Puppycake: Kelly Costello

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Kelly Costello, once a guest on “Shark Tank” for her business PuppyCake, discusses with us the difference between having a good product and a good business.

 

 

Danny:

All right so let’s jump into today’s episode. I have Kelly Costello who is the owner and founder of PuppyCake. Kelly?

Kelly:

Hi, I’m so happy to be here. I love talking about business, love talking about manufacturing so happy to share some of my stories with you.

Danny:

Well I’m excited to jump into this. So, all right, like we were talking about a little bit before we kind of kicked off is that, you know, there’s a lot, like your business, well first of all, you know, it’s kind of a little bit of a different area than we might typically have on IndustrialSage, which typically we’re talking to a lot of B2B manufacturers, or, so it could be manufacturers, or material handling, and so you guys are a little different, but like a good different. I’m excited about it because you guys have a very interesting fascinating story that I want to dive into. So, before we get into all of that, if you just tell me from a high level, like okay PuppyCake, what do you guys do?

Kelly:

So PuppyCake makes, manufacturers, and sells cake mix and ice cream mix for dogs.

Danny:

All right.

Kelly:

We sell a ton on Amazon and a lot of our business is actually business-to-business, we sell to a lot of independent pet stores and a couple of larger stores as well.

Danny:

Okay, that’s awesome. So, I really want to get into your story, I’m super excited. So I don’t mean to, there was like, Shark Tank‘s involved with this and we’re talking about how the business has been around since, you know, before the Great Recession and that was all fun and all kinds of things in-between then there. So, tell me, take me back to the beginning. Why, you know, how did PuppyCake start?

Kelly:

So I used to work for a sales and marketing firm and one of my clients was Pillsbury.

Danny:

Okay.

Kelly:

And so I was looking at their old cake mix ads and I thought, oh wouldn’t that be great if they made that for dogs and then I thought, I could do that. So I started researching it, there wasn’t anything on the market for it and I created some recipes, did a bunch of testing, and after a couple of months launched it. So I was 21 when I came up with the idea and then I turned 22 shortly after that and so I launched it officially on the market in November of 2007. So we got started, I was bright-eyed, young and bushy-tailed and thought that having come from the consumer packaged good background with working for larger companies like Pillsbury and Smucker’s I really ambitiously thought that I would be pacing to a million dollars by the end of my first year and I was so wrong.

One of the biggest challenges that I faced is after I launched it the recession started to hit and after the bailout banks weren’t lending money anymore so even at 22 the amount of credit that was extended to me was kind of unreal, today it’s not happening. But I had like one line of credit that was like $15,000 and I had a $7800 balance on it. After the recession they reduced my line of credit to only $8,000 so I had $200 over what I owed and essentially I had no money to be able to run my business. So I learned some really tough lessons, had to kind of restructure and focus on more grass-root sales because that’s the only thing that I could afford was me making phone calls because I just had no money to grow the business.

And the first couple years were really tough, and like you mentioned, I got on Shark Tank in 2012. So after a couple years of struggling a producer found my products and sent me an email and asked me if I’d be willing to audition. So in 2011 I filmed for Shark Tank and then in February 2012 it aired and after that I mean it really set up my business for success. I got some great advice from the sharks, I did not get a deal, I mean my numbers were pitiful. What I said that we made annually, whenever I filmed, we do in less than a week now.

Danny:

Wow.

Kelly:

So that is the difference of the level that I was at when I filmed for Shark Tank to where we are here in February of 2020 eight years after my episode aired.

Danny:

That’s awesome, so all right, actually I’m curious about the Shark Tank experience. What I’ve heard is that it’s, and I’m sure you can tell us your experience on there, I’m just curious. I’ve heard that it’s like, it’s a much longer pitch and then it’s edited way down so it’s an actual more like a traditional pitch and I think I’ve heard that it’s like an hour long or so, but then they obviously, they cut it way down. What was, is that kind of how it runs?

Kelly:

Yeah–

Danny:

Okay.

