The Front-Facing Dog Backpack Carrier – Joseph Watson of K9 Sport Sack®

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Hey there entrepreneurs. My name is Sushant and welcome to Treptalks. This is a show where I interview successful e commerce entrepreneurs, business executives and thought leaders and ask them questions about their business story and also dive deep into some of the strategies and tactics that they have used.

to start and grow their businesses. And today I’m really excited to welcome Joseph Watson to the show. Joseph is the founder of K9 Sports Sack. K9 Sports Sack creates front facing dog backpack carriers that are veterinarian approved and safe, fun, and comfortable. And today I’m going to ask Jack a few, uh, Joseph a few questions about his entrepreneurial journey.

And some of the strategies and tactics that he has used to start and grow his business. Now, before we dive into this interview, if you enjoy this kind of content, please make sure to hit the like and subscribe button. And for more content like this, please visit our website, Treptalks. com. And with that, Joseph, welcome.

And thank you so much for joining me today at Treptalks. Really, really appreciate it.

Joseph Watson of K9 Sport Sack: Thanks for having me. I’m glad to be here.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Veterinarian. That’s a, that’s a mouthful. So I’m very interested to know about your story. I know, you know, I’ve interviewed quite a few people, entrepreneurs who have created pet based products and always fascinated to see quite innovative and interesting products.

And this is definitely one of them. So what kind of motivated you to create a business out of a backpack or dog carrying backpack?

Joseph Watson of K9 Sport Sack: You know, um, you introduced me as the, the founder of the company. And while I do technically officially legally own the company, I am actually not the founder. Um, we, my wife and I, we’d been married three years or so.

Um, we lived in a small apartment and, um, my sister in law called us up one day and she was a, uh, a janitor at a, at an elementary school in Salt Lake City, which is about 30 minutes north of us. And she indicated that she had gone out at the end of the day to throw her garbage in the dumpster and, um, and she opened the lid and something was whining at her from down inside the, the rubbish.

And so she kind of jumped back scared and then looked in and there was a little cage inside the dumpster inside of the garbage and there was this little tiny puppy that was dehydrated and hungry and who knows how long she had been there long matted hair. So she pulled the dog out and my in laws already had a dog at the house she was living at and so she called us up and said, Well, I need somewhere for this dog to go for the weekend.

I can’t take her home. Can you come and get her? So we met her halfway and grabbed the dog with the caveat that we are, we cannot keep this dog. Our landlord will not allow it. We’re going to school full time. We have both have, you know, two full time jobs, a piece trying to make ends meet. We’re in a terrible position to have a dog.

We will help you on Monday, find this dog, a family, but we are not a per. situation here. And at some point that weekend, um, it was right about the time that the first, um, um, how to train your dragon movie came out. And it’s pretty obvious that they, they, they, um, you know, fashioned that dragon to look like a dog or a cat or kind of a hybrid of, of a pet that people love.

And, um, we were sitting there watching that movie and of course it gets emotional toward the end, even for an animated film. And. We looked down and dumpster Daisy, as we had dubbed her at that point, was laying with her head on my lap and she was laying with her tail on Jen’s lap, my wife, and realized very quickly that this was a trap.

This was permanent. We didn’t speak it out loud because we were, you know, apprehensive, but, you know, Monday, Monday turned into a week and a week turned into a month and a month turned into six weeks. And we, we just never did find her home. And finally we found ourselves at our landlord’s house kind of begging, can we keep this dog?

Um, and he said, he said, yes, we paid him, you know, a modest, you know, pet fee or whatever, and talked him into it, told him, you know, she’ll be good, which she wasn’t. She was a terrible puppy and she was all matted. Um, but We, uh, it was about that time that we got into a cycling hobby, which is kind of another vocation that we, we didn’t have time for.

We were, um, so busy, but my brother got me into cycling. So, um, he let me borrow one of his bikes and, and we ended up, um, we would ride 25 miles a day. And I started training for a, um, a bike ride that’s called the loader jaw. It goes to Logan, Utah to Jackson hole, Wyoming. It’s about 206, 208 miles. Um, you know, we, we just, we had no plans.

For any of this to happen. We were just trying to ease our guilt because we had these little windows that daisy would you know Press her face up against um and watch us as you know, she’d get smaller in the distance as we’d ride out on our bicycles and uh, and it just broke our hearts and so Um, we thought to ourselves we did the same thing any sane pet owner would do, you know She needs exercise.

We need exercise Let’s just, you know, have her jog beside us. So we, we went for a ride and she made it about a half a mile and then laid down on the side of the road, just, you know, where we were riding, just with this look on her face, it was, I’ll just die right here. You guys, if you’re, if you come back this way, pick me up.

I’m just, I will not take one more step. So. Yeah, I picked her up, put her under my arm. And of course I’m right handed. So I’m holding my bicycle with my left hand. And that’s the front brake, which means you press on that too hard. You’re, you’re going over your handlebars. Um, it was a harrowing ride home.

Um, I hit curbs and it was, it was bad. It was really, really ugly. But you know, the idea of carrying a dog, taking Daisy with us and carrying her kind of stuck in our minds. And within the next couple of weeks, it, the guilt kind of ate at us again. So we did what the, the next step that anybody would do is we went to our local pet store.

And, uh, we found this front carrier, which was absolutely hilarious. We thought it was the funniest thing we’d ever seen. And we walked out of the store, just laughing our heads off. We put our cycling gear on, put Daisy on the front. And of course it had this wide mouth and we, you could cinch it up around her neck, which didn’t really stop her from jumping out at every dog we passed.

Cause she’s a very social dog. And, you know, my knees would bump into the bottom of her, jostle around, which was Even more hilarious, but like super dangerous. So we made it about a mile and a half before we got tired of my knees bumping into her. And so, you know, we went back to the house and took that carrier back to whatever our pet store we’d gotten it from.

And that, you know, kind of kicked off a years long quest where we would buy a carrier. And it just wouldn’t work specifically for the bike rides. We were on, we bought a sling and I, I got back from, you know, about eight miles and my shoulder was just aching. We, um, we took a, we found this carrier that enclosed dogs on the back and it was really, really high quality, but it’s a poignant part of the story that we didn’t just find a dog.

We found. That particular dog in the dumpster because she wanted to be a partner. She wouldn’t, she didn’t want to be luggage. She, every time we drive somewhere, she’s looking out the windshield, helping us, you know, drive telling us what direction to go in. I mean, she’s involved with the process. We have a second dog just lays down in Jen’s lap and doesn’t care where we go as long as she’s with us.

But Daisy, she wants to see out. She wants her head in the wind and she loves that. And so, you know, she ran back and forth inside that enclosed carrier and threw my weight off. And, um, you know, it was heavy and cut into my back. So we sent that one back and we bought a, um, you know, a rear facing carrier where she like sat in with her head out, but she was facing backwards.

And, you know, we made it probably 10 or 12 miles before she started whining. And then we went home and we put her down on the front yard to let her use the bathroom as we do after a long ride. And she wobbled about five feet and then just. Threw up all over the ground, got sick all over the ground, and then laid down.

We ran her straight to the vet and had a 200 bill that we couldn’t afford, where they told us that, guess what, dogs can get motion sick. Same way that we look back, car, we can get motion sick, they get motion sick. We went through probably eight or 10 different carriers and, you know, they just didn’t every, every one of them just did.

I mean, they, they worked and they had value for maybe going to the store or, you know, going down the street or traveling on an airplane or something like that. But we wanted to ride our bikes and we want to go hiking up in the mountains and we wanted something that was lightweight, flexible, and we basically, you know, the front carrier.

We made a list item that said we wanted to go on our backs. We don’t want it to be in our fronts, you know, we, the rear facing carrier, we want it to be forward facing, um, the, we want it to be on both shoulders. So it’s gotta be a backpack. It’s gotta be. And there just wasn’t anything. And we kind of gave up for a while, probably almost a year, maybe a little less, um, we kind of gave up.

