We were lucky to catch up with John Acree recently and have shared our conversation below.

John, looking forward to hearing all of your stories 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?

Truth be told, Ginger Beds is my second business, so I have known for sometime that I am much happier as a business owner as opposed to working for someone else. There is nothing I love more than to teach, help or coach someone something they have never attempted before. There is a huge satisfaction I get when the light bulb finally comes on for them and they feel a sense of accomplishment having mastered something they hadn’t previously.

I will admit that I think about my happiness being a business owner as opposed to an employee everyday because I still have a part time job for a nationwide retailer. While my business is growing, my revenue is not consistent enough and the part time job give me some financial cushion. I get up 4 days a week at 2:45AM to arrive at work by 4AM. I was raised with the understanding that you do what needs to be done in order to accomplish your goals. So while I am standing in front of my locker putting my apron on, I remind myself this is the path I am on and I am going to see it through.

Although I would rather not need to work outside of the business, I wouldn’t change a thing. I love being a business owner and creating something from nothing.

John, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

My name is John and I am the Fearless Leader of Ginger Beds. I am solo-entrepreneur and I handcraft amazing dog beds in Bend, Oregon. The “Ginger” in Ginger Beds was our adorable English Bulldog and she was not only the namesake but also the motivation behind starting the business. She was incredibly hard on her beds and we were tired of replacing them constantly. Not to mention, most of the beds were made out of ugly fabrics. With the help of team members from my previous business, I taught myself how to sew and begin the process of making a better dog bed.

I started with traveling to High Point, North Carolina to visit the fabric markets. I knew I wanted durable fabrics, but they also needed to be design inspired. All of the fabrics I utilize are upholstery grade and I test their durability prior to adding them to the line. I then found a bonded thread that is typically used in auto upholstery for maximum durability of the seams on the beds. I also sourced a US based provider of zipper tape and glides. All the covers on my beds are zipper enclosed and can easily be removed for washing. I have believed for some time that we need to be mindful of our planet because we only have one. That was the main driver for the fill I use for my cushions. The fill is made entirely of recycled plastic water bottles! It is an amazing process and most importantly keeps plastic bottles out of the landfill and turns them into the cushions for our amazing beds!

The outcome of all of this are design inspired dog beds that are not only super comfy, but also incredibly durable. We unfortunately lost Ginger 3 years ago but her memory and inspiration goes into every bed I make.

I launched the business with a goal to give back to people trying to make the world a better place. I partner with K9S For Warriors who train and provides therapy dogs to our veterans who’re suffering from PTSD. The wonderful thing about them is 95% of their dogs are rescues. So they are not only improving the life of one of our veterans, but they are saving the life of a dog and giving them a mission of love. I donate a portion every sale to them and offer the option to my customers to add to their purchase by donating as well. I am super proud that on average, 50% of my customers choose to make an additional donation. Starting this year I wanted to do more so I started my Paw It Forward program. Each month, I engage with our social media followers and have them nominate someone who they feel is deserving of a bed for their dog. The recipients are people who give and do great things in their community or are people who just need a little happiness in their life. My hope with this program is to motivate others to practice random acts of kindness. Lord knows, the world can use a little more nice from time to time.

In closing, there’s nothing more that I love than sitting at the sewing machine knowing the bed I am making is going to be loved and will offer comfort to someone’s pup.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

So like most small business, when COVID hit, I was forced to get creative real fast. At that time, my business was 80% wholesale (I sold my dog beds to small independent pet stores) and 20% direct to consumer (DTC). Once the initial lockdowns occurred, the vast majority of my wholesale accounts where closed. That obviously had a detrimental impact on sales. When things slowly started to loosen up, a lot of my pet stores went to a curbside model but I found that mainly catered to people buying food and treats. Because of all of this, I immediately started on transitioning to a 100% DTC model.

Sales very slowly started to improve, but then I received some additional bad news. Up to that point, I was using a vendor to blow the fiber fill into my cushions as I did not have the equipment to do that myself. Because they were deemed a non-essential business, they were not allowed to restart operations for some time. Unfortunately because of this, they made the difficult decision to close their business. So just as my sales started to improve, I lost a vital vendor and there where no vendors near us that could provide that service at an affordable cost.

So I started making calls and found a vendor in India who manufactured a small fiber opening system that would be perfect. Never purchased or imported anything from outside of the US, I leaned on a great friend who owns a business with a manufacturing presence in India. As luck would have it, he has a container that ships from India each month and he was gracious enough to place my equipment on his container at no cost to me. He obviously is getting free dog beds for life!

While this equipment purchase is going on, I still needed a way to fulfill orders. I did more research and found a vendor who was willing to ship me “opened” fiber that I could use to hand stuff every cushion we needed for the beds. This was extremely tedious and not profitable but I didn’t have any other options. All told, I hand stuffed cushions for over 12 months as that is whole long it took for the equipment to arrive. I would love to tell everything was a rainbows and unicorns after that, but fate does not work that way. Whether it happened in shipping or during the building of our equipment, once I set everything up, the equipment did not work. Within the equipment, there are multiple rollers with thousands of small teeth on them. These teeth are what the fill feeds through to “open” it up and turn it into a fluffy fiber for the cushions. Unfortunately, three of the rollers were locked together and would not roll. So I rolled my sleeves, took the machine apart, figured out the problem and got it up and running.

So here we are, December 2022 and I am completely vertically integrated and own every part of the production process. I have flipped our sales mix and now we stand at 95% DTC with only 5% coming from wholesale. Through all of this I have grown to embrace the latin saying of Amor Fati or the the love of fate. I have grown to understand that there is so much I am unable to control in my life and business, but I do control how I react to what happens. The equipment breaks down? Good, I can take it part, figure out how it works and repair it. Vendor goes out of business? Good, I can look at my production process and create a better model for the business. I always try to embrace what comes my way, not complain about it.

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

When I initially lunched the business, I engaged with an outside vendor to build my site. At that time the website used the WordPress / Woo Commerce platform and I also had an Etsy profile as well. While selling on Amazon has been enticing, I haven’t gone there. My dog beds are a higher end product and I have always questioned whether Amazon is my ideal demographic.

During the middle of the COVID pandemic I was approached by Wayfair to have my beds on their platform. My sales were really taking a hit so I began the process of signing up as a vendor. There were so many hoops to jump through and they had not committed that the beds would be listed on their site under my brand name or a “Wayfair” product. After much thought, I made the decision to pull the plug on it and not move forward. My biggest takeaway is that it’s critical to figure out who you are as a brand and who your customer is. Once you figure that out, you have to let that guide every decision for how you market your business.

Two years ago, I switched to the Shopify platform and I could not be happier! The platform is so much easier to navigate, the support is top notch and I have never had a problem finding subcontractors when the need has arisen.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.gingerbeds.com
• Instagram: @gingerbeds
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/gingerbeds
• Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/JohnAcreeGB

Image Credits
Photos by Ginger Beds