Kelly:

You’re right, I was in there for probably 45 minutes or so. They ask great questions and I was really prepared for it but I knew that my answers weren’t going to be great, but that’s part of why I got aired, because not everyone that films actually airs.

Danny:

Right yeah.

Kelly:

So, I was very honest and very candid about the mistakes that I had made, some of the issues that I’ve had, my own personal shortcomings that, you know, one of the reasons we had struggled for so long is that sales wasn’t really one of my strengths. Like the, you know, face-to-face sales and cold-calling was a real thing that I didn’t find pleasant at all. So Mark Cuban called me a, wanttopreneur, and I mean at the time he was kind of right–

Danny:

Ouch.

Kelly:

You know.

Danny:

Yeah.

Kelly:

Yeah, they definitely lit a fire under my butt to really take my business to the next level and make, like look hard at my business. It kind of made me ask the question, well, if you had a pile of cash would you buy your own business, like is it, are you going to get your money back? And at the time like the answer was no and that’s why I didn’t get a deal. But it was a great experience and I am so thankful that I got to do it and the publicity’s been awesome since then.

Danny:

Well it sounds like it’s been amazing. So what we’re, I mean, you go through that experience and you know Mark Cuban calls you a wanttopreneur which, ouch, right, I get that. But, I mean you took that and said screw that and I’m going to make a go at it, what were those key changes that you made?

Kelly:

So one of the pieces of advice that Lori gave me, she said, “I think you have a good product, but you don’t really have a business.” She suggested that I create more products and do, so I can have a line of products and her advice was very sage, you know, too, pun intended. Because when I started getting into the industry more deeply by going to trade shows, and that’s our biggest expenditure marketing-wise is going to trade shows, is that I heard the same thing. Distributors were saying we want to see a line of products we don’t want to just take on two products, or one, five different flavors of one product because it takes a lot of work to set up a product and also start working with a brand that they want to have an arsenal of products that they can, they can sell to their customers. So that was one of the things I started doing.

I launched a couple of things that were okay, not great, I launched Puptato Chips which was a dehydrated sweet potato treat which I discontinued after a couple years when a few other products really surpassed it in sales. I did a cookie mix which I thought would be a slam dunk, but it wasn’t. People are completely content with buying biscuits. They like buying the cake mix because they want a soft cake, but they’re perfectly content with hard cookies from the pet store which is an interesting lesson to learn. But the thing that really turned my business around was I thought, ah, you know I need something for the summertime because people don’t bake as much in the summer, it’s hot, you don’t want to turn your oven on, you’re already 78, 80 degrees in your house and you’re going to turn the oven on. So I was like I need something for the summertime that is going to supplement the sales that I’m missing from the cake mix because at the time the cake mix was my best-selling product. And I was like, well you know I already work with yogurt powder. I wonder if there is a high-fat milk powder that I could use and make an ice cream mix?

And I kind of just didn’t think it was going to be, you know, that popular, but I launched one product, it started selling like crazy, I launched three more flavors of it we got first place at the New Product Showcase, actually it might’ve been second place, I hope I didn’t misspeak, but in the New Products Showcase at Global Pet Expo, because it was so popular, and what I learned was that retailers don’t have much freezer space, if they have any at all, it’s also a logistical nightmare to ship frozen food, I’m sure you’ve had plenty of companies that deal with that as well. So offering an ice cream mix solved several problems and allowed lots of retailers, like independent pet stores that you would see like mom-and-pop type stores, allowed them to carry an ice cream for dogs and overnight doubled the business.

Danny:

Wow, overnight, wow.

Kelly:

And so, yeah, I mean it was just like a huge edition to our company. Our cake mixes really served that answer to, “I want a cake for my dog,” but the ice cream mix is like all year round as people are buying it as a treat for their dog.

Danny:

That’s awesome.

Kelly:

So it has a really high sale-through rate, we’ve launched more flavors. I’m actually launching a new line of ice cream mix to complement our current line of Puppy Scoops. So that was, that piece of advice that I got from Shark Tank that I needed to have a line of products resulted in making my business explode. So in 2015 is when I launched all four flavors and it really turned everything around since then.

