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

Jessica, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Quality control is a challenge almost every entrepreneur has had to focus on when growing – any advice, stories or insight around how to best ensure quality is maintained as your business scales?

I think that when you decide to start a small business, or become an entrepreneur, you need to take the time to sit down and really get to the heart of what you’re doing and what you want the business to be.

After being an entrepreneur for over a decade now, I have learned that many people who go into being a small business owner focus too much on the product and/or services they want to offer to the public, and in turn, they neglect to consider the structures that need to be in place to make the business both successful.

When I started Okanagan Hound in 2020, I already had 7 years under my belt in running a business. So I essentially was given 7 years of entrepreneurial experience, successes and pitfalls. And with that, what I learned was most imperative the second time around was to create the business model as if I was building a “legacy” for someone to take over the business in the future.

What that means is that anytime I was designing new product, I would create a document outlining all the materials used, the processes to get there, the cost, the time and the exact design, step by step, so that someone could replicate it. Along with that, I would create a maintenance schedule to go with that specific process. (For example, if working out the price of raw materials for a certain collection, I would schedule in a block of time 12 months into the future to review and/or update any prices that may have changed. This ensured that when I got around to hiring staff, there would already be an “employee manual”, as it were.

I did the same thing with back-end, administrative tasks. When I would take custom orders on the POS, I would create a corresponding walk-through with necessary screenshots, supporting links, etc. Or, when I would package online orders, I had a corresponding step-by-step guide on how I wanted my company to complete this task each and every time.

This was something that was invaluable to me, ensuring that I had created what was essentially a fail safe in all of the operations of my business that would guarantee quality control and uniformity. It allowed processes to run much more smoothly which freed up time for focusing on selling of my product, because the other things were taken care of and already decided on.

Jessica, 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?

I started Okanagan Hound in 2020 when the world was essentially shut down.

I had a dog walking company prior to this, Rad Rover, which had become quite successful as a smaller-scale operation of myself and one other employee working under me.

When the pandemic hit, I was worried that the business was going to gravely suffer. After all, local trails were closed, people were working from home and we weren’t socializing outside of our “social bubble”.

Making collars and leashes was a way for me to keep my mind busy in uncertain times, and it was a way for me to tap into my already-established, dog-loving customer base. It was simply an emergency operation to ensure I was still bringing in an income, however meagre it would be.

However, that was not how things ended up going…

Instead, everyone working from home needed to INCREASE the number of weekly walks, being that their at-home Zoom Meetings were being hindered by a whining or barking dog just off camera. There was also a puppy boom and MORE people were calling to sign up for services.

So, Instead of closing Rad Rover, I instead had to hire 6 more dog walkers and a Director of Operations to run the company.

Also, during the second month of starting Okanagan Hound, a client of mine had put me in contact with a large lifestyle brand here in the Okanagan (Okanagan Lifestyle), and insisted that they needed to collaborate with me to tap into the four-legged demographic. Collaborating with them was the lucky break that set the business in motion. I didn’t let on that I was a brand new baby business, I just “dressed for the job I wanted, not the job I had”, as the saying goes. The rest is history.

And so what is Okanagan Hound? We are a small scale business that handcrafts high-end, waterproof and odour-resistant dog collars and leashes. We use only solid brass for our hardware, which means our products are extremely strong (Like, for horses strong), hypoallergenic and can go in saltwater and chlorine without rusting.

We design every piece in house and ensure only the highest quality products. With that comes our LIFETIME guarantee on all hardware. No questions asked.

Another great aspect of our business is our commitment to waste-diversion. When we get back a warrantied product, we salvage all of the “still good” pieces and make new products that are then donated to local dog-related charities.

What I’d love for people to know about Okanagan Hound is that it is a direct reflection of myself as a person. Customers have repeatedly said that their shopping experience with us is one of the best they’ve ever had. It’s fun, engaging, informative and people can really tell that we aren’t focused on “making the sale”. we truly care about our customers and their pets and we treat each one as if they were family friends.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

I think that as a woman, the hardest thing to unlearn was the scarcity mindset and the competition that is so rampant in our society. We are constantly reminded that we need to be better than our competition and that they are essentially the enemy.

When I was still dog walking, there was another dog walker who I would routinely see on the trail with her pack of dogs. Once or twice clients had stopped using our services and moved over to her. I felt so slighted and so offended. Even though I knew that those clients were changing services for legitimate reasons, like not being able to accommodate their schedule, their new location after a move, or some other factor that was not at all related to the quality of my services. I also failed to remind myself of the dozens of dogs that had come into my pack by way of several different dog walking companies. It wasn’t personal, it was business. But I had to constantly remind myself of that.

And so, much to my shock, right around the time I had started Okanagan Hound, I noticed an ad on Facebook Marketplace for new dog collars being sold in town. It was the same dog walker that I used to run into on the trails She had started a business during the pandemic at the same time as me! What were the odds? And so I reached out to her letting her know that I was also starting a similar business, even though our products were nothing alike. She said not to worry and that there’s room enough for both of us!

From that moment on, I decided, especially with her (as it was a perfect opportunity) to lead with an abundance mindset, even though my instinct was to run to the familiar scarcity mindset I had known so well.

She and I developed a sort of ‘business friendship’ where we’d spot each other when one was low on certain materials or hardware, recommend people to one another when we knew my product was not right in that situation. It was a safe environment to work on this new state of mind.

How do you keep in touch with clients and foster brand loyalty?

I keep in touch with customers mostly through Instagram and in-person at the local farmers markets, which has become my mainstay for selling my product as I do not have a brick and mortar shop.

Customers love to come visit and chat often and that seems to have been a good indicator of repeat sales.

I also try to foster brand loyalty by making my values clear, even when they don’t lead to a sale. If a customer reaches out saying that a product they’ve purchased from another brand has broken, I will try to repair it if possible instead of trying to persuade them to trash that one and buy new from me. That lets them know that our company’s commitment to waste diversion is authentic and of utmost importance.

We also provide coupons with each and every sale, to encourage future sales. We offer a promotional price on buying a leash and collar as a set, but we understand that sometimes people don’t have the funds, aren’t needing one or the other products, or some other variable. So we offer a coupon that allows for the customer to think about it and still get the discount at a later date.

Another unique way that we foster brand loyalty is through our ambassadorship program. We have people all around the world promoting our products on their social medial channels. They get to offer a discount to their followers and in exchange, they get $5 in shopping credit for each coupon of theirs redeemed. That allows them to get free or heavily discounted orders in thanks for choosing to promote us. Some of our brand ambassadors focus their socials on animal rescues and so for them, they can choose to instead get a $5 donation to the charity of their choosing for each coupon code of theirs redeemed.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://okanaganhound.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/okanagan.hound

Image Credits

Ivy + Rose Photography

Capture the Journey Photography