We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Treasure Crocker. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Treasure below.
Treasure, appreciate you joining us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?
I’m an animal nurse turned entrepreneur, I’ve always had a passion for animals and wanting to make sure that they have the best quality of life. The business idea to start Pawstries came after my dog, Chase, became severely sick after suffering from an allergic reaction to eating store-bought treats. Not knowing or even being able to pronounce all of the ingredients on the back of the labels on treats at the store, I wanted to be able to not only provide my dogs with healthy treats that included all-natural and gluten-free ingredients but also to other fur babies who deserve to have a healthy snack that’s not loaded with artificial preservatives and other ingredients that aren’t the best for them, and thus became the start of Pawstries. I started the company in 2018 and since then I’ve been providing healthy and delicious treats to fur babies in over 40+ states and over 3 countries. The feeling of creating a product that pets love and pet parents trust is honestly surreal. My motto is: If we as humans have the liberty of eating healthy snack options, our pets deserve to have that same right!
Treasure, 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?
My name is Treasure Crocker, animal nurse turned entrepreneur and owner of Pawstries. I have two fur babies, Chase and Bash, and they are the motivation behind the start of the company. Pawstries is a Black woman-owned pet treat business based in the city of Detroit. We provide pet treats for both dogs and cats with each treat being crafted with all-natural and gluten-free ingredients. The problems that our company is solving is the lack of 100% all-natural and gluten-free treats that our pets can enjoy as well as the lack of representation of Black people and Black-owned pet businesses in the pet community. Myself, just like plenty of other pet parents have been in the unfortunate situation where our pets have suffered an allergic reaction to store bought products. Pawstries, solves both of these problems by not only providing all-natural and healthy treats for pets but also having a black founder and owner, who is also a woman. I am on a continuous mission to provide healthy treats to our furry friends while educating and promoting animal health to our fellow pet parents.
By being a locally owned business, one of my goals was to partner with as many other local businesses in Detroit. Pawstries is partnered with our local honey company that is also a Black-owned business, “Detroit Hives”, and I am so very proud of this partnership. I’ve been able to not only learn about bees so that I can educate my supporters on the importance of them but I’ve been able to also teach them about pets, and they also provide the honey that goes into every treat! We as a brand recognize the importance of animal health and we believe that the more we grow as a business, the more knowledge we’ll obtain in order to educate this era of pet parents who want the best for their furry family members.
We’d really appreciate if you could talk to us about how you figured out the manufacturing process.
Yes, all of our products at Pawstries are homemade. Starting out, I had no idea on how to manufacture products. Sure, I had made treats for my pets at home before but that doesn’t compare to providing treats to pets all over the world. There was a lot of time put into research, testing, and picking the right ingredients and where they are sourced from. By being a small locally owned business, one of my goals was to not only partner with other small businesses but also with as many other local businesses in Detroit which is where we’re located. We are so fortunate to be partnered with one of our local honey companies, Detroit Hives, as they provide the honey that goes into every dog treat.
What I’ve learned along the way about manufacturing a product, especially one that has no artificial preservatives, fillers, or colors, is that you must have patience haha. We also use eco-friendly packaging and packaging materials so that our customers can reuse, recycle, and even repurpose their treat jars to help with sustainability. Sometimes, the ingredients we use will not always be available when we need them and we have to wait in order to receive them or the product packaging materials will be backordered which also can cause a delay with our production. So in times such as those, it’s good to practice patience because it will be needed.
Do you sell on your site, or do you use a platform like Amazon, Etsy, Cratejoy, etc?
We sell on our site at Pawstries.com and on a wholesale platform called Faire.com as well. Our decision with doing this is so that our customers can order directly from the source or for our clients who want to stock their own stores with our products in larger quantities also have the option to do so. I believe that it’s more beneficial for us to operate in this way because it allows our customers and clients to be able to communicate and purchase from us on a more personal level and we’ve been operating this way for a few years now and it works for us.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.pawstries.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/pawstries_
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/pawstriespettreats
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/pawstries/
- Twitter: www.twitter.com/pawstries_
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZzTbgP1HzTcASrPDIs8_pg
- Other: Google: https://g.page/pawstries?share
Image Credits
Image credits: GoTake Media (www.gotakemedia.com)