Um, but I, I did the loader jaw. Um, I rode all 206 miles or eight miles or however long it is. It took me. It took me an entire day to do it. And I vowed I would never do it again. Um, but I got home, they gave me this little like swag bag, you know, the little bags that have the drawstrings that you shoot them in or whatever.

They gave me one of the, with some literature and some, you know, you know, free things in it. And I took it home and threw it on the floor. And then laid down on the couch to die, basically. And I turned and looked and Daisy was laying on top of that bag with her tail going like a propeller. And I, I’m pretty thick.

It took me a minute to kind of put it together, but I realized that she thought that we had brought home another carrier for her to try and she was animated. She was so excited to go out. And I, I guess I lost my mind. I don’t know. Maybe I was too tired to fight back or something, but next thing I know I’m pouring a squirming little dog into.

You know, this drawstring bag and. You know, feet first. And I went outside and rode, I don’t know, another five miles and came back and it was like, Oh my goodness, this works. It’s a forward face. I mean, the, the, the, the strings went up around her torso. Um, and balance was all off, but I got home. And even after five miles, I took my, my cycling Jersey off and my, my wife just screams like, ah, and I had these big purple marks on my arms, on my shoulder, my collarbones.

So she took an old backpack, school backpack we had laying around and cut the, the, um, shoulder straps off and sewed them onto this, this, um, you know, little drawstring bag. And I went for another ride, the balance wasn’t quite right. So she added, you know, this, this. Hole that goes it went up around her neck and she had arm holes where her arms came out the front and It was hard to get her into it because we just buttoned around the back and so we added a zipper and it got to a point where we kind of had an Idea of the design that we wanted and it fit all the criteria which we didn’t Hadn’t put all that together quite yet, but it did everything we wanted to do Jen went to Joanne fabrics bought a bolt of fabric and made The original K9 sport sack and it’s, I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s weird looking, it looks like a pillowcase with, with, uh, backpack straps on it, but, but it worked.

And so we rode around for probably another year using that bag, just, you know, that we had gotten what we wanted out of it. And we’re blown away at how many people stopped us along the way. We were embarrassed. It was embarrassing to us. We were like, you know, don’t look at us as we went by people, you know, that are real cyclists, professional people.

But we were, we were accosted basically by crowds of people that expressed identical desires and concerns. And we have been looking for 15, we got our dog, our dog’s getting old and we’d love to take her or him for a ride. And we just, we just don’t know what, this is what we’ve been looking for. And we had a guy offer us 300 for that janky, like original prototype that we had.

And we were like, we’ll make you one. And he left us his contact information and we made a second one and never could get ahold of him. So we had a second bag that we gave to a friend or something. And it just, it started to dawn on us over time that, you know, we had, it was, it was three things that kind of dawned on us simultaneously.

Like. You know, we, we were, um, we had stumbled onto something, um, useful and fulfilling and brought joy and that we were not an audience of one, like we were, we were a bigger audience than just us. And the third thing was the longer we kind of kept it to ourselves, the more selfish we started to feel. And so we had no intention of starting a business with it.

I was getting a master’s degree in history. My wife was a dental hygienist. We were headed in a certain direction. And we’re like, Hey, this could be kind of a cool little side hustle. Um, let’s send it off to a little manufacturer. We actually borrowed 2, 500 from my father in law who very skeptically gave us a check.

Like, I don’t believe that enough people will do this, but here you go. Try it out. And we went and did one show with that rudimentary prototype type design. We had, I think, 50 bags, 50, maybe a hundred, but it was, it was a really low amount of bags and they were all in one size and one color. And so the show went from eight o’clock in the morning to four o’clock in the afternoon.

And by noon we had sold completely out and we were like, we were blown away. We’re like, wow, if this is a side hustle, this is the real deal. And over the course of the next couple of weeks, Years, we, you know, did more shows and ran into a, uh, a marketing guru who said, look, you’ve got a great product. You just need to get it in front of people.

And he, you know, we joined up with him. We have since kind of bought out his stake in the company and we have a marketing department that does his job, but it kind of organically grew. And then one day my wife and I looked at each other and went, look, we’re working 40 hours at our jobs. We’re working 60 hours for K9 sports side.

You know, is there a living here that we could do? Like we’re, we’re, we’re too busy. We were, we haven’t, you know, watched our kids grow up or anything. And so within a couple of weeks or maybe a month or two, we were full time K9 sports sack. And from that point on, it’s turned into this nice little company where we have a catalog of, of bags.

That original prototype grew into kind of a more sophisticated model. We put more amenities onto it. And then once adding more features to it could only take it so far. You know, we bifurcated into two models and then we had two models and then those turned into four models and four different things.

And now we have a whole catalog. And I mean, we had people asking us, you know, your bag tops out at 30, 35 pounds. I want my dog’s 60, 70 pounds. I want to carry my dogs. We created a monster bag. And, you know, we thought nobody’s crazy enough to do this and they fly off the shelf. People absolutely love them as a frame and a lap belt.

And, uh, and so we, uh, Just kind of organically grew into this company. We’ve got about 20 to 22 employees in Lehigh, Utah. We are developing the next round of our products that are far more like inclusive and more complex, but simple in a, in a way that makes them more, you know, more sturdy and structured, but they, you know, they, they don’t lose any of the structural integrity and.

You know, we’ve got some stuff coming up that’s really mind blowing, but that’s how we got from there to here.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: That is such an interesting story and, and that answered a lot of the questions that I would have asked you anyways. But I guess, um, you know, that’s kind of the best, best kind of validation, right?

When you know, you’re out with a product that you’ve created or, you know, you don’t even call it a product. It’s something that’s. So, uh, solving your problem and then people are stopping you and asking about it. Then, you know, you kind of inadvertently hit on something. Um, one question that I have, you, you said that this comes in, you’ve created in different sizes, but to me, it seems like, are people carrying really, really large dogs on their back?

I mean, is that really, what are people? So this, this is, targeting a very specific kind of a use case, people who are cycling or people who are going to like, um, camping kind of situation.

Joseph Watson of K9 Sport Sack: Yeah, it is. So we created it specifically for cycling and, and it, um, the first couple of versions, um, when we would hike with it, it kind of laid too far down on our backs and, and I didn’t like the, the way it kind of turned Daisy into a hammock.

Um, and, and so really cycling was perfect because you’re leaning forward and the dog’s leaning forward. Um, but we had enough people that said, Hey, can you kind of re re tool this so that it will do more than just cycling. And so we, um, we built it so that the bottom of the bag actually, and people probably don’t even notice it, but the bottom of the bag angles up like 20%.

So when the dog is on it, instead of the bottom of the bag kind of flopping against the owner’s back, it just goes and goes flat. So the dog is higher up on the owner’s back. We moved the straps higher on the body of the bag. And it, and, and then we added, it’s actually, um, we had, we, you asked you, um, you know, a question about manufacturing.

Um, we manufactured in the United States and then at some point that just got flat out too expensive. We just couldn’t do that anymore. So we, um, we went overseas and we actually traveled overseas and vetted different factories and things like that. And the first run that we got from overseas was The bags were just garbage.

They were, they were not. And we had to spend every dollar we had on them. We’re like, Oh my goodness, this is terrible. And we realized that the design of the bag was kind of a foreign concept. The backpack straps out of a normal backpack, they come out of the top of the bag, like right, like this. Ours came out of the middle of the bag like this and that was a harder scene to figure out, but I had an old sewing machine that my mom had gotten me, I don’t know, when I was 16, that I had put in mothballs on the, you know, on the shelf and I pulled it out and I started sewing a little basting stitch underneath where the straps were and I sat there every day for 15 hours a day just sewing those straps and, and reinforced them just enough That we could then sell them and, and make a little money off of them.

