How I Built a Thriving Brand by Keeping Dogs Busy and Owners Happy
About Woofin 🐾
Founded in 2020 by two dog lovers, Woofin is a Toronto based brand that came to life amidst the pandemic. We recognized a unique opportunity to address the growing concern of keeping our beloved dogs mentally stimulated while we all worked from home during the lockdown, so we set out to fill that void by offering mentally stimulating nosework dog toys that were unique to the market.
The Team
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Isabel
Founder, Marketing, Designer
Max
Co-Founder, Finance
Tiggy
Chief Cuteness Officer, Model, Quality Assurance
The Challenge
Dog owners who work from home are faced with the challenge of having to keep their dog busy and engaged throughout the day. Unfortunately, most dog toys out there just don't cut it when it comes to providing the mental stimulation dogs need to stay happy. Dogs get bored of their plastic treat puzzles and dog owners resort to creating their own “DIY dog puzzles” out of old cardboard boxes or used towels.
That’s when I thought to myself “there has to be a better solution out there to keep our dogs mentally engaged and happy!”
The Solution
We are an e-commerce store specializing in unique and carefully curated Korean nosework dog toys, offering shipping services across North America, with the added convenience of free local drop-offs available in the Downtown Toronto area.
The Outcome
Through a multi faceted marketing strategy, we were able to grow our sales and grow a community of like minded dog lovers.
How we marketed ourselves to acheive results🚀
Offline Strategy
Local Events
Partnering with brands like the 1Hotel and local influencers in the Toronto dog community, we aimed to attend 4 events over 3 months during the summer, each drawing an average attendance of 500+ attendees. During these events, we would setup a table showcasing all our products and incentivizing visitors with tasty treats for their dogs to test out.
Our goal for these events was to increase brand awareness and gather feedback by interacting with our attendees, do product demos and ask questions about our products.
We were able to gather valuable insight about how our customers perceive our products. One notable takeaway was that people were worried about the durability of our products therefore shyd away from buying one. This prompted us to change the way we marketed ourselves online by using words like "durable" and "high quality" to change perception.
Overall, we saw a 400% increase in sales after attending 4 events over 3 months.
Print Marketing - Flyers
We distributed flyers once per month at five dog parks in the area, resulting in a 10% increase in store sessions every month.
Print Marketing - Thank You Cards
We sent personalized thank-you cards with a discount code to encourage repeat business, contributing to 5% of total sales.
Online Strategy
Instagram - Content Strategy
We created our own content (photos, videos, graphics) to showcase on our IG business account and took the time to consistently engage with users, actively responding to comments, reposting user photos, and conducting giveaways to foster follower growth.
Instagram - Influencer Marketing
We had partnered with 10 dog profiles with 2k followers or more helping us create content and drive traffic to our website, generating 20% of total sales trackable through unique discount codes.
Instagram - Partnerships
Strengthening our local presence, we created partnerships with other online dog brands like dog treat companies that paired well with our products to offer cross selling opportunities, fostering mutual growth and enhancing brand awareness in the community.
Scroll me!
Keep Reading for our Full Design Process
But first...what are Nosework Dog Toys?! 🤔
Think of nosework dog toys like a rubik's cube puzzle for dogs, only cuter! These toys come with folds and pockets to hide treats in, allowing your dog to use their nose to find the hidden treats while providing mental stimulation as well as enrichment. Hover over the images to learn about their various benefits.
gives your dog a job to do
keeps your dog mentally engaged
15min of nosework is like a 1hr walk
keeps your dog busy for hours
sniffing reduces anxiety
boosts your dog's confidence
How We Got Started 👩🏼💻
Research
To kick off our journey, we immersed ourselves in the community by venturing to our beloved dog parks in downtown Toronto. Engaging with fellow dog owners, we had meaningful conversations about the challenges they faced while raising puppies or simply owning dogs amidst the lockdown. What we found were dozens of dog owners who expressed similar sentiments of frustration.
Questions we asked:
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How do you keep your dog busy while you’re working all day?
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How do you find the time during the day to play with your dog / take them on walks?
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What kind of toys does your dog like to play with?
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What kind of mental enrichment activities do you do with your dog?
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Have you heard of nosework dog toys?
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How does your dog react when they can’t get their daily park outings or walks?
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How do you go about buying your dog toys?
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Walk me through how you shop around for inspiration on dog products?
To sum up our findings:
Product
Dogs are bored, owners are busy - how can we get dogs to play by themselves?
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Education
Some dogs owners have never heard of nosework dog toys, there’s a big education gap.
👩🏻🎓
Behaviour
Dog owners prefer to support small, local businesses rather than shop on Amazon.
🛍️
Marketing
Dog owners browse instagram for inspiration on where to get local dog products.
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All dog owners seem to have similar struggles - keeping their dogs busy and engaged through the day. There also seems to be a big education gap in the market on nosework dog toys.
Personas
Based on my user research, I created two personas from which I created my website:
Gathering Inspiraiton
Now that we had spoken to a group of people and had an idea of their needs and goals, we began researching the market for sites that sold interactive dogs toys like The Tail Story and Spotted by Humphrey, as well as a list of direct competitors. Our goal here was to scope out the interactive dog toy market in Canada, get inspired and find opportunities to innovate on our part.
Zippy Paws proved to be a major influence for our designs due to their bright colour palette, clean and modern designs and imagery.
Product Research
Our strategy for the first three months was to use the dropshipping model in order to test our concept due to it's lower risk, for this we used Ali Express. Dropshipping allowed us to see:
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If the market was responsive to nosework dogs toys
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Which kind of toys sold best
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What our customers valued
Following the initial three months, we decided to build our own brand and source our own products from high quality retailers in South Korea.
Learnings from Dropshipping:
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No quality control
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Long shipping times lead to frustrated customers
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No branding or custom packaging with products
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No personalization
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Returns were nearly impossible
Bringing our Vision to Life 🌅
Once our research was complete, it was time to bring our vision to life and being mocking up some examples of what our website could look like.
Mockup
Once I had an idea of the layout I wanted, I used Shopify to start creating a first iteration of my website. I then used this version to perform user testing over several weeks.
Image slide displaying select toys to pique curiosity
Separating our products by level of difficulty
Incorporating an educational aspect to teach potential customers the benefits of nosework
User Testing
I conducted usability testing after creating the initial draft of my website. I had 3 participants selected from a group of friends and family. The participants each had to perform several key tasks on the platform such as purchase any toy and purchase one of our level 3 toys.
Some of the feedback we received:
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Brand name is difficult to remember
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Spotlight section was confusing
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Breakdown of the 'levels' on the homepage is confusing
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Some users don't know how to use the toys, videos would be helpful
Name is not memorable and difficult to say
Displaying difficulty levels is confusing to users
Displaying "best sellers" may be more impactful
Move this higher up on the homepage and make it less texty
Redesigned the brand name and logo
Included some CTA buttons in this banner
Simplified description of nosework toys and benefits, made it catchier
Replaced spotlight with best sellers
Clearly defined and broke down what each level signifies with a clear CTA
Added cute photos of previous customers to build trust
The Final Design 🖼
After the testing stage, I went back to the drawing board to refine my designs. I made specific changes to several screens based on the user feedback from the usability study.
At this point I was able to focus on the delightful part: choosing colors and images, and prototyping my final interactions while focusing on accessibility considerations.
