We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Blanca Osorio a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Blanca, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Owning a business isn’t always glamorous and so most business owners we’ve connected with have shared that on tough days they sometimes wonder what it would have been like to have just had a regular job instead of all the responsibility of running a business. Have you ever felt that way?

Having worked for big corporations for most of my adult life, I can tell you there is nothing like having a business that is my own, something I created myself. I get to decide how I want my business to be, instead of following procedures that don’t always make sense working for someone else. If anything positive can come out of a pandemic, it’s that it opened a lot of people’s eyes on what we wanted to do with our lives. Before the pandemic, I thought I wanted to climb the corporate ladder until retirement. The job I held for 7 years had gone from dream job to an exhausting life I wasn’t enjoying anymore. But it was my way of life… until it was ended for me. The pandemic made me realize that everything I had sacrificed for my job hadn’t gotten me anywhere. The job I once loved so much hadn’t loved me back. I wasn’t climbing any ladders, I was just an expendable employee. And still it was hard to let go. I had become my occupation, an losing it was like losing a part of me. Lucky for me it was the right time to find myself, to start a new path doing something I enjoy, something that is my own.

Blanca, 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?

Sure! I’m the founder and maker at Purrfashion. I make upcycled cat accessories by re-purr-posing clothes and fabric that would otherwise end up in the landfill.
I never worked in the pet industry before, but after losing my corporate job during the pandemic, I got into sewing classes, a skill I had always wanted to learn. I started making cat harnesses because we wanted to give our cat some outdoor time without the risk of losing him while free-roaming (something that happened with my childhood cat). But I couldn’t find a harness our cat walked comfortably in, and I found that most harnesses were made with synthetic materials that not only damage the environment during production, but are also not biodegradable at the end of its usable life, contributing to the billions of tons of textile waste in landfills.
That’s why Purrfashion cat accessories are upcycled from clothes and fabrics that are biodegradable. By upcycling clothes, we give them a second life, so they don’t end up in the landfill. Cats have nine lives, why should clothes have only one?

Do you sell on your site, or do you use a platform like Amazon, Etsy, Cratejoy, etc?

I sell on my website: purrfashion.com, as well as on Etsy: PurrfashionCats. Etsy gives me more visibility as a maker, but they charge high fees, so I prefer my own website shop, which also has more options available.

Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?

As a resource, the SBDC mentors and the many workshops and webinars they have for entrepreneurs have greatly helped me on my journey. It’s been a wonderful resource which I’m very grateful to have.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.purrfashion.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/purrfashioncats/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/purrfashioncats
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/blanca-osorio/

Image Credits

First photo of Blanca putting a harness on a cat, by Tabby Manor. Other photos, by Blanca Osorio.