It all Started in My Kitchen

I think most businesses start small or by accident. My parents had a chain of fabric stores growing up. By the time I started making dog collars though they had closed the stores down. But I still had access to all of their vendors. This was about 1999. I just adopted a great dog and wanted a fun dog collar for him. I started by buying the supplies at retail prices since I was buying a few bits at a time. But I was mainly doing it for my own dog. Well, friends wanted some for their dogs and people at my dog park were asking as well. LIGHT BULB! I think we have an idea.

I started sewing on my personal machine at my kitchen table. My roommate was not too happy to loose this space. I gradually bought rolls of webbing and 25 - 50 yard put-ups of ribbons. My style of collar was to sew a printed ribbon on to nylon webbing. I use the side-release clip buckle rather than a "belt" buckle style. I did not want to have to punch holes in webbing. You needed a heat punch to do this.

I would say the most fun was researching the supplies. Especially the ribbons. We had the internet obviously but not to the extent as now. It was hard to search for ribbons. Most companies did not have websites yet. I would go from fabric store to fabric store finding ribbons or fabrics I liked. I would take the vendor name down and contact them directly by phone asking for catalogs. My initial line was only about 10 different patterns. We have over 40 now.