Danny:

That’s awesome, you know, so that’s a, that’s a long run to go from 2007, launching 2007, and then 2015 that’s when it really made it, it’s interesting, so I started my first business in 2007 actually so and I was in, and I still have it so I’m still running it, but it’s, that, it’s a long run, you’re playing the long game. What kept you motivated and what pushed you through, there’s, I know there’s tons of ups and downs. I know that when your line of credit gets cut like that, and you’re like, crap, I owe more now than what the actual, like my balance is higher than what the actual limit is because they just came in and did this. What kept you, what kept pushing you through?

Kelly:

Oh a lot of things did. I think part of it was like my gut saying that I had a good company and that if I stuck with it I could, you know it’s like little things, good things kept happening to encourage me to keep at it. And because it continued to grow, I mean it wasn’t profitable, but it continued to grow and so I thought, and I wasn’t doing it full-time, I was doing it part-time, I mean partly out of necessity just because it wasn’t making me any money for the longest time. But I aired in 2012 and then we launched the ice cream mix, or sorry, before we launched the ice cream mix in 2013 I got this really really big order with BarkBox, it’s a subscription box that’s probably the most popular dog products subscription box in the United States. They placed an order for like 40,000 units of my Puptato Chips–

Danny:

Wow.

Kelly:

And I had to do my business full-time and so then once I was literally hungry because I was completely relying on my business to feed me, and put gas in my car, that was the push that I needed to be creative, be innovative and figure out how I could take my company to a profitable level where it would be worth it for me. And like one of the interesting things that surprised me after all these years of doing it, is that we didn’t really get profitable until we hit a million dollars, which I always thought like, oh once I hit 500,000 in sales I’m going to be just living high on the hog–

Danny:

Yeah.

Kelly:

And it’s just, in manufacturing economies and scale really do make sense and it wasn’t until we could buy bigger, better equipment that now when we make more products it’s just so much more profitable and that one million dollars was kind of like our break-even point almost.

Danny:

Yeah.

Kelly:

We hit that then things really took off.

Danny:

Yeah, that’s awesome. So let’s talk about the manufacturing a little bit in this space. So, traditionally, I mean typically, I mean we’d work with, especially at the on-set, a co-packer or, you’re developing something there. You mentioned that you, earlier, that you are currently manufacturing stuff so you’re not outsourcing that, that is you have a manufacturing facility where you’re doing that?

Kelly:

We have, I’ve always manufactured PuppyCake stuff. I would’ve loved to have had a co-packer, but the minimums were so high. Like a minimum for one flavor was like 10,000 units and then the cost just to have them do it was 25 cents per unit whereas it was costing me like five cents to make a bag of our yogurt icing.

Danny:

Right.

Kelly:

And so it just never made sense. I knew that if I hired a co-packer I would pay a lot of money out-of-pocket and then I would have product that would expire because I didn’t hit, I didn’t have enough orders to justify a 10,000 unit minimum.

Danny:

Yeah.

Kelly:

So that’s why we always manufactured. The interesting thing about doing powders is that you don’t really need a lot of equipment to put powder in a bag, mix it up and put it in a bag. I mean I started with–

Danny:

Yeah.

Kelly:

A KitchenAid mixer and an Impulse Heat Sealer which then I upgraded to a Continuous Band Sealer thinking I was like, you know–

Danny:

I am it.

Kelly:

Pretty hot, yeah.

Danny:

That’s awesome.

Kelly:

It was like where have you been all my life? And then just like little bit by little bit went from literally taking a scoop that I had cut so it was the right volume every time you scooped it and scraped it, to a laboratory filler from Logical Machines up in Vermont, which wasn’t, isn’t great for powders, but it was good enough for us because it causes a lot of dust because you’re vibrating the powder. And then my now husband, he was my boyfriend at the time, is a mechanical genius, he always blushes whenever I say that but he really is, I found this really cheap Form and Fill machine in 2016 and it was cheap because the company that made it said that they would not service it and so I was able to strike up a really good deal for this Form and Fill machine knowing that my husband could fix it for me. And he did have to fix it several times. But we used that Chinese-made Form and Fill machine for a while. We would literally walk upstairs and dump buckets into the top of the funnel. And then last year we upgraded to buying a brand new mass-ee pack machine and my husband, again, took a flexible screw conveyor and created the brain for it so it would communicate with the Form and Fill machine and now we’ve got a really sweet system where we can do thousands of bags an hour where we were doing 300 an hour at best.