And then we sent them out and the next wave of bags had bad zippers. And we were like, Oh man, we’re, this is like, are we really going through this again? And so I was sitting there in the middle of the night worrying about it. And we, I came up with the idea of putting a little pinch clip that went across the zipper and we, we, we started sewing these little pinch clips across.

We’d get them from the factory and we’d sew them across. So the zippers were indestructible. And what we noticed was. The back of the dog that where previously the zipper, their weight would press against the zipper, push their backs up straight. And we were like, Oh my goodness, these are, these are not just zipper enclosure straps.

These are lumbar support straps. And you know, we put those on every bag starting at that point. And then we realized, Oh wow, why not just put them right on the outside of the zipper? Let’s put them on the outside of that seam. And the new bags that we have coming out this fall, the lumbar support strap goes all the way around the bag to the farthest seam that connects with the back padding.

And when you sent it down, you sent it down this way and it takes all the, the, the extra material sucks it to the dog. And so your dog it’s form fitting to your dog, kind of wish we’d gotten that at the first, but you pick things up, you know, as you go along. But if we hadn’t had those early mishaps, those early misfires.

We wouldn’t be as far as we are because we wouldn’t have had to sit there and go, okay, how do we make it so that in the event that something like this happens, we still have a design, you know, people are carrying, they’re not carrying a laptop, they’re not carrying papers, they’re carrying a living, breathing animal, and they have to be right.

And so our, our newest designs, every, every model we’ve come out with the next version. It’s that much safer and that much more inclusive and, and it just, you know, it’s all because of a mishap that happened early on that drove us to, to get to this point.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: I know on your website, you have a page for sizing, right?

So you have sizes from extra small to extra, extra large. I’m just curious. Because I’m, I’m just trying to imagine, you know, a really large bag on someone’s, uh, I mean, it’s, it’s going to be tiring for the person also to, to, to carry. And I’m sure the dog is probably going to be a little bit, um, uh, you know, uh, confined in there as well.

Do you find that you sell more bags of smaller size versus larger size, or is that, is that not even an issue? Like people are, who are, who love their pets. Are willing to basically carry them anywhere,

Joseph Watson of K9 Sport Sack: you know, the, the early idea was now remember that the very first version that, that version that we took to the pet show, it was, Only one size and that was daisy size.

That was it. And it tapered a lot, but it actually fit her. Every dog. So the 50 bags that we sold, but that first show, they were all like identical sizes of daisy. Every dog that was slightly smaller ground in the fabric and every dog that was slightly bigger wouldn’t even fit. So the next version, of course we widened it and then we added some straps along the sides that, you know, cinch down, we would over time we’ve widened it, but created some sort of a weight.

That that could be cinched down to form bit the dog. Um, and every time we did that for the, for the first five years or so, our market was exclusively dogs that were like maybe 30 pounds or less. And based on the sheer amount of feedback that we got from people that had dogs that were 40, 50, 60 pounds, we were like, okay, do we, do we make a bag that only goes up to 50 pounds?

Do we make a bag that goes, I mean, do we do one that is next 10 pounds heavier? And we’re like, you know what? We’ve got enough people asking. Let’s just go for broke. Let’s, let’s go ahead and build one. That’ll hold a 90 pound dog. And we did, we built, it was called the Rover and with we’ve since renamed it, um, uh, the Colossus with a K.

And, um, I mean, it has. We’ve put a 127 pound dog in it. Now we only have it rated up to 90 pounds. So we’ll put a dog in it. That’s over 90 pounds. You’re on your own. So our warranty only covers 90, but we have put massive, massive dogs in it. And we have had people buy this extra, extra large bag and then send us pictures of their, you know, German shepherd on their back.

And for me. I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t do that. I would make, you know, and they make, they do, they make their dog walk until they’re tired and then they put them in the K9 sports. Like, of course, you don’t want to rob your dog of any valuable exercise. Um, but when they get tired, how are you going to carry them?

You can carry them under your arm. You know, what are you going to do? Put, put them over your shoulders. There’s really no way to carry them. And so we created it for, and yes, they do fly off the shelves and we get great reviews about them. Um, they are. I mean, I, we have pet people and put it this way, pet people are nuts in the best possible way.

And so when we created that, we created something that just works. Build a need and they, they love it.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: I completely agree. As I said, you know, I’ve been, I’ve spoken with a few, um, pet businesses and it seems like, you know, pet owners are really, really passionate about their pets and their really, you know, personalization.

Exactly. Um, I’m very curious. So you go, you said you got some funding from your father in law, 2, 500. How did you sell it to him? And he was skeptical. And did he, so was he, was he kind of like an angel investor? Did he get a return on his investment?

Joseph Watson of K9 Sport Sack: My, my father in law is not a spender. He is, he’s a, he’s very, um, parsimonious, let’s say that with his money.

Um, and I, when I went to him and I told him about this idea, The look on his face was very, it was like, like this, like, what are you, are you serious? Like, and he, To be honest, he really did say this. So I, um, I married into a family that has three boys, three girls, and two parents, and they are all spectacular people.

They’re just, I mean, I’m scatterbrained. I’m all over the place. I’m a dreamer. My wife is very pragmatic. She’s very stable. She’s very, um, you know, she could run a fortune 500 company, whereas I’m barely pulling it together day in and day out. But I went to my father in law, I threw the idea past him, and he looked at me.

And he, he said, I would be remiss in my responsibility as a father and father in law if I did not voice my concerns. I do not believe that there are enough people on planet earth that want to carry a dog on their backs so as to necessitate an entire company or orders worth of these bags. But if anybody wants to cut in the check, as he says, he’s like, and if anybody can figure it out, though, it’s Jen, my wife, and hands me the check.

I’m like, please. Thanks for the confidence. So it had nothing to do with me. It had to do with the fact that he believed in his daughter and I was being dragged along for the ride. And so that was, that was the deal. He believed in her and to be fair, um, she and Daisy are very much the bosses and I just, I do what I’m told.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: No, that’s, that’s, that’s, uh, that’s very interesting. Um, so, um, you talked a little bit about your manufacturing. Is this, uh, are you getting this manufactured, is this getting manufactured in the U. S.? Or is this, uh, are you getting this made somewhere in Southeast Asia, China?

Joseph Watson of K9 Sport Sack: You know, um, we are having it made in several different countries.

Some of them, some of them are in Asia. Um, we just, um, We have never done business with a factory that we have not traveled to and visited first. Um, we’ve been very careful on that front. Um, but we just, we discovered very quickly that there was no way that we were going to be able to sell a backpack that was in the price range of our, our target demographic.

If we were continuing to manufacture them at the costs demanded within the United States. So we did go overseas so that we could manufacture them in the tens of thousands instead of the, you know, hundreds. Um, and when we did that, that was kind of when it took off, um, we still had to tinker with the quality of it and we had to add things that would mitigate, you know, potential quality issues.

Um, so we’ve been very careful with our, our design. We’ve been very careful with our, our manufacturers. Um, we have, we’ve, we’ve built a process that really eliminates any margin of error for, for any, you know, any wide margin of error. Um, but yes, we do have them manufactured overseas in the event that, um, uh, uh, factory In the United States can do it for the right price and we can, we can fulfill our customers needs at that price.

Then we would definitely come back. But until then, we’re, we are overseas.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: No, I think that that makes complete sense. And I mean, I don’t think there’s any, anything wrong with manufacturing overseas. I mean, uh, I’m sure most businesses do it these days just for the cost, cost reasons. Um, I’m curious. Uh, so.

I’m sure as you said, you know, there were other designs in the market, other competitors, and you’ve kind of created your own version of it to meet a certain, uh, kind of, uh, use case. Uh, have you found, given that you’ve had a good response from the market, I mean, it usually happens that when a product starts selling, you get other competitors, copycats, you know, especially from China, you know, if you’re building in China, um, who, uh, who have, who create similar products and put it out in the market.

