Bill Jones is polished, full of glitz and glimmer when front and center as chief executive officer of Sissy's Log Cabin. Behind the scenes, he loves roughing it in rugged wooded locales and doesn't shy away from back-breaking work to reach his goals.
Jones hopes to grow the company from five stores to 10 in the next decade.
"Bill has a lot of pent-up energy," says one of his oldest friends, Ford Trotter of Pine Bluff. "I don't think he necessarily knows how to relax."
Trotter tells a story about moose hunting with Jones about 10 years ago.
"It was a bow hunt and Bill killed his moose in like the first hour of hunting, and we were there for a week," he says. "The camp we were at in Canada was really remote and there was no furniture -- there was not a chair anywhere, and there was one little table inside this hut we were sleeping in. He spent the next two days building furniture, carving it out of the trees and stuff that he cut down. He made a table and chairs and then he made us all play cards on it."
Trotter's friendship with Jones goes back to their school days, and after college, when they were both back in Pine Bluff, he watched as his friend helped build a jewelry business.
"He and his mother would sell jewelry during the day, and he would make [jewelry] at night," says Trotter. "I'd go up there and sit with him, and we would drink a beer. A lot of people don't know how hard he worked."
Jones was 7 years old in 1970 when his mother, whom he calls by her first name, Sissy, opened an antique shop in a dilapidated 1920s log cabin in Pine Bluff.
"She rented it for $50 a month, and they were going to tear it down, as a matter of fact, when she saw it that weekend," he says. "There were like, six layers of wallpaper we had to pull off the walls and the floors were falling in. The ceiling had stuff falling out and we had to take this black and white checkered cloth and staple it to the ceiling to catch everything."
There was no hot water in the building, he says, and the bathroom was built into a plywood box on a screened-in porch with a door that had settled and would no longer open.
"We had to put antifreeze in the toilet to keep it from freezing," he says.
He joined his mother in business in 1984 after studying chemical engineering at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. In 1985, he went to the Gemology Institute of America in Santa Monica, married his wife, Sharri, whom he met in high school, and started making jewelry in the evenings, often working until 2 and 3 a.m.
"There's a difference in selling to eat and selling to make money," he says. "We were selling to eat."
A FAMILY AFFAIR
His mother had borrowed $1,500 from the bank, and they paid that back. And they put everything they made in the first several years right back into the business.
"It was really difficult to build that kind of inventory unless you just do without," he says.
His sister, Ginger, a registered nurse, joined them in the business, bringing her flair for marketing and advertising.
Jones' mother and father, Murphy Jones, divorced when he was 10 and the couple remarried when he was 27. When they remarried, Murphy Jones, an electrical engineer, also joined the jewelry business. Murphy Jones died in 2017.
"Sissy and I were really the sales people, the upfront people, and my sister really started the advertising because we didn't have advertising at all before her. And then my dad was very analytical so he was the driving force behind the financial aspects of the business and getting computers. Sissy and I didn't care about that stuff. We cared about people coming in and designing stuff and making beautiful jewelry," he says. "So we had all the different pieces in place. The stars aligned."
In 1991, they built a new store, right next to the old log cabin. It took them from 900 square feet to 10,000 square feet -- and it had had water and an indoor bathroom.
"We really saw some explosive growth. Advertising was one of the key things to our growth because we were in Pine Bluff, Ark., which [was] in the second-most impoverished state in the nation, and we were in the most impoverished county in the state," Jones says.
Craig O'Neill prank called Sissy, pretending to be a sheik who had 12 wives and needed to order slide bracelets with their individual birthstones and Arabic engraving for each of them.
"He was really leading her along, and this was going to be a huge sale, and she was saying, 'Oh, yes, we could do it," Jones says. "She got so many calls afterward from people that heard it. So she said, 'Well, apparently, this advertising thing does work.'"
At one point, about 85% of Sissy's Log Cabin's sales were from outside Pine Bluff, Jones says, and the family was having trouble moving beyond their peak numbers.
He designed and created a 248-acre subdivision in Jefferson County around that time.