Danny:

That’s awesome.

Kelly:

So I’ve always done it myself just because it made sense for us from a profit standpoint and also from just like numbers, now we could afford a co-packer but don’t need it because we’ve got the facility.

Danny:

Yeah, keep those margins. So what, all right, did you have, I guess you did this yourself, but you know you get to a certain point, you said you started with a KitchenAid mixer and, okay that’s one thing right, and then I guess it’s just the next thing, it’s like well we need to scale a little bit, so did you have experience with any of these other machinery’s, how did you, what did you do to go learn to say, hey, I need something bigger but I don’t know what that is, or how did you do that?

Kelly:

I kind of of joke that… I joke that my nickname here at work is Jerry, because I jerry-rig a lot of stuff. When I was deciding on what my major was going to be in college it was between business and engineering.

Danny:

Okay.

Kelly:

And I decided to do business instead. So I have more of a mechanical brain that whenever I see videos I start, I start thinking like, well okay, so this is what I’m trying to do is there something already on the market that I could buy and sort of jerry-rig it to do what we need to do? We just, just natural progression of researching the, the Form and Fill machine I actually found when I was on YouTube for something else and it was an advertisement that popped up, or it was like the next video, oh suggested next video, and I was like, oh man, wouldn’t that be nice to have a vertical Form Fill machine, it’ll make the bags for it oh I was like drooling over it and then I clicked on the link and went, oh, it’s actually for sale and it’s not that expensive. And so I was able to get an equipment loan because we had enough sales at the time to justify getting an equipment loan. Which I have learned that equipment loans are a lot easier to get than like a line of credit. So for other companies that other people are looking to upgrade.

Danny:

So largely just because it’s collateral-based versus in factoring or something like that?

Kelly:

Yes, it’s like collateral-based so they can always take it back and usually get some of their money back almost, or all of it.

Danny:

That makes sense.

Kelly:

So between myself and my husband we were able to come up with the next step. And I’ve gone to trade shows like a bulk powder show where you can really see like, well how are other companies moving powder? Because powder is a little bit challenging, it just, it’s kind of corrosive, gets everywhere and it’s a little fickle because every powder is a little bit different. Some are really free-flowing and others are like cornstarch and they kind of keep their shape however you put them. So between just being in the industry for a long time and sort of having an engineering brain that tells me to figure out what our next steps would be.

Danny:

That’s interesting, okay, but all right, so cake mix is one thing, you mentioned, well obviously the ice cream thing was kind of big, was a big piece, so that’s, I mean, yes, from a mix standpoint I get, but you still have to like test out how to actually make it and that’s kind of a different thing. And then you also mentioned chips, you mentioned you were doing some sort of like, you call it Puppy Chip, or maybe that’s now?

Kelly:

Potato, Puptato Chips.

Danny:

Pup, okay yeah, Puptato Chips, like that’s different, a different process there. So you’re just, you’re jerry-rigging it?

Kelly:

Yeah–

Danny:

No.

Kelly:

I ended up discontinuing–

Danny:

Okay.

Kelly:

The Puptato Chips because I realized that what I could do in 10-man hours on the ice cream mix, and what that value would be versus 10-man hours with Puptato Chips I mean it was like–

Danny:

That makes sense.

Kelly:

The difference of like $500 and like $5,000 for the ice cream mix. So from a profit standpoint it didn’t make sense for us to do something that was really not our core competency. It ended up being for us that powders are our core competency and that’s all we do is just powder.

