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

Alright, Tori thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

When I first adopted my dogs 7 years ago I had such a hard time finding clothes for them that were aligned with my own personal style. There weren’t as many “cool’ dog brands at that time and people really had a stink about small dogs in general I think.. it was the years of the doodles and big dogs and chihuahas were seen as yappy undesireable dogs to most people. The dog outfits that were for small dogs always had a tacky-ness about them i personally thought.

I learned how to crochet during the pandemic as something to do to pass the time because i was working an on call job where there was a lot of down time. Naturally i started making pet hats for my dogs when I saw a tiktok go viral that was for making little sun hats for your chihuahua. That really sparked my creativity and had me looking for cool “retro” inspired crochet outfits that would be easily translated for my dogs.

I wanted my brand to be something that people who wanted a cool retro style for their dogs could find that wasn’t anywhere else.

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

I’m Tori and I make crochet outfits for pets that have a retro feel about them. I taught myself how to crochet by using youtube videos and retro patterns off of etsy, and that quickly had me fixated on making a clothing line for my own dogs that reflected my own unique retro style. Small dogs like chihuhuas tend to run cold, so i though that my crochet dog jackets would be like a portable crochet blanked that dogs could wear on walks or around the house. Instagram and Tiktok really put me on the map when we had a few videos go viral. At first i was only selling little dog hats on etsy but people would see the jackets i made for my dogs and those started to be requested for orders. My business blew up very quickly in the last two years mainly due to videos of mine reaching millions of views on Instagram and tiktok.

We make a lot of custom styles for our clients where they can choose colors and different elements to make their dog jackets one of a kind. Examples being: they can choose colors, buttons (flowers or butterflys), their jackets can have scallop edges or fringe edges. Some customer will just put a “vibe’ they are going for in the notes and then i interpret it how i think. Some of my favorite examples have been ‘Scooby Doo’ , ‘Neapolitan ice cream’ and also “desert sunset”.

I am really proud of how many friends ive made though this business. Some of my closest friends are people who live in completely different parts of the US and the WORLD that have ordered from me and we have just been connected ever since. The fun and relaxed style that my brand has really has created a community for itself. I’ve always tried to have our online or brand presenece feel like youre haning out with your friend instead of having hyper curated very sterile business styles. Instead of pushing products to buy I always try to make it feel like people are following along with a personal account that they can order from. It really gives it that small buisness feel! People know my dogs better than they know me on our accounts I think, which is funny because some people are “Arlo’ people or “kaiba’ people since i am usually using them for most of our videos and all of the modeling for our products.

Any fun sales or marketing stories?

During the Barbie movie hype I remember seeing Ken’s black and white cowboy outfit and immediately thought ” i could make that for my dog’. I wanted to strike while the Barbie iron was hot so i spent a day making a black and white fringe jacket for my dog kaiba that would be very reminiscent of the one worn in the barbie movie. This was also my first time making one of our jacket with fringe so I had to go out and get a fringe making tool and teach myself the best way to have the fringe lay. what length we needed etc. As I was making the jacket I thought that this could be the making of a viral internet video. Most people LOVE dog content and a dog in an outfit made by somebody who has a small business felt like a genius guerilla marketing plan. I also knew that Halloween was coming up so i wanted to get this out there asap so we could potentially take dog halloween costume orders. It was about 48 hours where I made the jacket, made the video, and then posted it to tiktok and instagram. The video went SO viral that I had people in other countries that i knew telling me their friends had been sending the video of kaiba dressing up like Ken set to a song from the movie to them. We even had cast members of the movie liking the video which was wild to me!

It was such a fun time when that video was going viral. we were getting so many followers and also we got a TON of orders for the black and white fringe cowboy jacket. I think we sold 10+ around that time but it also had people reaching out for pink fringe and other styles of custom jackets and that marketing decision got us starting on this upward incline that my business has been having over the last two years.

Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?

I think the most effective strategy is just being myself. I used to get so caught up in keeping up with other brands and being as sales forward as i could with product pictures and photoshoots, but as soon as i started to free flow my online presence for my brand the more people enjoyed it.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://bootscootincrochet.com
• Instagram: bootscootincrochet
• Other: tiktok: _bootscootin
  etsy: boot scootin crochet.