Have you encountered anything like that where somebody is kind of taking your designs, which is your, what your proprietary thing did, you know, you’ve created your own designs. Um, do you find you have copycats now or, you know, people creating similar products and how are you kind of dealing with that?

Joseph Watson of K9 Sport Sack: You know, anytime you, and this is a lesson that I have learned that is at the top of the list of lessons I have learned by running a company. Um, remember, I had no experience when we came into this. I was, I, you know, the lessons that I’ve learned along the way, I learned them, you know, hard knocks. Um, but I, if you create something That fills an active void in a market.

Um, there are people that will always see dollar bills. Remember we, we created this because we were asked to, yeah, we make a living out of it, but you know, really everybody in our company, we don’t use the word product. We use the word solution because that’s what we’re doing. And really, you know, We are, our goal is to share the joy that the K9 sport sec has brought to us.

Um, but we did protect it legally for sure. We, so when we, you can’t patent a backpack, backpacks have been around for, for millennia. So you can’t patent a backpack, but you can patent parts of a backpack that are, that make your backpack distinct and, and, you know, have a different utility than what came before it.

Um, so the zipper that goes straight up and down the back. The arm holes that the collar enclosure with the arm holes, then the mesh that goes down the sides, um, all of those things that made the K9 sports like what it was that made it valuable that made it work. And that’s the, those are the building blocks of the K9 sports acts entire value.

Anybody that has had to. Who has tried to knock us off. They’ve either had to, to contend with if you had to not to create a bag, it’s identical to ours, but the quality doesn’t really seem to be there. Or they’ve had to go around all of the features and facets on our bag that make it valuable so that there’s doesn’t infringe upon legal intellectual protection, in which case their product is, um, you know, in my estimation, and I don’t mean to bash any of my competitors.

Um, but if you, if you take away all of the features that make the K9 sport sack work that make it valuable to make it what it is, you end up with an inferior design. You just, you just do, it’s just, just simple math. We have a, an influencer. Um, he actually had several thousand Instagram followers. Um, we, we, um, were small time too.

So we sent him a K9 sport sack and within a couple of months he had, um, he had created a pretty good size following just by taking pictures of the people that were taking pictures of him while he walked around the city with his dog in a K9 sport sack. And he came, um, a while later and demanded an exorbitant amount of money from us.

And I told him that I don’t even pay my own employees that I’m not going to pay you. And we, we kind of parted ways. And then before we know it, he has a bag that is trying to compete with ours. And yeah, it looks it’s, it’s the second, you know, original forward facing backpack dog carrier. But yes, he did have to go around all of our design implementations.

He’s had to, I mean, his story is a direct rip off of ours. Yes, we do find on Amazon, eBay, all the time we find somebody who looked at a product that we created over the course of three years that we built around a living, breathing dog and went, Huh, wow, we could do that and builds it. Um, you know, we just, the best thing we do is we just keep innovating.

We just keep on building the next while they’re knocking off last year’s version. We’re already working on next year’s version. And once we release it. You know, it’s just, you know, we’re using real customer feedback from real customers with real dogs, and they are waiting for us to come out with the next version so they can knock it off and by the time they’ve knocked it off, we’re on to the next version.

And that is because of our awesome customers. They are absolutely amazing. So yes, there’s a lot of infringement. We have kind of led a renaissance, I guess. Um, if you look at the market data up until about 2012, it’s like search history for backpack dog carriers is like flatlined. And then in 2012, 2013, it spikes.

The only difference is that we came along and then it never goes back down. And so, yeah, there has been an explosion of Lots of pet carriers. There’s a, there’s a whole subculture. I’ll call it of people that want to carry their dogs. And, you know, hopefully they get the carrier that is right for them, whether that’s a sling or a backwards carrier, front carrier, whatever.

Um, hopefully they get the one that’s right for them. Even if it’s not a K9 sports sec, um, we’re just glad to be part of a culture of people who finds joy in carrying their, their dogs. And for those who find Our solution to be the one that they need. Um, you know, we, we love them and we will continue to.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: That is so true, right? You know, in any industry, any area of business, you know, some innovator comes up with a new idea and then it gets copied. Like it’s, that’s, it’s the, um, the never ending story. And so I think what. Or, you know, it’s really about, I guess, creating a brand, creating your own story, and having people who kind of, you know, align with that story, or, you know, uh, um, and, and as you said, you know, coming up with new products, keep continuing to innovate, and, and I think that’s, that’s what, uh, will, will continue to keep you different.

What, uh, what have you learned about your customers? Um, you know, these are really hardcore Pet, pet lovers. Um, who’s, who’s buying from you? Have you learned anything unique about your particular customers?

Joseph Watson of K9 Sport Sack: Oh my goodness. Um, I could write a book on our customers. They are, they’re fascinating. The psychology of the pet owner is really fascinating and the changing sociology of the pet owner culture is really fascinating as well.

Um, I will say this. We, yes, we’ve learned a ton about our customer. Um, if we can sum them up in one Kind of comprehensive statement. They are a special breed of people. And what makes them special is the inordinate amount of love that they are capable of giving. Even, even, you know, an animal that I don’t know, 10, years ago would have been, you know, a tool.

They would have been chained up in the backyard to take for hunting. They would have been, you know, now they’re family members. These people love their dogs and they want what is best for their dogs. And if they want what’s best for their dogs, and I love my dog and want what’s best for my dog, then my obligation is to provide the very best experience I can for them, right?

Um, they, we hardly ever have anybody call up, call up our customer service department and just tear us to shreds. Because these are loving people. They’re people that are, they, they love a dog, which makes them intrinsically kind, understanding people. Um, they usually work with us pretty well. Um, we have a customer base that is second to none.

They are, they are a special breed and we love them for who they are. Um, not in spite of it. They are, they are, you know, when we go to these shows, I’ll give you an example. We do, we’ve done, um, probably Hundreds of shows since 2014 all over the world. Um, I myself have put probably over 80, 000 dogs in, in K9 Sports X.

And if the front row seat to their faces lighting up as they realize what they can now do with the best friend that’s on their back. If that was the only thing driving me, that would be way more than enough. These people, they bring their dogs in and they, they are the love they have for their dogs. It is radiating off of them.

And my job is to make sure that I connect the love they have for their dogs to the safety of their dogs while they’re using our product and, and it, it, um, you know. It’s a fun deal. We love meeting our customers face to face is the funnest part of this job because watching them light up, watching them realize what they can now do, watching them all of a sudden find a solution.

They’ve been, may have been looking for it for a long time and that’s a rush. You cannot get anywhere else. So yeah, our customers are very awesome. They’re incredible.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Is there a difference between, of course, your product is target towards dog owners, uh, is there a difference between do people want to carry their cats on their back?

That’s, that’s a different, uh,

Joseph Watson of K9 Sport Sack: No, I’ll be completely honest with you. If I could go back in time, I probably wouldn’t have named the K9 sports, like the K9 sports sack. I, I just, I, We did pigeonhole ourselves into ourselves into the, the, the dog market. Um, cats, cats are different. They, they, um, they, when you put them in a carrier, they fall into a puddle in the bottom.

They don’t, they don’t have the same rigidity that a dog has. But I’m lying if I told you that we, I mean, just about Once, twice, maybe up to three to four times a show, we have a couple of people that walk up to us handful of people to walk up to us and they got a cat in the K9 sport sack and they are just tickled to show us off that it’s not just a K9 sport sack.

Um, we have begun working on a cat carrier. Um, we are still in the process of learning more about the anatomy of cats and the needs of cat owners and stuff like that in order to make something that works better. But yes, there are tons of people that use the K9 sports sack for their cats as long as their cat fits in it and is rigid enough and the new products that we’re coming out with the ones that cinch down better, they will hold cats better because, because there’s not as much room to just like, you know, melt in the bottom of the bag.

It does hold them up better. So yes, we are trying to help people that want to carry their cats. They do not seem to be as ubiquitous as people who want to carry their dogs, but yes, we are trying to build something that will accommodate them as well.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Now you said that, uh, of course, you know, you found a really great product market fit.