Danny:

That’s very cool. No it’s a super interesting story. I mean I love the hustle, I love the drive, I love the ingenuity, hey I’m going to figure this out. I think that’s super fascinating and obviously there’s a huge drive, push, because otherwise there wouldn’t, you wouldn’t be able to, there’s just no way, there’s no way. So let’s talk a little bit about some of the, a big big topic in the industry is this digital transformation piece. A lot of manufacturers are struggling and realize, hey we need to, we need to bring in more digital solutions, and we need to throw away the paper process and we need to look… get things a little bit faster because the world is demanding it. The world that we live in, I call it the Amazonification, call it just business in general, we need things better, faster, cheaper, that’s always the push. How have you managed to kind of embrace that in your business?

Kelly:

So from the internal-manufacturing standpoint one of the big things that we’ve added, and I luckily stumbled upon this, was Katana MRP which is a cloud-based manufacturing resource planning software and for us, to dumb it down, it basically, it tells me if I make 3,000 packages of peanut butter cake mix on Tuesday, 5,000 bags of banana cake mix on Wednesday, will I have enough resources to make 3,000 pumpkin cake mix on Thursday and if I don’t when will I have it and do I have enough man hours for it? I have this many employees, they work this many hours, what day will we be able to complete all of this?

And before we found that I had a person who I was paying quite a bit of money and was just using spreadsheets and every time we’d get a change, which we’re a smaller company and one of our benefits is that we can move on a dime, is we get a big order for 3500 boxes of cake mix, you want to say yes to it. So every time that would happen you’d have to sit down at the spreadsheet, go back and count all the boxes, do we actually have enough because we don’t have a central inventory system for these components, maybe the finished product, but not the components, or the parts, or the raw materials. And that person would spend 30 hours a week just calculating whether or not we had enough resources–

Danny:

Wow, yeah.

Kelly:

From time to material to complete what we needed and it was very archaic. So when I found Katana it saved me tens of thousands of dollars in no longer having to have someone do all that manual calculation. I use it, I’m a big champion for it, I don’t get paid for it, but I love Katana, it’s a start-up and it’s been an awesome company. It’s fun to watch them grow and add more features for us. But that was like a big thing for us to upgrade to more of a digital cloud-based software so that even when I’m traveling for business I know what’s going on in the warehouse, I know how much inventory we have. From like a sales point of view we are, we’ve really embraced Amazon. We sell a ton of product on Amazon. For a while PuppyCake was the number one selling cake mix for everybody–

Danny:

Really!

Kelly:

People and dogs.

Danny:

Wow.

Kelly:

And somehow it was beating out Duncan Hines until someone figured it out and re-categorized it, but we were number one for a while, several months. So we sell a lot of our products on Amazon. We actually sell them for higher than MSRP on Amazon which helps protect our independent retailers. They love it when someone goes into their store, pulls out their phone and checks to see, “Can I get this cheaper on Amazon?” and they see that they can’t, so then they buy it in the store. So it’s really a win-win for us.

Danny:

Oh they must love that.

Kelly:

And our retailer.

Danny:

Yeah.

Kelly:

Yeah, so we sell a lot on Amazon, we sell a little bit on our website and then we also sell to independent retailers which are our primary customers and really how we grew the business. Amazon from the, for us, why we were able to be so successful was that when you, when someone Googles, dog birthday cake, we’re the answer. And so I tell other businesses you want to be the answer to something. If you can be the answer to a Google search you will make money.

Danny:

Yeah.

Kelly:

You know no one really… we’re growing our brand, but we’re still a very young brand and we don’t have great market penetration yet, but we are an answer to that solution and that’s a big reason why we’ve been able to grow so much.

Danny:

I love that quote. I’m going to use that, again, I’m writing it down, “If you can be an answer to a Google search, you will make money.” I like that, no I love it because it, I mean it, but that’s where we’re at, right, I mean, forget the yellow pages, we’re not looking up for, that’s gone. Unfortunately a lot of people still operate that way, but that’s not the case that’s not where we’re going and it’s super, I don’t know, I just really like your story. I like how you’re embracing this technology is how you’re just making stuff happen.

