We were lucky to catch up with Amy Kim recently and have shared our conversation below.

Amy, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Coming up with the idea is so exciting, but then comes the hard part – executing. Too often the media ignores the execution part and goes from idea to success, skipping over the nitty, gritty details of executing in the early days. We think that’s a disservice both to the entrepreneurs who built something amazing as well as the public who isn’t getting a realistic picture of what it takes to succeed. So, we’d really appreciate if you could open up about your execution story – how did you go from idea to execution?

I started KindTail because of my own relationship to my dog, Monkey. I went through a very difficult time and my dog Monkey saved me by being there for me. Monkey gave me a reason to get up in the morning (literally) and gave me a purpose. I truly understand a bond the between a pet and a pawrent.

I was living in NYC in an apartment and my wire crate was too ugly to leave out for dinner parties. I tried to collapse it and snapped my figure in it. I thought there has to something better out there! I looked for the best crate on the market and there wasn’t anything that got me excited. That’s when I started on a quest to design the best crate there is. We love our pets so much and yet why are we putting them in products that doesn’t make us feel good? (i.e. pet jail crates).

We see this as a huge opportunity as there is a huge gap in the pet industry for hardgoods.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My background is in automotive and product design. I began my career at Ford Motor Company, where I made history as the first woman exterior designer. I contributed to the development of the MK-T show car for Lincoln and participated in diverse projects for Ford. Transitioning to product design, I became involved in crafting the Xbox controller and collaborating with consumer goods brands like P&G. It was during that time, that decided to start KindTail.

Our vision is to improve the quality of life for pets and pet owners through kind and thoughtful design. What sets us apart is that we truly live our KindTail motto which is to be kind.
Our latest marketing campaign, we included special needs dogs because we wanted to highlight that all pets are lovable and being kind to our animals are a priority for us through the story we tell and the products we design.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

How I grew from $0 to $1mm in two years by targeting a niche group of customers

With my background in industrial design, I invented a pet crate called the PAWD from KindTail. Without much funding, and no experience in digital marketing I had to get creative in how I acquired my customers.

In the early stages of my company, I would go to every pet event in town and showcase my prototype. I noticed that a certain group of pet owners had WAY more events and meetups than other groups. Dachshunds!
They were also our perfect target customers as they were smaller dogs (under 15lbs) that fit into our crate.

When I researched the Dachshund community and saw that they had common characteristics. Most Dachshund owners seek out this breed. They don’t end of up getting this breed from a rescue, most seek it out from a Dachshund rescue, breeders and from a Dachshund network.
It turns out Dachshund are the sixth most popular breed in the US. The owners are highly active in the community as they are more obsessive about this peculiar, proportioned pet. Dachshunds have quite a bit of health issues and most Dachshund pet owners are aware of this and are willing to overlook it as they are dedicated, pet owners.

I started an Instagram page and called it @KindTail_Puppies. We Massed over 165K follower just posting daschund pics initially. Then I only started working with Dachshund influencers. I would send them a free product in exchange for a post. I must have sent 50+ to Dachshund owners and went to every Dachshund event in town. I had enthusiastic influencers that would post and share all the time as their pups were usually in the crate napping and chilling, so I got a lot of organic shares. I had this one influencer that only had 9K in following but she brought in $3K in sales in two months as her two Dachshunds were always in the crate. These are two discount codes from two Dachshund influencers. They both did significantly better than any other type of breed.

We used Dachshund models in our crate, and we did a ton of giveaways with them. We didn’t have much digital marketing budget, instead we allocated our budget to influencers. We doubled down on targeting certain breeds so then we went after Brussels Griffon (another small pet with high spender pet owners) and Frenchie bulldogs.

We’d love to hear your thoughts about selling platforms like Amazon/Etsy vs selling on your own site.

We sell on our website KindTail.com, Target.com, Petco.com, Amazon, independent pet shops and Target retail stores. We build brand on our website and when we run ads we see a spillover to Amazon. We put different SKUS/Bundles on Amazon so we don’t compete with the Prime shipping and price. Amazon is a complicated business however, it has such a huge audience that if you’re not on there, you are losing sales.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.kindtail.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/kindtailco
• Facebook: https://facebook.com/kindtail
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amy-kim-8a0666a/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCH1i7z6iu60jzRkI0dQOdxg
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@kindtail