Please welcome this guest post from Jessica, one of the master minds behind the new funk-tional dogwear of Green Monster Dogwear
I’m honored to be given the opportunity to pull up a chair, have a cup of coffee, and tell you all about the exciting business I’m launching. It is a huge compliment that Jennifer has opened her blog up to me and lent me the ears (or rather eyes) of her loyal readers. I’ll try to keep you entertained, or at least distracted, in her absence!
I’m Jessica and together with my partner, Haley, I’ve launched a new dogwear brand, Green Monster. If you’re a person who rolls their eyes at “dogwear”, I totally understand. Give me just a few more minutes to tell you how Green Monster is different!
I’ve never been a person to arbitrarily dress my dog, Megaball, in clothing. I only would put a jacket on her when the weather demanded it or when she chewed herself raw from allergies. And even then, her stints in clothes were usually short-lived because they were ill-fitting and restrictive. Meanwhile, Haley, an artist, was frustrated with her male dog constantly wetting his jackets and the few items that did fit, offended her artistic sensibility with their boring designs!
So, in an effort to create something both functional and expressive of our pets’ unique personalitites we started sewing! Marrying fun and function, we created funk-tional dogwear!
We’ve been creating each item ourselves, unique and differentiated from the next, by hand; with the greatest thrill at the moment we sew our label on. But now we’re ready to take our designs to the next step with small-scale domestic manufacturing; and in order to get there, we’ve launched a 30 day fund-raising, “fire sale” of all our current inventory!
In order to raise the funds necessary to be ready for SuperZoo, the big retail trade show, in September, we are utilizing Kickstarter, a crowd-funding platform.
The Kickstarter website allows creative projects to gain support and involve backers in the projects through dialogue and exchange with the creators, all through the process. In exchange for your support, we will reward you with awesome Green Monster dogwear! For a $25 pledge, you can have any item in our Etsy shop with free shipping! And the rewards get better and better from there…
However, you have to act fast! The Kickstarter model is “all or nothing”! It requires project creators to set a financial goal and a timeline and if we hit our deadline before we hit our goal, then we get none of the pledges. So, please don’t delay! Our deadline is 6pm on April 20th! Take a peek at our Kickstarter video and Etsy shop and pledge for a great reward!! Then tell everyone you know, and help us transform the world dogwear from costume couture to funky, funk-tional!
A huge thank you to Jessica for sharing more information about her funk-tional dogwear and for introducing me to the Kickstarter program! Before this post I never heard of such a program and I am thrilled to know that something like this exists for project creators!
On Kickstarter, a project must reach its funding goal before time runs out or no money changes hands. Why? It protects everyone involved. Creators aren’t expected to develop their project without necessary funds, and it allows anyone to test concepts without risk.
Each and every project is the independent creation of someone like you. Projects are big and small, serious and whimsical, traditional and experimental. They’re inspiring, entertaining and unbelievably diverse.
How great is that?
Totally! Which is why I decided to help Jessica spread the word about her dogwear creations and also the reason why I made a pledge for her project.
It’s a win win for everyone involved because if Jessica hits her goal, the pledge that I made gets YOU a chance to win some funk-tional dogwear!
Yep! I will turn my reward over to you, because……. I’m cool like that! (or at least I like to think I am)
Stay tuned for hopefully a great success story!