And, uh, as you said, you knew you kind of partnered with some marketer before and now you’ve bought out their stake. So do you really find that the bottleneck kind of. In your business at this time is really how effectively you can market this product in front of the right audience. And, and that’s really kind of your bottleneck right now in terms of growth.

And how are you doing it? Like, how are you, what is your best marketing, uh, channels and strategies?

Joseph Watson of K9 Sport Sack: Oh, man. Um, so I’m the bottleneck. I’ll be totally honest with you. Um, if, if somebody were running this company who knew more about business than me. 59 sports that could probably be double or triple the size.

I, it’s my inexperience. Um, I, somebody who has been there and done that would probably, um, be more sensitive to risk, but be able to navigate them better. Um, our marketing is not our bottleneck. Our product development is kind of people are always asking what’s next

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: You know,

Joseph Watson of K9 Sport Sack: they’ll they’ll bag and they’ll use it for you know, six months and then their question is what’s next?

You know, what’s the next update? So we have an entire developmental department who works on the next product Yeah, there’s a certain there’s a certain speed at which we can get the can And sports sec in front of the world. Basically, I’ll put it this way. There are two things that we do at CaK9ports Act by creating the K9 Sports Act.

We have created an experience, the experience of being able to carry a dog forward facing on your back where your dog is no longer luggage, but rather a copilot. That’s a new experience. Our job now that we have created that is to improve that experience so that it is better for everybody who is either currently using it or will use it in the future and get that experience in front of as many people as would possibly find benefit or joy from it.

Everything we In every department is to fulfill those one or both of those of those goals, whether it’s a product update that makes the product work better, or whether it’s a marketing push to go into a new country, a new, you know, we’ve gone to Brazil and done pet shows and people just rave about it.

They’re begging for it around the world. Um, I would say it’s not necessarily our ability to get. The K9 sport sack idea in front of them. It’s a lot harder to ship it from either the United States or from a manufacturer overseas and get it to them. I would say distribution, the ability to get physical product into every country where people really could benefit from the K9 sports act.

That’s the bottleneck. They want it. They know it. Seen it. It’s just either we have to ship it from the United States and contend with customs fees and exorbitant shipping prices, or we have to find somebody in that country who will buy it in bulk and then send it from, you know, From the manufacturer and it’s, it’s a delicate balance, but we do have a department working on that too.

But that is our bottleneck is getting physical product to the places that really need them.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Which, uh, which countries are you shipping in right now? Like where have you kind of solved that problem for now?

Joseph Watson of K9 Sport Sack: You know, the United States we’ve got, um, the United States is, is very, um, we we’ve got it covered.

Um, we have a, uh, a, a 3PL company, a third party logistics company in Canada. Uh, Um, we have one in Europe, um, that Australia, Australia, um, Japan, a lot of Asia has really taken to it. Um, we have the next country on our list. I would say Brazil is probably the next country. Um, basically anywhere that we have done a show where they have had.

an enthusiastically positive response. That’s kind of the next on our list. Um, but those ones that I just listed, they’re the ones off the top of my head who have somebody on the ground there who saw the value of the K 9 Sports Act and was willing and able to take enough of them into storage or whatever that they could sell them for us or buy them from us and sell them on their own.

Those are the distribution networks in Australia, Europe, Canada, United States, Japan, uh, the rest of, you know, Asia. So, um, that’s where it’s easiest to get ahold of anywhere else. It’s kind of a wait till it comes into stock in the United States and then pay whatever it costs to get there, which we’re trying to, to fix.

Of course.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Uh, by the way, we are at 631 now. Do you have a few more minutes to, uh, for a few more questions?

Joseph Watson of K9 Sport Sack: I have time. I have time for sure. Let’s do it.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Okay. Thank you so much. Um, Yeah, so the next one is, uh, um, your channels. So I know that you have your own website, um, and I know on your website, there is a wholesale section as well, and there’s, uh, um, uh, I believe I saw a retail section as well somewhere, but, uh, can you talk a little bit about your channels, where you’re selling and which channels are, uh, working the best?

Joseph Watson of K9 Sport Sack: You know, um, you’re, you’re right. We do, we have basically three overarching channels. We sell on k9sportsac. com. Um, we sell on Amazon and, uh, and we sell on, um, uh, we sell through wholesale channels. Now my favorite is wholesale. Um, just because I like to look a customer in the eye, it gives you the best opportunity to explode.

And the product and train somebody face to face and um, you know, all that good stuff. It was, it was really, um, that’s the funniest of, of all of them. Um, when somebody else can benefit, whether it’s, you know, the financial benefit of the store owner or the customer who’s, who’s buying it, um, getting a face to face training.

That one’s my favorite. Yeah. Um, I think we’re, what we’re trying to do is we’re trying to, and, and, sorry, we’ve got a soft place, a space in our hearts because at our very first show, we had a store owner walk up to us and say, I’d like to carry these, these products in my store. That was just down the street from where we lived in Las Vegas at the time.

And we went and talked to her and she walked us through the process. So getting like product liability insurance and hang tags and UPC symbols and things that hadn’t even crossed our mind yet. Um, so we have come to love the small, you know, strip mall stores of people that are just trying to make it work with a little pet store, whatever we can do to help them grow.

That is our favorite. Um, right now I would say they’re probably revenue wise. Those three are probably equal. Um, there are others. There’s some that I love selling through more than others. There’s some that are easier than others. There are some that are easier to find than others. Um, most of it, if it’s outside the United States, most of it is through our wholesale channel and through stores and e commerce that’s in that particular country.

If it’s inside the United States, most people either get them from a local store. We have about 5, 500 stores worldwide that we sell to. Um, but yeah, they are on Amazon and on canonsports. com.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: That is awesome. We have 5, 500 stores. That’s, that’s quite a, quite a bit. Um, I wonder like,

Joseph Watson of K9 Sport Sack: Go ahead. Go ahead.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: I wonder, uh, for your direct to consumer business, like your website, is it, um, margin wise, I mean, I know for wholesales, of course, you know, it affects margin, but, uh, you know, with the direct to consumer, you probably have to spend more in marketing.

So, do you find any difference in terms of margin, or at the end of the day, You know, what Amazon takes versus,

is it pretty much the same at the end of the day? I

Joseph Watson of K9 Sport Sack: would have to, um, it’s, it’s within, it’s within a certain, um, uh, margin from each other. Um, we have, we’ve done what we can to, like, for example, Amazon, yes, Amazon costs more than to sell on our own website and they have, you know, marketing fees and things like that, but we also ship in bulk directly to them from our manufacturers.

So the shipping costs are less. So we found ways to kind of, ameliorate that, that, uh, that overarching cost. Um, they, I would have to look at the numbers. Yes. Some of them do cost a few dollars more than the others, but we have done, we’ve made every effort we can to make sure that each channel is as financially advantageous for us as it is for our customer and for the third party, um, that is selling them if, if there is a third party involved.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Makes sense. Um, I know you talked about your team. Can you talk a little bit about your, you know, uh, what, what your team looks like? I believe you said you have 2026 people or something like that. Um, what are the different departments and, you know, who’s doing what?

Joseph Watson of K9 Sport Sack: So we have a, um, I call it the, the, uh, Um the wheel of reciprocity, I guess each department kind of feeds into the next Um, so we have a department that is our product development department They focus only on the data that we get from from customers tangible quantifiable data that we can take um from from customers and make better products and and add ons we have some things like Um, I’ll give you an example.

Um, we have a, a product called a snuggler. Now we’re retooling the snuggler, but several years ago we had customers contact us and say, you know, do you have a jacket or a sleeve or something to go inside the K9 sports sack that can keep my dog warm? So we created a little, it looks like a sleeping bag with arm holes and a hood.

