We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Erin Leonard a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Erin, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Almost every entrepreneur we know has considered donating a portion of their sales to an organization or cause – how did you make the decision of whether to donate? We’d love to hear the backstory if you’re open to sharing the details.
For us, choosing to donate a portion of our sales is rooted in our love for animals. Loving animals is more than just something our family does naturally – it’s a defining trait for each of us. We are the people who run up to you asking to pet your dog or forget to ask completely because we’re so distracted by a cute doggo that we just can’t help ourselves!
When we started our small family business, The Pit Stop pet shop, our focus was on designing and creating durable, ergonomic and attractive pet furniture and we knew from the start we wanted to find a way to support other pet-friendly small businesses and give back to animal organizations in our community. We did this by sourcing some of our products, like our dog treats, from other small business owners and by donating a small percentage of our sales to animal based charities we already supported.
Then, COVID hit and so many people were surrendering their pets that our local shelters were over max capacity. As donors, we started receiving emails asking for extra support to help shelter and feed all the surrendered pets, so it just felt like the right cause to support at the time. After all, we adopted our fur baby Luna from our local metro animal services shelter. So, when we sold our first large dog bed and feeder set, we chose to donate the entirety of this first sale to metro animal services. It felt amazing knowing that not only did we create beautiful pet furniture for a lucky and loved fur baby, but we also were able to financially support other pets in need during a critical time for shelters in our community.
By the end of 2022, we decided to start setting annual gifting goals. For now, we are focusing our efforts on our local shelters by sponsoring at least one animal room/kennel at our local shelter for the year. Our kennel room is affectionately named “The Pit Stop pet shop” to honor our Pitbull fur babies who we’ve rescued, loved and put to work as product testers in our business!
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
Hi there! We’re Zeus and Luna (oh, and Luke and Erin). We’re the crew who started The Pit Stop pet shop.
Our business started a bit by accident. See, our entire family would attempt to cuddle on the only family couch, which never worked out well. Luke or I would end up sitting on the floor, giving our fur babies the luxury of our couch. One day, I started shopping for a dog bed to fit into the nook under the stairs in our living room. The only problem was that I couldn’t find a dog bed that fit the space well AND looked like real furniture that coordinated with our style. So, I did the only thing I could do – make it myself!
I’m no stranger to art or design. I’ve been an acrylic painter since my teenage years and have never shied away from an opportunity to build, sculpt, paint or create what I saw in my mind but couldn’t find in real life. My husband, Luke, is a master craftsman and woodworker, so he utilized reclaimed wood and a knack for design to bring my idea to life. The original bed frame was dubbed “The Pit Stop” since it was intended for our Pitbulls and is still a favorite of both fur babies and toddlers in our home!
After multiple compliments from family and friends, we decided to try out our designs as a family business. Although we started with our original bed frame design, we have added raised feeders and dog bum silhouette leash holders that complement our bed frames, in addition to home decor, clothing and accessories that we make in our home workshop. While we have a soft spot for Pitbull themed designs and build our furniture to sustain the extra love bully breeds tend to display, we offer smaller versions to accommodate all the other adorable pets in this world too!
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
Running a small business is full of learning lessons! One of my most impactful lessons occurred prior to starting our current pet shop business. My first experience with starting a small business was when I chose to sell my paintings and art prints at craft shows. I spent months building up inventory, painting imagery that spoke to me and scenes I found inspiring. From these paintings, I created prints and stationary to fill up my booth space. Looking around my booth, I was elated and proud of my work and hopeful I would sell out. Instead, I ended up not selling much and that trend continued at future craft shows. I was so disheartened and didn’t know what to do. Even though I didn’t want to continue having my heart broken, I knew I just wasn’t ready to quit.
At lunch with a friend and successful entrepreneur, I mentioned my unfortunate experience and without missing a beat she said to me, “you’re looking at this all wrong.” She told me there were two ways to handle a craft show and I needed to first decide which camp I was in, and that decision would define my future experiences showing my work. Camp one housed people who created work for their own purpose and shared that work with the world, not caring at all what people thought and whether they purchase. This camp was about passion more than profit. Camp two housed people who wanted to profit from their work. While selling your work may be a goal for camp two, a major reason to show work at a craft show is market research. She told me that if my goal was to make a profit, I couldn’t only create work for my own purpose. I had to listen to what people wanted and create product to fit those needs or wants. She challenged me to listen to the comments at the next show and determine how to pivot to fit the market.
Talk about eye-opening advice! My experience was completely different at my next show. I heard almost every person who entered my booth say something positive about my work. They loved my color palette, felt my artistic style was warm and uplifting, and many of them returned to revisit a favorite piece. So why weren’t they buying? Listening to their comments informed me that they didn’t know where to put that painting in their home or weren’t sure how to frame the piece. Some people preferred the art be wearable, like on a shirt, tote bag or water bottle. The stationary sold better than the art, but only after I moved it to the front of the booth and changed my merchandising style.
Although that final craft show was the most profitable during my time selling my art, I chose to step away from monetizing my favorite hobby. The lesson I learned was invaluable. Today, my husband and I employ this “camp two” strategy to our pet shop business. Whether we’re posting new products to our ecommerce shop or preparing for our next craft show, we set goals. Instead of focusing solely on selling products, we utilize craft shows as a market research tool. I have learned so much about our business by simply listening to consumers and asking questions.
Okay – so how did you figure out the manufacturing part? Did you have prior experience?
Luke found his love for woodworking long ago, which made it easy to decide on wood pet furniture as our core products, and we knew from the start we wanted to manufacture our own products. This means that we source the wood and handcraft each individual piece of pet furniture. As artists and craftsmen, we enjoy the process of taking materials and crafting into custom, finished pieces. Our home goods, clothes and accessories followed suit as we chose to create designs in digital format and screen print or sublimate those designs onto sourced textiles or glassware.
While it’s a wonderful gift to be able to craft most of our products from raw materials or source readily available base products, it is also a major issue when it comes to scaling our business. For now, we are still small enough to make custom orders, but we have run into several time periods where the struggle of producing multiple products by hand in a short time period was quite difficult. I remember a week when we needed dog bed frames and raised feeders in every size, plus multiple leash holders. While exciting to have so much product to build, we’re pretty sure we developed a new form of carpal tunnel from running a hand sander for extended periods of time followed by hand staining and painting for days! Even though it’s exhausting at times, we’re people who value craftsmanship and hand-made products, so we’re willing to work a little harder by owning the manufacturing process.
Since we’re a small business, we also try to keep overhead low, which means we operate out of our home garage. It’s a bit tricky trying to store our raw materials, work-in-progress, finished pieces, craft show supplies, and tools in a space where we also park our van and store our holiday decorations. It’s inconvenient, but we’re just not ready to find a vendor to manufacture our products at the risk of losing the handcrafted feel that we value. We know that growth requires many changes and tradeoffs along the way, and we’re excited for what the future holds. Hopefully, our next chapter holds a large workshop with ample storage space! For now, we plan on bridging the gap until we grow large enough to hire employees who value handcrafted products as much as we do.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://thepitstoppetshop.com/
- Instagram: @thepitstop_petshop