Necessity, the cliche goes, is the mother of invention. For Bella Modi founder Kim Mitchell-Catlett, necessity hit the day the strap broke on favorite pair of shoes.

By the time Rocky Detwiler hit his 30s, he was already a millionaire. Then the phone rang…

For Annalisa DeMarta and Ken Johnson, family camping trips have transformed into a family business: LoneCone.com, an e-tailer focused on outdoor gear for the whole family. The company, which sells through Amazon, it’s own website and — beginning in May — a retail showroom in Boise, is now a profitable, growing and well-respected retailer. But it wasn’t always this way...

Four years. That’s how long Roger Hancock went without a paycheck. Not just an employer’s paycheck, any paycheck.

Those who watch the entrepreneurial reality show Shark Tank know one of the most interesting parts of each episode is when they feature updates on the businesses a year or two later. We're taking a page out of their book and doing the same with the Boise companies we've profiled over the past year. Let's get started...

Tanya Carnahan has always been worldly. The daughter of globetrotting missionaries, Tanya was born in Morocco and lived in dozens of countries by the time she was a teenager. Eventually, things settled down and Tanya started a family of her own in the outskirts of Seattle. Life was good. Then — inexplicably — her family, including her newborn son, started getting sick.

August Johnson wanted to take a selfie before he — and most of the world — even knew what a selfie was. The full-time commercial real estate appraiser and some-time metal sculpturist welded a cellphone-sized metal box and used screws to attach suction cups. He then used those suction cups to attach his camera to a mirror, set the camera’s timer and take a selfie.

To locals, Usful Glassworks is a place to drop off used wine and alcohol bottles. To foodies, it’s the place that supplies upcycled drinking glasses to popular restaurants like Fork and Red Feather. And while both are true, there’s more to it than that.

You might say that fish fertilizer is in Thomas Lansing’s blood. The son of an environmental activist and a commercial fisherman, Thomas spent much of his childhood exploring Idaho’s great outdoors. As an adult (and founder of Carp Solutions), he’s trying to keep it that way as he builds a career.

Melt looks like butter. Spreads like butter. And in most ways, tastes like butter. But of course — it’s not butter. In fact, the only reason Melt exists is because the company’s founder, Cygnia Rapp, couldn’t eat butter (or many other common fat sources) without becoming ill. “She was 30 years old at the time and decided she didn’t want to live that way,” explains Meg Carlson, an experienced food industry veteran and the company’s president and CEO. Cygnia’s solution? Develop a not-so-easy-to-follow recipe for an alternative to butter.

Down a bumpy gravel path off Hill Road is a red house with a door in the back that leads into a narrow room. The walls are lined with movie posters, pencil sketches and racks full of resins and paints. Near the door is a desk covered in miniature plastic body parts, squares of sandpaper and a utility knife. This is Credenda Studios — a one-man operation for custom action figures. Or as his fans call them: designer toys.

Frannie Wilson and Nichole Schoener say they're impulsive, but it's hard to believe looking around their immaculate store, Paperie + Pen, at The Village in Meridian. Like Frannie and Nichole themselves, the space is classy but quirky, upscale but unpretentious. It all feels so intentional; not impulsive at all. But the partners insist their shared impulsiveness is the very thing that got them to where they are now...