You couldn’t, the dog couldn’t walk around in it. So we are making a version that you can either take the bottom off or it doesn’t have a bottom. Um, but we have a bunch of products that specifically interface with the K9 sport sack or with the brands. The brand of K9 sports like is all, you know, concise, easy to carry lightweight, you know, easy to use tools for hiking, camping, you know, whatever you’re going to have doing.

So we have some, some tents that we’ve, that fold down into nothing and some, you know, little blow up beds that fit in the bottom of the tent. So if it interfaces with the K 9 support sec or the K 9 support sec experience. That’s kind of what we’re focusing on. So our product development department, it takes all the product data from customers.

I wish it had this. I wish it did this differently. I wish it was bigger. I wish it, you know, whatever, which was more simple to use. And we implement those changes, test them out. And then if they are viable, we put them on the next version of that bag, or we create a version of that bag that does that particular thing.

And then we have another side of the product development department that works on just the, the supplemental items, things that aren’t necessarily a carrier, but make the carrier experience more valuable. And then they turn over the, the, um, the process to the marketing department who gets it in front of as many people as they can.

Um, and then the, the customer service department who helps walk people through the purchase process or helps people answer questions or whatever. Um, we have a wholesale slash sales department that is in charge of just getting them inside of stores. Um, we do have a department that just runs amazon. It’s our smallest department, but it you know, we do consider it its own Stand alone department and then we have a warehouse where we do we do Stock in house and we do ship from here.

Um, and we actually a few years ago. Um, we we had our um, it was the The, um, the, the, um, dog, the, what are they called? Service dog market. This is a section of people have dogs, have service dogs, and they indicated to us that in order for their dog to be identified as a service dog, they have to have a patch that goes on the outside of the harness or.

You know, leash or collar, whatever the dog is wearing that indicates them as a service dog. And when they were in a K9 sports act, there wasn’t any place to do that. So we started adding a little six by two hook and loop patch on, on the back of the, the, um, the K9 sports act. And of course the next question was, well, we don’t want to buy your bag from here.

And then a service dog patch from the store can just buy them from the same place. So we started buying these ready made service dog patches. And then the next question was, wait, well, I want to put my Instagram handle. I don’t want it to say service dog. I want it to say at whatever, you know, Instagram handle you are.

And so I went out and bought an embroidery machine and I taught myself embroider and, uh, that exploded very, very quickly. And then I remember the day I was, um, you know, we, there is always a certain amount of breakage for bags. I hate to admit that on podcast, but the reality is, you know, when you’re building bags at that speed and, and in that quantity, you’re always going to have a scene that just doesn’t get sewn quite right.

And so we replace those and make sure that the second version is better. And we do test them out before we send them out, but there are always things that are overlooked. So we have a less than 0. 3 percent breakage rate, which at the rate that we’re selling bags, ends up being a pretty good size pile of bags.

And I remember going out to the Garbage can the dumpster behind the warehouse and just dumping these, these bags in and going, man, this is tough. I just spent a lot of time and effort on these bags. And then I went back in the warehouse and I unrolled a roll of fabric that I had bought at the local store.

And I went, man, this is just expensive. These, these patches. I mean, I’m, we’re. They’re just expensive. And I went, I wish there was a place that I could get a bunch of fabric that didn’t cost me so much. And all of a sudden the light bulb lit up and I went back out to the dumpster, grabbed all of those returns that we could no longer sell as either new products or refurbished products or whatever, the products that were basically dead.

And I started cutting them up and making fabric out of them. And now when the, When the bags that are returned that come in that we cannot sell as a clearance item, a refurbished item, or, you know, at a discount, we can’t put them back into stock because they’re unopened, if they are absolutely destroyed, we wash them, we take the fabric, we cut the fabric out of them, and that is what we make our patch.

So we recycle the old K 9 sports sacks to make the patches. And that is an entire department. So we have five, six embroidery machines that go all day long. We have three people that stand down there and just cut bags and make patches and then package them up and send them out to the warehouse. And so that’s its own department.

Um, but that is, I mean, basically there’s one final department that evaluates all the data from all those departments. People like this about the product. We marketed this well, did this poorly, our customer service is succeeding in these areas or not. And then they feed that. data back into the circle and we improve our process.

So we do our job and then the next time around we improve our process and it just keeps going around and running around.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Well, that, that is, uh, that is so interesting. Um, very briefly, I want to ask you this in terms of your future. Um, You know, it’s, you have a, uh, you know, you started out with a hero product, right?

I mean, that’s your main seller. And now that you have kind of a market recognition, you have a brand, you people, you have a community of people who are using your products. Do you think that, and I think you were already talking about product development, but do you think that the path to growth from here is really just adding more adjacent product categories in the pet space, and that can give you a, uh, you know, A bigger base of customers.

Joseph Watson of K9 Sport Sack: No, no, we have, um, we’ve tried to do that. Um, there is a point where adding another product, this is our philosophy. I’ll try to make this as quick as possible, but basically product A, you have a hundred, a hundred customers, right? That’s your, your market. If you introduce product B. Ideally, you’d like to introduce a second hundred customers, right?

It means you’ve created a product that does something totally different product A. But the reality is there are a certain number of people who walked away from product A because it didn’t do exactly what they wanted. There’s a certain amount of people who bought product A because they would, but would have bought product B if they had known it existed.

And so there’s always going to be a certain amount of overlap. So instead of adding, you know, You know, having 200 customers, if you had 200 customers, yay, you created another product that does, you know, something totally distinct. If you have the same 100 customers, but now there’s 50 per breach, you just reshuffled your market.

There’s got to be a Venn diagram right in the middle where, you know, there’s enough overlap. Usually you add, you know, you end up with not 200 customers, but somewhere in the middle, like 150 who buy product B because now it exists, who, you know, it kind of reshuffles it and adds. It splits the difference.

We have introduced products in the past that we thought were solidly enough in their own hemisphere that, that we could introduce them. And then we realized afterwards that it just causes confusion because they do too much of the same thing. They, you know, maybe a dog, a bag carries a dog that’s five pounds heavier.

And then we find out that both dogs, both bags actually are rated at the same and they do the same thing. And so we have actually, um, we’ve actually worked really, really hard. Not to just introduce a new model ad infinitum. Um, what we’ve tried to do is we’ve tried to make our current products do as much as possible.

And then once we reach that threshold where no more features or facets or bells and whistles can be added to it, that will make it go any further or do any more. That’s when we introduce a new product. And so we actually, um, we have right now. I have six, six levels. And the idea is each level of bag holds a heavier dog for a longer period of time.

If you’re going five minutes down the road and your dog weighs five pounds, you might as well use this lightweight one. If you’re going an hour down the road and your dog weighs 50, 80, 90 pounds, you’re going to want to use, you know, this one on this end and in between they all go up by 10 minutes and 10 pounds or, you know, up, you know, a certain amount.

So the longer the time. And the longer, the bigger the weight, the more you’re going to want, be happy with the next level up. Well, even with that disparity. In our models, we found some confusion. So we are actually furloughing a couple of our models and taking the things that customers find valuable from them and making them applicable to the other bags.

So the other bags are gaining value at no additional cost. We’re simplifying our catalog and we’re making sure that our existing products and products we’re keeping still do the same stuff without so much overlap or having to be having confusion. So no adding another product. We only do that if we can verify, um, if we can verify that.

We are going into a brand new market. We’re doing something brand new. Um, I’ll, I’ll give an example. Um, in order for a dog to be, or a dog carrier to be airline approved, the dog has to be fully enclosed in the carrier. So that usually means one of the duffel bag carriers that has the mesh on the sides of the dog can see out.

Um, but we, we are forward facing backpack dog people. That’s kind of our, our modus operandi. And, uh, And so we have created a K9 sport sack where it, for all practical purposes, it looks like a K9 sport sack, but the sides pop out into a duffel bag and the top rolls down and it becomes a duffel bag that you can put over your shoulder.