"Sharri called it my midlife crisis -- instead of getting a Corvette, I got a bulldozer," he says. "We basically did it on nights and weekends, and my boys helped. ... They learned to run trackhoes and bulldozers and trenchers and everything else. We built two houses in there and sold 50 lots, too."
Jones built a massive double gate to close off the property while he did the work, refusing requests from people wanting to come in to see the progress. On a lower area of the property, he created a park with a recirculating creek system, bridges with waterfalls, basketball courts, a playground, a driving range and a communal garden area.
"In his spare time," says Sharri. "He would get home from work and do this, and then he would get up the next morning and do some more before work. Bill's very driven."
HEIGHTS BOUND
Jones said he was glad he had done the subdivision but learned it wasn't really what he wanted to do. He was simply combating boredom, when the Pine Bluff store was the only one in existence. Shortly after that, he convinced his family that it was time to expand.
A Rolex representative had told him they could represent that brand in a Little Rock store but that he had to commit quickly.
"We were at Cheers in the Heights, looking around, and I told Sissy, 'Look, the future of our business is in your hands.' I had my phone, and I texted my Rolex representative, 'Yes, we will take Rolex.' And I didn't send it, I just pushed it over there in front of Sissy, and I said, 'What do you want to do?' And she said, 'Oh, what the hell.'"
With that, she pushed the send button and the deal was done. In 2009, the second Sissy's location opened, in the Little Rock's Heights neighborhood.
"When I found this location, I remember going back to talk to Sissy and my dad and they go, 'Why do you want to be there? Roberson's just left that place. Mary Healey's is going out of business right around the corner and you want to build on, you want to put a business in there?' And I'm like, 'I think it's right. I really think it's right,'" Jones says.
Uncertainty waned as they were inundated with customers, he says, many of whom were tired of driving to Pine Bluff.
"The Pine Bluff store is the only one that's never been robbed. We've had smash-and-grabs, and I got into a shootout here," he says of the Heights location. "I was really scared. It's the only time I thought I was going to die, and I've been attacked by grizzly bears, and you know, charged by an elephant and everything else."
Sharri Jones jokingly says that he's a "wild man."
"I think that's how he relaxes," she says with a laugh.
The bear didn't actually attack, Jones says. It just mock charged him 10 or 12 times after he shot his bow and hit a caribou in the northern territories of Canada.
"I said, 'Let's cut the head off and run with it, and I bet this bear will stop at the body,'" he says. "'The man I was with said, 'Well, I've never done that before, but we'll try it.'"
It worked like a charm.
LIFE IN AFRICA
Murphy Jones had worked for a company that contracted with Entergy in Johannesburg, South Africa, for five years.
"One of the main reasons he did that is because he'd always promised we can take me on African safari when I was a senior in high school," Jones says. "So when I was 18, 19 and 20, I got to spend three summers in Africa, which was pretty cool."
He worked on game preserves, hunted, went to Eastern Transvaal, Kruger National Park and Victoria Falls, enjoying the freedom to explore the area on his own.
"He'll tell stories about jumping out of a helicopter onto a gazelle to wrestle the gazelle to the ground. I mean, these are things these that he's lived, and it's just fascinating to me," says his friend Dr. Hayden Franks. "He's made his community of Pine Bluff better. He has a real neat way of looking at the situation and finding a way to improve that situation, which is one of the greatest things I think you could say about any person."
IF YOU BUILD IT, THEY WILL COME
Bill and Sharri Jones have long supported the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, Franks says, and have often committed time and equipment to improving various parts of the city.
"He built a baseball practice facility probably 15 or 20 years ago behind the Sissy's Log Cabin in Pine Bluff and does not charge anybody to use that, and so Watson Chapel, Pine Bluff, White Hall, all those different baseball teams and I'm sure softball teams as well, have had access to this building. And then it's been completely outfitted by Bill and Sharri Jones to provide the youth with a sport."
It was through baseball that Jones met Joe Cook. He had needed a pitcher to show the team of 11- and 12-year-olds he was coaching what an 80-mile-an-hour pitch looked like, so he called up the baseball coach at UAPB, who sent Cook.
