We recently connected with Matthew Caserta and have shared our conversation below.

Matthew, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. 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?

It all started in 2021. The world was somewhat getting back to normal after the pandemic, and it was time to get out and start over, at least for me it was.

Our dog, Moon, turned one year old on Sept. 15th… I took my camera out and started making photos of her. She’s a husky so she photographs wonderfully. After a couple minutes of shooting, I looked at the photos and all I could think to myself was, “WOW, PEOPLE WOULD LOVE THIS, AND I CAN GIVE IT TO THEM!” … I thought immediately that there was something to this. I’ve always loved animals, loved being around them, and interacting with them, so it just felt like an all around win. I pitched the idea to my girlfriend Mary, of going to a park and offering high quality photo portraits of your dog (or any pet really) for a super cheap price. We both thought it was solid. I would take the photos, and Mary would use treats to pose the dogs. We went to our local photo store in town and bought a pop-up portable backdrop. At that point we had all the ingredients: the two of us, my camera, a backdrop, and treats. After about a month of gathering the right amount of nerves, and game planning our location, time, date, and all the fine fixings, we were ready. We spent about a week of marketing around our neighborhood with flyers and word of mouth at the dog park. On the morning of Oct. 21st, we went to our local dog park at the Schuylkill River, set up an impromptu photo studio with a 5×7 backdrop, ‘pop-up style’ if you will, and went for it. We charged $6 for two fully edited photos of your dog, and we edited them and sent the to you that same day, via email. That was our schtick.. we would pop up randomly with little marketing, give you awesome high quality photos of your dog for $6, and you would get the images the same day. If you were there and caught us, great, but if you missed us, the idea was, you’d hear about us and then be on the look out, and then we would maybe create some buzz. That first pop-up at our dog park went INCREDIBLE! People were totally into it. ‘Pawtrait Pop-Up’ was born.

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

Before Pawtrait Pop-Up, I attended The Art Institute of Philadelphia and graduated with a bachelors in Photography. I fell in love with portraiture, and all the techniques that went into making portraits.. But for the most part, I’m an introvert aha so the less human interaction, the better. I’ve always gravitated towards animals. When I first started shooting, I would go into the woods for hours, waiting around, hoping to cross paths with deer. I always enjoyed the interaction, and taking what the animal would give me to make a photo. I enjoyed the challenge.

I did wedding photography for several years. I had a great boss and a great gig as a second shooter, but I never developed a passion for it. It just always felt like work, and I always felt so awkward and out of place during the eight hour days. When my boss told me he was taking a step back from weddings, I took it as a sign to do the same.

Like I stated before, I’ve always loved animals. Same thing for my girlfriend and partner Mary. We’ve both have always had pets growing up. At the moment, we have a 3 yr old Siberian Husky, and two cats, a 6 yr old and 1 yr old. Being in the pet industry just felt completely natural for us, and one of the main things we wanted to accomplish with Pawtrait Pop-Up was to get in to a position to give back. Since we’ve started in 2021, we’ve been dedicated to helping animals in need and supporting local rescues and other small businesses. We’ve been able donate a portion of our events’ proceeds to a number of local rescues, and are always looking to connect with rescues and shelters in hopes to offer our photography services for any available pets and and animals in need.

We also pride ourselves in providing affordable portraits for people. Since we started, we’ve bumped our prices up from $6 to $20 for two photos of your dog delivered to you the same day, but that’s still a steal! Sure we want to make money, but what we’re really trying to do is provide you with a righteous photo of your doggo. We want the dogs to shine! With us, the dogs are the stars. We always hear, “These looks like school photos”.. BANG! That’s the idea! Dogs are the new kids, hang the Pawtraits on the wall!

What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?

For us, reaching out and collaborating with other small businesses has been a gold mine for us when it comes to new clients. A lot of our marketing and advertising is word of mouth. We’ll pop up at a cafe, make Pawtraits for a few hours and then go. While we were there, new people saw us, new people got Pawtraits, new people took our business cards, new people liked our sign, snapped a photo of it and then shared it on their story. After we’ve shared the Pawtraits on Insatgram and tagged the cafe, other cafe’s see it and reach out to us to come. The people who got Pawtraits of their dog will post them, and then everyone in their network sees it and follows us. Lather, rinse and repeat. Our service is such a tangible and in-the-moment experience, it’s one of those ‘ya gotta be there things’. And it all stems from reaching out to businesses and setting up a collaboration.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

I think our passion and the spontaneity of what we do is what built our reputation. We love what we do, and although we’ve photographed close to 1,000 so far, we remember A LOT of them. And they remember us. Mary and I have created a little repertoire when it comes to making Pawtraits, and the people love it, our process becomes somewhat of a performance, especially with Mary getting the dogs to pose, its really cool to watch. We cherish our interactions with the dogs, and the dog owners cherish the experience. We’ve become so close to so many of our clients and customers, dog and human!

And generally, I think our pop-up approach to providing services has a sort of ‘build up’ to it, and a mystique. We make peoples day, and I hate saying that because I feel like I’m bragging, but people tell us that all time! And it makes our day. We meet so many people at our events who tell us they’ve been tracking us down to get their dog a Pawtrait. That was the goal from the jump

Contact Info:

• Website: pawtraitpopup.com
• Instagram: @pawtraitpopup
• Facebook: Facebook.com/pawtraitpopup

Image Credits
Matthew Caserta