So it is airline approved. It’s totally different from anything that other, any other K9 sport sack does. It goes into a new market. Nothing that we have that is head out in the wind forward facing backpack dog carrier is airline approved and this new model is and that’s why we’re introducing it as this brand new model.

Um, there are, there were some, even though we’re introducing that model, the rest of our catalog is getting a simplification makeover where the products do more, are better, are simpler, but there’s still like the quality is still going way up and there’s less of them to confuse our customers.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: In every entrepreneur journey, there’s always mistakes made, lessons learned, failures.

Has there been any big failures or lessons learned for in your own business journey? What did you learn and what can other entrepreneurs learn? You can tell about, you know, like the top one or two.

Joseph Watson of K9 Sport Sack: You mean today? Um, this week, this month, anything that is

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: like, uh, that was a big kind of a setback for you.

Joseph Watson of K9 Sport Sack: Um, I, I’ll give you the example that pops into my mind. Now I have, I have one K9 sports sack that hangs on the wall of my office. I used to have an entire display, but I, we moved into a new warehouse and I took all But I have a lineup of all of our old bags like the original OG K9 sport sack all the way to the modern version and then I have a one of each model I put that in kind of its own museum but I kept one version of the K9 sport sack in in my office and it is to remind me of the mistakes.

It was called the flex. It’s actually hanging right here. You can’t really see it. Um, basically sizing is our biggest bugaboo, even though we have created an extra small, small, medium, large, and even some sizes that are extra large and extra, extra large. And we have little booster blocks that go in the bottom that split those sizes and, you know, further tune the sizing.

Um, we still have customers that call in and say, it’s bad, my, my dog is too wide, but too short or too long and too narrow. It just doesn’t fit right. My dog is uncomfortable, you know, and so we were sitting there one day, my wife and I kind of ruminating about the ideas of how, what, what ways could we make a one size fits all.

And we came up with the idea when you have a suitcase, you know, like the big, the big, you know, hairy suitcase, carrying suitcases. We have one zipper that opens it up, right? Then you have a second zipper that pops it up three inches or whatever. So we created a K9 sport sack that has two zippers at the bottom, each one that pops the, the fabric down two inches.

So if your dog is short, you just zip up those zippers and it puts it up. And then if you, if you unzip it, it makes it longer, more narrow. So the first version of that was essentially An old looking air, air one sort of a bag, you know, the air one, you can Google it and it’s images come up. It’s a very simple early prehistoric version of the K 9 sports set.

And it was just a, an identical version, but it had the two zippers at the bottom. And for some reason we started adding, we took every iota, every modicum of customer feedback and we started shoveling it into this one product. The lap, an internal frame, um, a, a, you know, a storage pack storage, you know, we, we, we basically took everything that customers wanted and we rolled it into this one product.

And when it showed up on the surface, on paper, it was a home run, but we immediately had customers calling us and saying, you know what you say to put the dog’s arms in first, but the zipper, instead of it being this long, it’s this long, because now you’ve got two zippers at the bottom and you can’t, you can’t cross over.

If we had gone simply at first, we would have. Had a far less expensive lesson to know that start simple and then add things into it or, or, you know, create a product that does a couple things because this thing, I mean, it is as complex a bag as you’ve ever seen. And we were so excited about it because they did everything our customers wanted.

And it was the only product we’ve ever had to recall. So I, I keep that bag on my wall to remind me to a do your homework. Don’t make what you want. First of all, the color, the color is green because I went to a physics professor at UNLV and said, what’s the coolest color that’s not white. Cause who wants to white bag, they’ll get dirty really easily.

And he went through the color spectrum. Well, Roy G Bibb and greens right in the middle. So he’s the coolest color spectrum. So pragmatically I made them green. Guess what? Everybody hates the color green. So we got a bunch of feedback. Are you ever going to make these in different colors? The zipper was too short.

There was too many moving parts that created too much failure. And it was an abject loss because we did what we wanted to do. And we shot for Mars instead of, you know, a rocket to Mars. If you’re off one inch, you end up on Pluto. You know, we, we, we reset and now we run K9 sports act like a drive to work where if you miss the exit, you can still turn around and go back and it doesn’t cost you too much.

Um, no, it, it really, that was the biggest lesson was don’t get too ahead of yourself. Don’t try to do too much at two at one time. And when your customers ask for something, do what they want, not what you want. And that has, probably been the most detrimental lesson that has catapulted us toward our greatest, you know, um, education and, and our, and our greatest, um, you know, foundation for the future.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Yeah, it’s, it’s a great lesson in, in product development and, you know, just, just the product in general, anybody who works, works in product, it’s like, you know, you have to, I guess, you know, you have to, you have to always get the customer feedback and test with the customer to see what they like and, and, uh, And I guess, uh, incremental improvement, not, it’s like, uh,

Joseph Watson of K9 Sport Sack: Absolutely.

Take it, take it one step at a time. For sure.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Uh, now I’m going to move on to our rapid fire segment. In this segment, I’m going to ask you a few quick questions and you have to answer them maybe in a word or a sentence or so. Uh, so the first one is one book recommendation for entrepreneurs and why?

Joseph Watson of K9 Sport Sack: Oh man, I would recommend the, uh, the, um, the lean startup.

Um, the lean startup was, was one of the books that I read when I was looking for like a business 101 sort of a book. Um, I basically, that was where I got the analogy of flying to Mars or driving to work. Um, the lean startup, um, it poses the idea of taking a working prototype, a working product or a solution.

That isn’t necessarily perfect, but you don’t necessarily know where to go with it either. And go ahead and release it and let your customers tell you what, what, what’s wrong with it so that you can create the next version better. And you got the funding to do it. You don’t want to present an imperfect or, or, or an incomplete product to your customers, but.

If you’re there and it works and you’re, you know, and, and, and you can take it one step at a time, go ahead and release your product. Take the chance, take the risk and do it as, as one, you know, one baby step at a time as you can. Um, the lean startup was probably the book that, that was most instrumental in me.

I’m a, I’m a, I swing for the fences. I’m a dreamer. I see the finished product of something and I have to go for it. And that was the book that reset me to, you know what, take it one step at a time, you’ll get there. Go ahead and envision your destination because that’s the first decision you make when going on a trip is like where we’re going, that’s the destination.

But remember to plan one length of, of travel at a time and carefully plan it out and take one step at a time. And you know, and you’ll, you’ll get there, but, but do it carefully, do it methodically and all of that.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: An innovative product or idea in the current e commerce, retail or tech landscape that you feel excited about?

Joseph Watson of K9 Sport Sack: Ooh, um, innovative product idea in the current e commerce, retail or tech landscape. Um, you know, I’m not, I’m not entirely sure. Um, we, we keep on stumbling on to, um, on to different inventory systems that are better than the last one. We keep stumbling on to, um, you know, different, different products. Um, marketing platforms.

Um, I don’t really, I can’t really think of one, um, that pops into my, my head right now. Um,

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Anything that, that like you, when you first came across it, it was like, wow, this, this seems interesting.

Joseph Watson of K9 Sport Sack: You know, um, I would say this now, this pops into my head. Now I, I may get off of this video and realize that this is, there’s something more powerful than this.

What pops into my head is, um, I, I write on these little notebooks right here. See, it’s hard to carry a computer around with you everywhere you go. Um, And I have ideas that occur to me in the middle of the night or in the middle of driving. And so I carry these little notebooks and I write my ideas down.

Um, but when I’m done with them, I have two choices. Put them in a, like a Google doc or Microsoft word document or something like that. Or I can organize them into something like a Trello board, um, Trello, or there’s one called task manager or something like that. Um, the ability to take my to do list and organize it in a way that I can check it off and I can take each task and.

look at it microcosmically. Like, here’s what the company needs. Here’s what the company needs from each department. Here’s what each department needs from each job. Here’s what each job needs from each project. Here’s what each project needs from each task. Those organize those into the macro to microcosmic structure.

