We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Sasha Nunes a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Sasha, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Do you take vacations? Why or why not?
I am a huge believer in taking vacations, and I try to take at least one every quarter to do small things like touring my own city, camping, weekend trips, and social media breaks are the most important. I’m currently running my business and in grad school at the same time, so it’s imperative to take a break and enjoy life without deadlines.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
I was born and raised in Jamaica and migrated to Miami, FL, with my mom at 9. I graduated from Bethune-Cookman University with a bachelor’s in Criminal Justice and joined the Navy immediately after. In 2019 I founded Bark Organix while I was in the military. Since then our company has grown 1,270% in sales. Every month we curate treat boxes with customized treats celebrating each holiday in every month. For June, we provided Juneteenth, Pride, and Dog Dad treats along with lick mats for the pups. We also make custom birthday treats, and bulk dog treats for other small pet businesses. We still operate on a small basis, so we ship on a weekly basis. Our treats are preservative-free and vegan with minimal ingredients you can find at your local farmer’s market. I’m most proud of our growth and ability to come up with unique ideas while keeping our pups health at the forefront.
Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?
With Bark Organix, I’ve learned that customer service is key to success, especially in the pet treat market. Customers want to feel like they’re being listened to and want to know what’s in their dog’s treats. If you can give your customers that feeling, you’ve got them for life! Quality control is also critical. Whether it’s your ingredients or packaging materials, having a quality product is essential for building a good reputation with consumers. We ensure that at least three points of direct contact information are available on our website and our social media platform—it’s vital that we’re easy for customers to reach!
We encourage customer feedback and listen to what they say; we use those insights to make changes where necessary. We use certified organic ingredients, which include pumpkin, peanut butter, and bananas—our treats are healthy alternatives for pets who need a little extra help staying fit!
We develop healthy alternative ways to make our treats look attractive—for example, coconut shreds instead of store-bought sprinkles, which are loaded in sugar!
We also offer coupon codes for existing customers and new customers who sign up to receive emails from us every time they have a promotion going or they have new products coming out that they want to let people know about so that they can get a discount off their purchase by signing up for their newsletter or email list.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
Working hard alone won’t make your business successful.
I used to think that all I needed to do was work hard and everything else would fall into place. But it turns out that you need more than just pure work ethic to be successful—you also need patience, a willingness to learn from mistakes, and a healthy mental state.
This is something I had to unlearn, and I did so in a pretty painful way: by creating a lot of stress around orders and products when they didn’t go as planned. I thought the reason it failed was because I didn’t have enough drive or ambition, but now I know that wasn’t true. Instead, it was because I hadn’t learned how to manage my stress levels and emotions effectively yet; as a result, they got in the way of making good decisions about how much time we should spend on certain tasks or what kind of pricing structure would be best for our business model.
Contact Info:
- Website: barkorganix.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/barkorganix/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/shopbarkorganix/
Image Credits
All photos are owned by Bark Organix