Cook helped him coach after that, and they led the team to a state championship. Cook confided in Jones later that he was going to drop out of college because of a family situation. And Jones invited him to stay with them and continue his education.
"I thought, 'Oh, man, what did I just say? I haven't even talked to my wife about this,'" Jones says.
All was well, though, and Cook remains a part of their family. He is manager of their Jonesboro store.
The Jones family roots go all the way back to Joseph Stillwell, who settled at Arkansas Post in the 18th century. They have a cabin in nearby Watson, on the lower White River in Desha County.
"When we're down there, and the boys and Sharri and I go to Watson United Methodist Church, we double the population there," Jones says.
Their church in Pine Bluff is Lakeside United Methodist Church, and they start each day of business with a prayer.
ROUGHING IT IN THE WILDERNESS
Jones' son William, the company's vice president of operations, told him when he was in high school that he, too, wanted to have stories like his dad.
"I said, 'Well, to have the stories, son, you're gonna have to put yourselves in harm's way.' He goes 'Cool, let's do something,'" Jones says.
So Jones found a company, weguidealaska.com, that would drop them in the wilderness for a 10-day unguided camp. They wanted to go bow hunting for caribou, and the company flew them in a Piper Cub over the Brooks Mountain Range, dropping them off with some camping supplies in a valley about 500 miles from the nearest roadway.
"We land and the guy stops, doesn't turn off the engine or get out of his seat or anything, and he says, 'Get out.' So we throw all our stuff out, and he slides his little window open, and he goes, 'I'll be back in a week. If the weather's bad it'll be longer,'" Jones says. "And he left."
He and William learned on that trip to fill a coffee kettle with water gathered from a nearby stream and put it over a fire at night because in the morning it would be frozen. They drank from the creek throughout the day and ate arctic graylings (a freshwater fish in the salmon family) they caught for dinner.
"The reason I did this was the bonding aspect -- when it's you and an 18-year-old, and the only person who'll save you is me, and the only person who'll save me is you, and you're together the entire time because there's a full concern about a grizzly attack the entire time you're there," Jones says. "We killed two caribous, and I'll never forget that last night we were there. I was just like, 'Please, God, let the plane show up tomorrow and let me get out of here because I feel like I'm on borrowed time."
The Jones' younger son, Wyatt, didn't have the same desire for adventure as William.
"I want to go on an elk hunt more than anything right now," says Wyatt, a sales associate at the Heights store. "I want them to drop us off in the middle of Arizona."
Jones, always up for an adventure, has one in mind for when his grandchildren, now just 1 and 2 years old, grow a bit more.
"We have 40 acres. Our north border is the Country Club golf course. Our south border is the Bayou Bartholomew, which is the longest bayou in the world," he says. "About a year or so, we bought a canoe. And when my grandchildren get old enough, I'm going to be the first person to ever take their grandchildren to Walmart in a canoe because with this bayou I can put in and paddle down about 2 miles and it comes out right by Walmart."
SELF PORTRAIT
DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH: Oct. 5, 1963, Pine Bluff.
A BOOK I RECENTLY READ AND LIKED: MONEY Master the Game: 7 Simple Steps to Financial Freedom by Tony Robbins.
I KNEW I WAS AN ADULT WHEN: I got married. I was barely 21.
THE FIRST PIECE OF JEWELRY I BOUGHT FOR MYSELF: Was a gold nugget chain.
A PAST PRESIDENT I WOULD LIKE TO HAVE LUNCH WITH: Ronald Reagan.
AN EXPRESSION I USE OFTEN IS: “Water always runs downhill,” and “cream always rises to the top.”
IF I COULDN’T BE IN THE JEWELRY BUSINESS I WOULD BE: A developer.
TO RELAX I LIKE TO: Ski, hunt, fish, golf, parasail.
MY FAVORITE PLACE ON EARTH: Our cabin outside Watson.
THE BEST MEAL I CAN IMAGINE: Something I get at Hotel Bristol in Colmar, France — sea bass with truffle froth.
I WISH I COULD: See my grandkids graduate from college.
ONE WORD TO SUM ME UP: Learning
High Profile on 03/01/2020