry Republic’s ecommerce stack.
- Quick setup and onboarding, which required just a few weeks and not much time required from other departments.
Zest in Cherry Republic’s toolbox unlocked gifting possibilities that had previously seemed impossible from a time or technical capabilities aspect. Zest’s suite of gifting products includes fully optimized solutions for corporate, consumer, and event gifting.
The TL;DR: With Zest in their stack, Cherry Republic could quickly serve any customer with any type of gifting intent without a bottleneck in sight.
Throughout 2025, Cherry Republic’s gifting channel evolved from ad hoc, time-consuming, and frustrating processes to a fully fleshed out strategy that included aspects like a:
- Full-time business gifting manager.
- Self-service business gifting portal for automatically processing and submitting DIY multi-recipient orders.
- Concierge project management path that better served orders for 100 or more gifts as well as branded or custom needs.
- Dedicated Events & Occasions landing page for non‑corporate group gifting and party favors.
- Fully optimized digital gift notes and multiship gifting for up to 10 recipients baked right into the Shopify Plus checkout.
Truly formalized, convenient and brand‑forward gifting features like uploadable recipient lists, personalized gift messages, gift delivery scheduling, automatic volume discounts, gift tracking, customizable branded elements, and beyond ultimately added up to mean one (very important) thing: The people who love Cherry Republic were finally getting the online gifting experience they craved.
The Results: Cherry Republic Had Everything It Needed to Grow Gifting Channels Past $2 Million
Cherry Republic’s 2025 strategy to invest in and amplify gifting for corporate clients, everyday DTC consumers, and event gifters proved to be a huge success.
Zest is just one chapter of the company’s overall gifting story. Alongside its adoption of a comprehensive gifting platform to capture and convert every gifting intent, Cherry Republic made smart moves to educate its audience, build awareness around new gifting features, drive traffic to gifting pages, and engage gifters past their gift purchases to stoke loyalty (and those coveted repeat purchases).
Instead of just a form in the footer or driving DTC shoppers through the standard checkout experience again and again to send many gifts, Cherry Republic committed time and energy to:
- Highly visible on-site landing pages touting benefits and compelling CTAs to direct shoppers to their gifting needs.
- A Zest-powered gifting portal to capture self-service corporate orders any time, day or night.
- Gifting-focused campaigns with expanded touchpoints across social and email during peak seasons.
- Dedicated email campaigns to drive awareness and adoption of new gifting tools.
- LinkedIn networking with Zest to generate buzz and amplify the ease of gifting with Cherry Republic.
for their gifting intent.
Gifting had officially made the full transition from nice-to-have ecommerce extra to full-bodied growth channel — and Cherry Republic has the numbers to prove it.
In 2025, Cherry Republic was able to grow corporate gift sales to $1.4 million — a year-over-year uplift of nearly 20%. Through a streamlined combo of Zest’s self-service Storefronts and Concierge project management solutions, the team was empowered to process and submit 100% of its corporate gift volume through Zest with maximum efficiency, freeing up time to take on new clients and more orders than years past.
"We went from spreadsheets and hours of back-and-forth to a gifting channel that practically runs itself. Zest gave us back time, improved team morale, and helped us grow corporate gifting to $1.4 million in a single year. That's not a small thing."
— Sara Harding, VP of Marketing & Impact, Cherry Republic
With Zest’s consumer gifting products in tow, Gift Notes and Multiship Checkout, the company was finally able to optimize the DTC gifting experience straight from the Shopify checkout.
This frictionless purchase journey for everyday, non-corporate gifters to add personalized gift messages, digital gift note designs, and up to 10 recipients in a single transaction drove a 23% year-over-year increase in multishipping customers and a 34% year-over-year increase in multiship order value.
On top of more customers sending more gifts, the Cherry Republic team was able to save even more time internally through faster onboarding of seasonal ambassadors, fewer ticket touches, and simplified processes around international shipping.
“Customers responded so positively,” says Sargent. “There are now huge opportunities with our gifting programs and expanding this channel over the course of 2026. We’ve only scratched the surface on awareness.”
With plans to redesign landing pages, FAQs, and curated gift collections pages, Cherry Republic sees even more untapped potential when it comes to informing consumers and locking in an even better flow of gifting processes.
gift messages and tracking details.
Gifting Is Ripe for Picking in 2026 with Cherry Republic
Cherry Republic’s longstanding attention to detail and unending mission to improve the lives of people who cross its path are at the core of every step the brand takes.
And taking the time to prioritize better gifting in 2025 did just that.
Not only did unified gifting processes and one heckuva smart strategy improve the company’s in-house efficiency and morale, but Cherry Republic’s gift-hungry customers were finally able to buy more gifts for coworkers, friends, family, partygoers, and beyond in a way that aligned with where and how they want to shop.
Partnering with Zest and implementing a comprehensive gifting platform was one part of the playbook that led to more gifts sold, more happy customers, and more Michigan cherries out in the world. It’s a move that slots seamlessly into Cherry Republic’s mantra “Life, Liberty, Beaches & Pie,” and we know that 2026 will only be sweeter.
