+ West Paw Design: Care for your pet, care for your planet
Today we are speaking with the President of West Paw Design, Spencer Williams. West Paw Design manufactures the highest quality dog and cat toys and bedding, all at their facility in Bozeman, Montana. Thanks to Spencer for taking the time to tell us about West Paw Design- to learn more about this truly innovative company, read on...
Hi Spencer, thanks for speaking with us. First, can you tell us more about the history of West Paw Design?
West Paw Design is a high quality pet products manufacturer. We are based in Bozeman, Montana. We make about 99% of all of our products in the factory where I work at Bozeman. It is a really innovative company in that we can do a lot of things; we have really great business processes that allow us to get to market with quickly with new products and to get them directly into our independent dealers hands. We also have very great manufacturing processes which allow us to make a great quality product that serves a wide range of needs for dogs and cats. We manufacture them right here so we can watch the quality and the safety of the product. We know how it is being made and we can also market it very, very well from this location. It is a company that does what manufactures used to do which is design, make, and sell their own goods.
Button, a Brittany, tries out her new West Paw toys
Tell me more about what it is like working at West Paw and how wellness manifests itself at West Paw Design- the more holistic idea of wellness, energy efficiency of the warehouse, to employee wellness, and the actual products you design and manufacture.
What we created when we built this building in 2001 was a variety of things. We needed a larger space to manufacture but also really wanted to have a space that all employees, regardless of their position would feel comfortable working in and enjoy their days. We created an environment here that is very conducive to great work quality and allows people to also enjoy their own personal space. Essentially what we created was a building that is very energy efficient, as well as being very brightly lit, has a lot of natural light coming into it, throughout the factory as well as in the offices. What we used in the construction was a tilt up concrete panel wall system. They are walls that are about a foot thick, they have concrete on both sides of a insulated foam, insulation piece that goes inside the walls. These walls were assembled in about four and a half days onsite for our whole factory which is over 15,000 square feet. It allows us to have a space that is very well temperature controlled both in summer and winter. It allows for a lot of light coming though, with the big windows that we placed high up on the walls. In the offices we did the same thing with letting a lot of natural light in.
The building is surrounded by a lot of great green space, trees, and even the break room exits out onto a large patio where we all can just enjoy summer barbeques, lunch, or just hang out in the sun and take a break from work. We wanted that space to speak to everyone’s workday that it doesn’t have to be the old grind. We want people to come here and enjoy their day.
As far as wellness that we do, we have all sorts of ideas that we think are important. We have implemented here. All of our water is filtered, we drink great quality water from every facet in this building so that people can have access to healthy water. We have snacks, a great break room, great employee benefits, one of which we pay for. All of our employees to do prescribed exercises or stretches every hour. We put on a random bit of music for one min over the loud speakers throughout the company and people do stretches that are prescribed for their particular work. There is some real positive energy that is standing up and listening to a new tune, and doing some really great stretches. We don’t want people to over excerpt themselves, we don’t want people to burnout. As a result, we have employees here that have been here for more than a decade and that is just unusual in manufacturing today. We have gotten some great kudos for being innovative with the way to have fun and keep people safe.
How would the products you sell help promote health and wellness in pets?
When you think of pets, one of things we find is that they are very closely linked in peoples minds to children. Some people who do not have children and they have elected their pets to be their children. There is this very close mentality there. What we find is that people desire to buy products for their pets that promote wellness, that promote safety and fun, play and comfort. Those are all things that we look for in our products. When we design products we use the highest quality raw materials and that is a big buzz word today. People are wondering about these products that are being made today for children and for pets and what is the quality of the raw materials that are being used. We as the manufacturer can attest to the quality because we source them directly. That really can allow us the confidence to be able to tell the consumer that our products are made with the upmost quality, for the safety of your pet. We don’t want your pet to ingest something that may be toxic in their bodies. Likewise, in the design of the products we make them very, very durable both from the shapes that we make but also the craftsmanship quality and the handwork that goes into all of our sewn products. It is really unmatched in the industry. That allows the product to hold together much better, which makes a safer toy for dogs to play with. Cats too, they ingest a lot of catnip when they are playing with toys, or maybe sprinkled on their scratching posts. We usually only certified organic catnip and we always have. This isn’t a new trend for us, we were using certified organic catnip back in 1996. This is a foundation at West Paw.
Tell me more about Zogoflex. What is it?