Kelly:

Yeah so one of the things that I’ve kind of lamented throughout my career in manufacturing is you know why did I pick something so hard, like why I do powders? Like they’re hard to work with, they’re messy, you get dirty. Like when I was on Shark Tank and I’m like how am I going to bake these cakes in a hotel room like why didn’t I just pick a hard good, like something plastic I can get made in China. But I realized over the years is that choosing the path that is harder is usually the path to success. So don’t be afraid to do something hard because if it’s hard that means other people aren’t doing it and that ultimately is going to lead to your success.

Danny:

Oh, that’s awesome, I love that. No, you’re 100% right, you’re 100% right. And even anything that’s worth it in life is tough, it’s hard, you know I like the, I’ve been preaching this. You know the T-shirts and the memes, oh the struggle is real, or whatever, I’m like okay, yeah it’s funny right the struggle is real, but I want to make a T-shirt, but N Necessary.

Kelly:

Yeah.

Danny:

Because there’s a piece of value associated with it. So you go back and you look at all those years, the time and the ups and the downs and the freakout and whatever, it’s all, I feel like it’s necessary to go through that. You can’t come out on the other side without having, without kind of going through that process because there’s, or you certainly don’t appreciate it on the backend because it’s… the meaning and the purpose isn’t there and you have to go through pain. It’s like it’s transformative. I got a couple other questions for you that are maybe, okay, stupid question I think I know the answer, but you know, could I eat your cake? Can humans eat your cake or is it just for dogs?

Kelly:

So technically I can’t recommend that you eat our cake just because we don’t have the health inspections for people–

Danny:

Okay, yeah.

Kelly:

So we don’t have that little certification; however, I can tell you that I have tested all of our products, I regularly test our products, like with the new ice cream mix I will always test that out and, because I know how it’s made and we use all human-grade ingredients and we have very high standards. When we get, we do a voluntary audit annually for good manufacturing practices and we got 97% compliance on our last inspection.

Danny:

That’s awesome.

Kelly:

So, again, I can’t legally recommend that you eat it–

Danny:

I was just curious.

Kelly:

But I can tell you that I have eaten it–

Danny:

Yeah.

Kelly:

A lot.

Danny:

So, how many dogs do you have and what are they?

Kelly:

Okay, I have five dogs. I live in the country so whenever I take my five dogs for a walk none of them are on leashes and we don’t really have to deal with some of the other messes that you know someone who has a backyard might deal with. So having five isn’t such a challenge as someone who might live in the suburbs or in an apartment. And they’re all rescues, all mixes. I’ve got three Terrier mixes that are all unrelated and look very different. One I’ve joked that he’s a short-haired Pomsky because everyone thinks he looks like a little mini Husky with short hair. I’ve got like a little, basically a Rat Terrier that’s like 25 pounds and then my other Terrier’s name is Gary and I think he’s the cutest thing in the world, but my husband thinks he’s really ugly. And then I have a brother-sister pair that are cattle dog Boxer-Beagle mixes. And so we’ve got quite a gamut of animals. And then we also have two three-legged cats.

Danny:

Okay.

Kelly:

That get along with everybody.

Danny:

Two, three-legged cats, okay, and they’re rescues as well I’m guessing.

Kelly:

Yeah.

Danny:

Yeah okay, that’s awesome, but they are probably, they’re probably very excited to be, to you know be in your home because I’m sure they get to be the guinea pigs, so to speak, for–

Kelly:

Yeah.

Danny:

For all of your products so they’re very lucky.

Kelly:

They are my taste testers and sometimes they get to come to work too.

