We were lucky to catch up with Grace Wang recently and have shared our conversation below.

Grace, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

Petphoria is the longest love letter ever written to humankind’s best friend–doggos! Our company was founded by Petreprenuer, Grace, and her furry companion, Beni, as a gift giving solution when boring, overly-processed store brand dog treats just don’t make the cut. Since its grand opening in Madison, Wisconsin in 2020, Petphoria has grown into much, much more, offering a wide variety of luxury dog treats, handmade pet accessories, (yes–even human items to match!), along with sassy human apparel. So, how exactly did we get here?

When Grace met Beni, in Los Angeles, it was love at first lick and nothing has been the same since. As a self proclaimed (and a little obsessed) Dog Mom, Grace felt like Beni had her back through thick and thin. Together, they faced anxiety, managed ADHD, and conquered pretty much everything else life and its lemons threw their way. Beni and Grace became frequent guests at events in Los Angeles like barkday parties, bark mitzvahs, and yappy hours (that’s right, yappy hours!). It became clear to Grace that other people felt the same about their beloved pups, thus, Grace and Beni’s search for the pawfect doggo gift ensued.

After constantly being underwhelmed by plastic packaging of generic treats when shopping for these events, Grace was left wanting for more.

Grace developed treats made with carefully sourced natural, and limited ingredients packaged in a luxurious, quality paper tube to offer kitchen countertops a pawp of color and packaging almost as cute as your pooch. Most importantly, they’re delicious and packed with the nutrition our best furends need to stay healthy and tail waggin’ happy.

But why stop there? Since opening its doors, Petphoria’s product assortment has expanded. We design sassy human apparel for our fellow crazy pet parents and colorful, handmade pet accessories and toys that are so, so fetch–see what we did there?

Petphoria invites all dog enthusiasts to join their community, promising not just a purchase but an experience that delights both taste buds and hearts. Dive into the Petphoria universe and embrace the joyous celebration of the human-canine bond while making a meaningful difference, one purchase at a time. So what are you waiting for? Join our Petphoria pack!

More information: https://shoppetphoria.com/pages/about

Grace, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Founder of Petphoria, Grace comes from a diverse background in marketing, project management, and Entrepreneurship. Her experience at Live Nation and Marketing Agencies has made her a strategic thinker with a strong presence and willingness to learn in any environment. Grace is focused on seeking out innovative ways to improve the pet industry by growing her business, Petphoria, for dogs and their people.

IG: @petphoria
FB: @shoppetphoria

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/graceewang/

Can you talk to us about manufacturing? How’d you figure it all out? We’d love to hear the story.

We have a mix at Petphoria, depending on the product. When I started, I had some experience on sourcing but never developing my own product so lots of research and learning was involved. I met with a lot of different manufacturers to see their capabilities and only brought on ones that aligned with what I envisioned for Petphoria. Our dog treat partner is a small business that makes each batch of our limit ingredient dog treats. Our blanks for our apparel are all sustainably sourced and printed in house. Our handmade bandanas are handmade in house as well. Product development is not an easy thing so a lot of learnings happened when we brought a product to the market, we def had to adjust to our customer feedback in order to get the product to be where we wanted it to be.

Have you ever had to pivot?

Launching a new product takes a lot of time to perfect, and even when you *think* you have it perfected…there’s room for improvement. When we first launched our dog treats, all the treats came in a tube with a gift box. After we brought it to the market, customers loved the concept of the dog treats in tubes but thought the gift box wasn’t necessary for every purchase. We quickly took that feedback and adjusted our product line for dog treats to be just the tube with an optional gift box.

Another story I’ll share with you is about our bandanas. I never made bandanas before, until Petphoria. Customers wanted something stylish and adorable for their pup to put around their neck. It took me some time to learn how to sew, figure out how I wanted the bandanas to look and all the other fun logistical things that is involved to bring in a new product. Well, my model is Beni – he’s a 8lb yorkie – so I based the measurements for the different sizes off of him. Turns out most people have larger dogs (50-60lbs) so my original bandana sizing was SO SMALL for the large dogs. So for the first month or two I had bandanas that could only fit smaller dogs while I was trying to recreate sizes and make a totally new size run / size standard for Petphoria. Luckily, we were able to sell and donate the bandanas with the original size standard and brought in a new standard for Petphoria’s bandanas that fit dogs of all sizes!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://shoppetphoria.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/petphoria/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/shoppetphoria
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/graceewang/ and https://www.linkedin.com/company/petphoria