Zogoflex is our proprietary material. It is a plastic that feels very soft like rubber. It is a material that we developed to do many, many, things. We wanted a product to be guaranteed it was so durable. That didn’t exist on the market. We wanted to come into the market and say that any dog could chew on this and it would last, if it didn’t, we would stand behind it with a 100% guarantee. We have done that very successfully. Our returns on this product are o.6%. We also designed this product to float in water, to bounce on the ground, to be very soft on the dogs mouth, to have all of these properties as well as to have more human based properties if you will. The material is FDA compliant. It is very safe. Secondly, it is a recyclable material. Of course dogs don’t think about recycling but their owners should. We do have the capability of taking all of these products, and we can make brand new parts out of them, 100% recycling of old material. This is an innovation that we brought to the pet industry. We thought why have a product that is creating a lot of waste. With Zogoflex we engineered it to reduce waste. We also engineered it so that we can make this product in Montana. Rather than importing the product from around the world, and having long lead times. That is difficult for a lean manufacturer like West Paw Design. We wanted to have something that was immediately available to us so that we can control the process and likewise we are not shipping the raw goods and finished product around the world and expending a lot more energy than is necessary.
West Paw Zogoflex toys
How to you test these toys?
Well, we have a pet loving crowd at West Paw Design. As you can imagine, we have a lot of great testers here. People are very passionate about their pets at West Paw. We have a lot of friends who share those common interests. We do all of our testing here because we want to be sure that if we can stand behind a product and if we are all pet lovers we can attest to the quality and safety of the product. There are very few testing labs for animals. In my view I’d much rather test with a dog that is happy and loved than one that is in a research type of environment.
I would assume then that you can bring your pet(s) to work?
Yes one can. We do find that it is like bringing a kid to a candy store. So, we don’t see as many pets in the office as one might think. All the toys around are a bit tempting for them.
How have the recent recalls both the children’s toys and pet foods affected your business? How do you think it will affect the pet care industry?
It definitely has been a boom to our business. We have always been making high quality US made products. When people starting wondering about imported products and their quality, we saw more and more products being purchased from us. In the summer there was some news about a large pet chains and the concern that some of their toys may have heavy metals in them such as lead. There was a great concern about safety there. Needless to say, more and more people seem to seek us out everyday. In fact, this past October represented the largest month on record for our company. We are very confident that what we are doing well is that we are providing high quality and safe products to consumers around the world. We have done that from the beginning. We are really excited that we can do more and that offer these products. The more people that have our products for out pets the safer their pets are.
To learn more about West Paw Design please visit them on the web.
Hi Spencer, thanks for speaking with us. First, can you tell us more about the history of West Paw Design?
West Paw Design is a high quality pet products manufacturer. We are based in Bozeman, Montana. We make about 99% of all of our products in the factory where I work at Bozeman. It is a really innovative company in that we can do a lot of things; we have really great business processes that allow us to get to market with quickly with new products and to get them directly into our independent dealers hands. We also have very great manufacturing processes which allow us to make a great quality product that serves a wide range of needs for dogs and cats. We manufacture them right here so we can watch the quality and the safety of the product. We know how it is being made and we can also market it very, very well from this location. It is a company that does what manufactures used to do which is design, make, and sell their own goods.
Button, a Brittany, tries out her new West Paw toys
Tell me more about what it is like working at West Paw and how wellness manifests itself at West Paw Design- the more holistic idea of wellness, energy efficiency of the warehouse, to employee wellness, and the actual products you design and manufacture.
What we created when we built this building in 2001 was a variety of things. We needed a larger space to manufacture but also really wanted to have a space that all employees, regardless of their position would feel comfortable working in and enjoy their days. We created an environment here that is very conducive to great work quality and allows people to also enjoy their own personal space. Essentially what we created was a building that is very energy efficient, as well as being very brightly lit, has a lot of natural light coming into it, throughout the factory as well as in the offices. What we used in the construction was a tilt up concrete panel wall system. They are walls that are about a foot thick, they have concrete on both sides of a insulated foam, insulation piece that goes inside the walls. These walls were assembled in about four and a half days onsite for our whole factory which is over 15,000 square feet. It allows us to have a space that is very well temperature controlled both in summer and winter. It allows for a lot of light coming though, with the big windows that we placed high up on the walls. In the offices we did the same thing with letting a lot of natural light in.
The building is surrounded by a lot of great green space, trees, and even the break room exits out onto a large patio where we all can just enjoy summer barbeques, lunch, or just hang out in the sun and take a break from work. We wanted that space to speak to everyone’s workday that it doesn’t have to be the old grind. We want people to come here and enjoy their day.