Danny:

That’s awesome, no that’s super exciting. So, I, you know, I just want to thank you for coming on and kind of sharing your story talking about just the different, just the, the ups and the downs and just the whole, I think it’s super fascinating. I think what you’re doing is really exciting. I think it’s awesome that, from a manufacturing standpoint, that it’s just kind of like I’m, you’ve got that mechanically inclined side to just, maybe it’s that process side, to be able to say, hey I want to, I know I can do this there’s a way to be able to figure it out. And I think it’s interesting we’ve talked to a lot of different manufacturing leaders, you know, companies that have been around since, 100 years, 75 years, or, I talked to a guy the other day he had his business for, he’s had it for 50 or 60 years, and very sort of similar stories and I think there’s a really awesome entrepreneurial spirit with that, but it’s also the process mind and that comes together and it’s just very cool to hear these stories. So congratulations.

Kelly:

Thank you, yeah I love manufacturing. I’m definitely in the right industry. I like to show how it’s made, I love to just watch machines work so–

Danny:

Yeah.

Kelly:

I’m definitely like efficiency-minded and this is the right place for me to be in.

Danny:

Well, that’s awesome. So my last question is, what’s next? What is next for PuppyCake?

Kelly:

So we are launching a ton of products at Global Pet Expo. I mentioned to you that trade shows are our number one marketing spend because they’re well-worth it. Global Pet Expo is one of two of the largest trade expos for pet products in the United States. The other being SuperZoo in Las Vegas. So I’m launching a birthday station floor display to help independent pet retailers have a birthday display instantly in their store which will include our cake mixes and our ice cream mixes and some toys and accessories. We’re also launching a new line of no sugar added ice cream mix called Hoggin Dogs.

Danny:

All right.

Kelly:

And that’s spelled H-O-G-G-I-N, we did get the trademark for it.

Danny:

You always want to make sure there, yeah.

Kelly:

Cross your fingers that we can keep it.

Danny:

Yeah.

Kelly:

And then also we’re launching a smaller version of our ice creams. We started with a pint size and now we’re launching a cup size because a lot of households have small dogs, like under 25 pounds and so that’s also going to come with a gift pack. And so that’s what’s coming up for us. We’ve got a really big year. I think it’s going to be great and we’re excited about it.

Danny:

That is awesome. Well that’s super exciting, again, I’ve already, I’ve sung your praises a bunch, that’s awesome. Keep up the great work and the innovations and I’m excited to see what the next five to 10 plus years, or whatever that is, what that looks like for you because it sounds like you, you’re really, really on to something and you have continued success. So congratulations, thanks for coming on. If people want to come check you out I’m assuming puppycake.com?

Kelly:

Yep, that’s it.

Danny:

And I encourage everyone, yeah just go check it out, take a look at the story. I’m sure there’s the Shark Tank clips and things on there you can go Google and do all that stuff. And obviously if you have dogs and you want to celebrate things puppycake.com. And you can go get them on Amazon, or visit a retailer, right?

Kelly:

Yes.

Danny:

All right.

Kelly:

Thank you so much I really enjoyed this.

Danny:

I did too, thank you. All right so listen I loved this. I’m super excited, I love hearing these kinds of stories. This is, you’re going to hear more of this with IndustrialSage when we come out, we’ve been getting some feedback that hearing entrepreneurial stories and just the people behind how they’re starting things, whether it’s a manufacturing company that’s been around since for 50 or 60 years, or companies that have been around a lot shorter, and I think this is just a really great story of that blend of that passion and that entrepreneurial spirit, process, really figuring things out.

And I think really at the core that is, you go back to American ingenuity, and you go back to The Industrial Revolution and if you look at how we have progressed in a hundred to 150 years, it’s really on the backs of innovation of people who are saying, whoa, maybe there’s a better way to do this, we can do it faster and we can, and that’s the focus and it’s been, if you look at our history, it’s super exciting to see that and that’s what you’re seeing here with Kelly. That’s why I love her story because it was just like, I don’t know how this, but we’re going to figure this out, we’re going to do it and make it happen. So that, just capturing that spirit. Oh man I love it.

So, thank you for listening or watching. We’ll be back next week with another episode of IndustrialSage. If you’re not on the email list get on it and we’ll send you all this information and more. We’ll obviously have puppycake.com so take a look at them, they’ll be in the show notes and I’ll be back next week with another episode of IndustrialSage. I’ll see you then.

 

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