This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Yes, yes, what's up, welcome. My name is Chris Guillebeau. You are listening to Side Hustle School. I'm so glad you're here. This segment is called Throwback Thursday/Where Are They Now, where we take an in-depth look at someone whose story has evolved since we first featured them.
Now, so far we have almost 1,500 episodes in the Side Hustle School archives. A fact that I find quite hard to believe, even though I'm pretty sure I've been here for most of them, well, actually all of them. But anyway, we've got all these stories in our archives. And last year we thought, wouldn't it be great to go back and talk to some of these people to find out their updates, their lessons learned, successes, challenges, as well as their advice for somebody out there who might like to do something kind of like them. So this was very popular and we kept it going for this year.
Recently we have featured the founder of a service that helps people who work alone do so productively, that was last week, I believe, as well as Texas's leading provider of marimba rentals. And yes, that's the thing. And yes, that guy's actually making a lot of money. So go and check that episode out if you have not heard it. Now, today in our latest feature, we'll hear from a woman who designs and sells matching clothes for dogs and their owners.
This too is a thing, and they're doing something like half a million dollars a year. So she started this with her boyfriend at the time. He's now her husband and they work in the business together. What can I say? It's a dog-eat-dog world out there, but they are clearly barking up the right tree.
What has happened since we first featured them? Let's hear directly from Gina, she's the founder, and I will be back at the end to wrap us up. [Music]
My name is Gina Davis. I am the co-founder and CEO of Dog Threads. We are based in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
We were last featured on episode 700, and we design dog clothing and matching outfits for people and pups. My husband and I started it as a side hustle, kind of just a passion project for our pup Thomas in 2014. We couldn't find any clothing that we thought matched his human-like personality. We wanted him to dress more human-like, like Scott's wardrobe. And I was designing women's clothing at the time, so we decided to just create a couple designs for him ourselves, and people would stop us everywhere we went and ask where we got them.
And long story short, we decided to start, you know, just the side business, doing it nights and weekends together. And it was right when Instagram started to take off, and apparently we weren't the only ones looking for quality threads for their dogs. So people started asking for it. We couldn't keep it in stock, and in 2017, I decided to leave my full-time job to focus on the business. We also launched matching outfits for men, women, and kids around that time, which has done incredibly well, and is actually the majority of our business at this point.
Last time we were on the show, I believe we were doing around $250,000 in sales. We are continuing to grow our direct-to-consumer market. We also partner with different wholesale accounts, retailers, but our main focus is definitely D2C. Since our episode with you guys, we actually were on Shark Tank season 11 about a year ago, and we've almost doubled our sales since being on the podcast with you guys. So just really focusing on growing the business and scaling it thoughtfully, but also as quickly as possible.
One tip I have that I've seen since the beginning of working in the apparel industry, I guess over 15 years ago, is a lot of people make the mistake when they want to start an apparel business specifically. They tend to copy what they see as popular. Maybe they change it slightly, but they see growth in an area, and so they kind of knock off a popular design, and that almost never works out successfully. You might gain some traction, but you're not gonna gain a really dedicated customer, I don't believe, and create a brand story that you need to be successful in an industry like ours where you can't patent apparel design. So I think the most important thing is coming up with a design that is unique and authentic to you, and a real reason of why you're creating it to fill a gap in the market, and then staying true to your brand and your identity, and not just copying what you see as popular out there, which is tough to do because there's so much inspiration out there and there's so many incredible companies that I think everyone looks around and they're tempted to kind of go a different direction just when they see something that's shiny and new and awesome.
But I think just trying to always go back to yourself and think what is authentic to you and your company and staying true to that is definitely what's most important in our industry. [Music]
Thank you so much, Sheena. I really appreciate those updates, and it was great for me to be reminded of Dog Threads. I remember working on that episode long ago and thinking this is the coolest thing. As you heard, they were doing something like $250,000 a year when we first had them on the show, and now they've doubled it, lots of other improvements as well.
So just a couple of comments here. Sheena was talking about how a lot of times in the fashion world, people just kind of do knock-offs and they look at something, they're like, oh, that's cool. And they make something a little bit like that. And as you just heard from her, she's like, I don't think you can create a brand story, which is what you need to be successful in an industry like the fashion industry, right? So a brand story is this narrative, this customer loyalty, the trust that people kind of give over time, or you could say a brand builds up over time, depending on which perspective you're looking at.
And that is the real value in a business like dog threads, which by the way, Sheena pointed out to us separately, the pet industry is pretty much recession-proof. Like during the pandemic, animal adoptions have gone way up. People who already had pets have been spending a lot more time with them. So, you know, dog threads is well positioned. And again, what a creative idea, very cool.
I encourage you to check out dogthreads.com, tell them Side Hustle School sent you. And if you've got a question, a comment, if you'd like to update us about your Side Hustle, just come to sidehustleschool.com/questions. We'll have another one of these for you next week. And of course, a new episode every single day. Thank you for listening.
My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School. [Music]
from The Onward Project.