As far as wellness that we do, we have all sorts of ideas that we think are important. We have implemented here. All of our water is filtered, we drink great quality water from every facet in this building so that people can have access to healthy water. We have snacks, a great break room, great employee benefits, one of which we pay for. All of our employees to do prescribed exercises or stretches every hour. We put on a random bit of music for one min over the loud speakers throughout the company and people do stretches that are prescribed for their particular work. There is some real positive energy that is standing up and listening to a new tune, and doing some really great stretches. We don’t want people to over excerpt themselves, we don’t want people to burnout. As a result, we have employees here that have been here for more than a decade and that is just unusual in manufacturing today. We have gotten some great kudos for being innovative with the way to have fun and keep people safe.
How would the products you sell help promote health and wellness in pets?
When you think of pets, one of things we find is that they are very closely linked in peoples minds to children. Some people who do not have children and they have elected their pets to be their children. There is this very close mentality there. What we find is that people desire to buy products for their pets that promote wellness, that promote safety and fun, play and comfort. Those are all things that we look for in our products. When we design products we use the highest quality raw materials and that is a big buzz word today. People are wondering about these products that are being made today for children and for pets and what is the quality of the raw materials that are being used. We as the manufacturer can attest to the quality because we source them directly. That really can allow us the confidence to be able to tell the consumer that our products are made with the upmost quality, for the safety of your pet. We don’t want your pet to ingest something that may be toxic in their bodies. Likewise, in the design of the products we make them very, very durable both from the shapes that we make but also the craftsmanship quality and the handwork that goes into all of our sewn products. It is really unmatched in the industry. That allows the product to hold together much better, which makes a safer toy for dogs to play with. Cats too, they ingest a lot of catnip when they are playing with toys, or maybe sprinkled on their scratching posts. We usually only certified organic catnip and we always have. This isn’t a new trend for us, we were using certified organic catnip back in 1996. This is a foundation at West Paw.
Tell me more about Zogoflex. What is it?
Zogoflex is our proprietary material. It is a plastic that feels very soft like rubber. It is a material that we developed to do many, many, things. We wanted a product to be guaranteed it was so durable. That didn’t exist on the market. We wanted to come into the market and say that any dog could chew on this and it would last, if it didn’t, we would stand behind it with a 100% guarantee. We have done that very successfully. Our returns on this product are o.6%. We also designed this product to float in water, to bounce on the ground, to be very soft on the dogs mouth, to have all of these properties as well as to have more human based properties if you will. The material is FDA compliant. It is very safe. Secondly, it is a recyclable material. Of course dogs don’t think about recycling but their owners should. We do have the capability of taking all of these products, and we can make brand new parts out of them, 100% recycling of old material. This is an innovation that we brought to the pet industry. We thought why have a product that is creating a lot of waste. With Zogoflex we engineered it to reduce waste. We also engineered it so that we can make this product in Montana. Rather than importing the product from around the world, and having long lead times. That is difficult for a lean manufacturer like West Paw Design. We wanted to have something that was immediately available to us so that we can control the process and likewise we are not shipping the raw goods and finished product around the world and expending a lot more energy than is necessary.
West Paw Zogoflex toys
How to you test these toys?
Well, we have a pet loving crowd at West Paw Design. As you can imagine, we have a lot of great testers here. People are very passionate about their pets at West Paw. We have a lot of friends who share those common interests. We do all of our testing here because we want to be sure that if we can stand behind a product and if we are all pet lovers we can attest to the quality and safety of the product. There are very few testing labs for animals. In my view I’d much rather test with a dog that is happy and loved than one that is in a research type of environment.
I would assume then that you can bring your pet(s) to work?
Yes one can. We do find that it is like bringing a kid to a candy store. So, we don’t see as many pets in the office as one might think. All the toys around are a bit tempting for them.
How have the recent recalls both the children’s toys and pet foods affected your business? How do you think it will affect the pet care industry?
It definitely has been a boom to our business. We have always been making high quality US made products. When people starting wondering about imported products and their quality, we saw more and more products being purchased from us. In the summer there was some news about a large pet chains and the concern that some of their toys may have heavy metals in them such as lead. There was a great concern about safety there. Needless to say, more and more people seem to seek us out everyday. In fact, this past October represented the largest month on record for our company. We are very confident that what we are doing well is that we are providing high quality and safe products to consumers around the world. We have done that from the beginning. We are really excited that we can do more and that offer these products. The more people that have our products for out pets the safer their pets are.
To learn more about West Paw Design please visit them on the web.
Labels: Health and Wellness, Interviews
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posted by MTBCXGirl on Monday, November 26, 2007