Um, and, and that, that for a guy who’s a skeptic, scattered as me, those organizational systems are probably the biggest advancement in technology that I have found because they take a guy who likes to write on a piece of paper and puts everything in an organizational, digestible format.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Makes a lot of sense.

Uh, another startup or business in e commerce, retail or tech that you think is currently doing great things.

Joseph Watson of K9 Sport Sack: Oh man. Um, I tell you what, um, we It’s, I don’t know how much of a startup anymore, but we did our first show. Um, it was called super zoo. Somebody came to us and said, are you doing super zoo this year?

We’re like, we don’t even know what that is and come to find out. It was in Las Vegas where we lived at the time. And, um, and it was, um, it’s the top five of the largest most, um, attended pet shows, like business to business pet shows on the planet. And we got there and set up our, our, um, our booth. And it was of course really, really rudimentary.

And just down the way from us, there was a company called Scouts Honor. Um, S K O U T S, honor, H O N O R, um, they made, um, like a, you know, like a Febreze type of thing. Although Febreze covers out the smell. This is, this was actually like eliminates the smell. We use it when we, when we wash returned bags that we’re going to, we’re going to turn to patches.

It really does eliminate the smell, but their marketing is phenomenal. Um, they like to collaborate with other companies, which is something we’ve liked to do. We’d like to find, um, Other up and coming companies that we can mentor that will be a benefit to us for sure. We don’t want to waste a bunch of time on a company that’s just going to flop, you know, in six months.

Um, but if we can identify a company that we can help grow and they can help us grow together, Scouts Honor is the one that taught us how to do that. I love what they do. They, they add their advertising. You walk into SuperZoo and you walk on these big ads that say, you know, Um, have you tried scouts on or lately they’ve got all these little sayings and things they’ve got a marketing department a second to none.

They have expanded from just Stuff that you spray on pet smells or whatever, um, to laundry detergent to really, and they just keep on adding to their product lineup. And they, I mean, they are really, um, they’re really innovative and they’re really inclusive when it comes to finding the companies that Where, where they were two or three years ago and helping bring them up to that level.

Um, Scout’s Honor is, um, is probably the business that I think is currently doing great things that I really admire.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Awesome. Uh, a peer entrepreneur or business person whom you look up to or someone who inspires you?

Joseph Watson of K9 Sport Sack: Oh, um, you know, it might, it might sound, um, you know, um, it might sound like a platitude But my dad, um, I know everybody uses their parents, but my dad was a chiropractor for 25 years.

And then one day he decided he didn’t like touching people. And he was, he was, uh, I’m number eight of nine. So I have eight siblings, one little sister and seven older siblings. Um, several of whom actually work for K9 sports. I can do a killer job, but, um, my dad was driving from the mountains of North Carolina, where we lived at the end of a goat path.

Um, he was driving them out predominantly to Brigham young university or Rick’s college, which is now BYU, Idaho and, you know, other, other, you know, Western based universities. And every time he would drive on the interstates across the United States, he would think, and I wish I just knew what was up at this next exit.

And so he drove off at a Walmart and bought a little micro cassette recorder. And started recording what was off of every exit on every interstate in America. And every time he took one of my siblings out to college, he would drive out one way and come back a different way. And it really, um, it took him years.

I mean, you just imagine the, the, the Herculean task that was ahead of him. It was, I mean, I look back on it and it took him probably six or seven years to compile his first book at which juncture, the information had already changed half the business that were out of businesses. And, you know, there were a whole, you know, 60 percent more businesses that have copped up since.

He stuck with it. Um, it was his dream. He, and he made it work. He made a living off of it. Now he didn’t, um, grow it to the size of K 9 Sports Act. He did not, he didn’t want to grow. So he didn’t hire a bunch of people. I wanted to grow K 9 Sports Act to, to see where it could go. And I couldn’t do that by myself.

So I enlisted some help, but the fact that my dad took on such a massive task and plotted through it methodically and was so careful and was so And just his stick to it iveness. I think about that when I want to quit and give up, because I mean, it happens, I get burned out and I’m like, I don’t do this anymore.

You know, you talk about the knockoffs. I mean, I go home and I’m like, well, why would somebody do that? Well, you know, I remember my dad, his advice, his, you know, careful, calm demeanor of how he ran his company, even though he didn’t manage anybody. Um, and I would say that kind of recenters me that I can do this.

If he can do that, I can, I can do this. And he really, he really has inspired me to, uh, to be an entrepreneur, to work for myself, but to be the good entrepreneur that is easy to work with, honest, um, even if it costs us, you know, to, to be honest, um, and to be part of something that makes the world a better place.

Um, that’s what my dad taught me.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: That’s awesome. Final question. What is the best business advice that you have ever received or you would give to other entrepreneurs?

Joseph Watson of K9 Sport Sack: Oh my goodness. Um, now I, I have had, um, certain types of business advice. I actually, um, I have a friend who, who told me don’t be fooled by the 40 hour work week.

And what he meant was work as many hours as you can and then, you know, die early, but that’s not it. Um, I would say the best business advice would probably, I would go back to that, that book. Um, I would go back to the lean startup, um, and, and be reminded that the best business advice is if there’s a risk, take it.

But, but be careful, take it, take careful risks, do your homework, take it one step at a time, be methodical, don’t shoot for the, don’t, don’t swing for the fences. If there’s a chance that, you know, you could actually end up striking out, go for something that is attainable, um, and, and, and learn as you go.

And as you learn, implement those lessons. into the next version of what you’re going to do. Um, that is probably the best business advice I have gotten because I am a fence swinger and, and being able to kind of recenter and go, okay, let’s, let’s take this one step at a time. Let’s build a product that goes just far enough that we, we can prove that there’s viability to it.

Let’s, you know, do a marketing campaign that takes, you know, that we can grow into stuff like that. Um, the best business advice is don’t be scared by risks. But don’t take unnecessary risks either. Um, find a balance in between and, and you’ll, you’ll generally do okay.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: That is such a great advice. You know, it’s, uh, and, and with lean startup, and I think that it works for all kinds of businesses or any, anyone who’s interested in entrepreneurship.

It’s almost like you have to find the balance between, I always say, you know, or all I was think is like, you have to find the easiest way to make money. with your business idea or quickest way to make money first, but at the same time, you can’t, you can’t, um, forget about the long term quality of the product.

At the end of the day, you know, longevity will come from like the quality of the product. But I think in the beginning you have to, you know, some people, you know, go for years and years working on a project, but never monetize, never sell. I think if people have to be very quick in terms of trying to monetize their idea first.

Joseph Watson of K9 Sport Sack: You know, I’ve learned this is not somebody else’s advice, but I’ve learned if you, if you work hard. You will never want, if you are honest, then you’ll always be in the right. And if you’re kind, then you’ll always have friends. That’s it. That’s the best. That’s the best thing I can come up with. If you, if you are, if you don’t have the right on your side, then you are wrong, which means that you’re not being honest.

If you’re unkind, you don’t have any friends, you’re all by yourself. And if you don’t work hard, then you don’t get anything done. Work. Those are the three things that I, if I could give any advice to anybody is work hard. Be honest and be kind, and you won’t have to worry about really anything else.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Very true.

Very true. Well, Joseph, uh, I know we went a little bit too, too late into the interview. I really appreciate that you shared your time so, uh, so kindly, uh, and, uh, shared your story, shared your successes and, and, uh, lessons learned. So thank you so much again for the opportunity. If anybody wants to purchase your product, try it out.

What’s the best way they can do that?

Joseph Watson of K9 Sport Sack: Uh, probably k9sportsac. com or, um, you can look at your local store and see if they have it. Um, if you want to try it out while on your dog before you buy it.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Awesome. Well, Joseph, thank you so much again. Uh, and yeah, I wish you all the very best in your entrepreneurial journey.

Joseph Watson of K9 Sport Sack: Okay. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me.