We love to design toys that bring connection and fun to people and their pets but it’s really how they’re made and the materials that mattered most for safety and so our materials are free of bpa phthalates and the latex that people don’t want in their products and we make sure that they last westpaw is located in bozeman montana and we make all sorts of toys for dogs toys that are squeaky and plush really durable chew toys and we make treats leashes and collars and beds since our beginning sustainability has been really important and we’ve used recycled materials and organic catnip and all the things that really are important to our values of sustaining this planet and one of the things we did is we created a totally recyclable dog toys back in 2004 and we have a join the loop program which allows all of our consumers to participate and send back their dog toys for recycling here at westpaw and it’s an infinite recycling loop [Music] 2019 we wrapped up a year of great growth we were really excited about 2020 and we had put a lot of plans in place we had a new product launch we were really invested in and then by the time march hit we knew things were not going to go to according to plan at all april suddenly it was like 40 percent of our sales just stopped but we knew we had to protect these jobs that was the most important thing for us and we had to keep people safe and we we said what else can we do our local hospitals did not have enough ppe so we started designing and sourcing materials that we could turn around really quickly to get our local hospital system more pve and keep our people employed and working hard to make a mask in the midst of a pandemic people came to work very very proud of what they were doing [Music] and then in may we started getting more bigger orders we noticed wow not only are the independent pet stores surviving but they’re thriving because people are coming in and saying i want to give dog food but also some make my dog happy and me happy and the choice and the treats that perfectly into that and then we started seeing all channels picking up and so we love the fact that all of our customers are thriving right now going into this pandemic and covet it’s required us to think about what’s important to us to re-imagine priorities there’s a real sense of connection and love that people get from dogs and we know that scientifically that can lower stress and we also know that as people are spending more time at home they’ve got more time to train and be with pets and so we’ve seen adoptions just skyrocket they have now somebody in their home that they can love and give attention to and and they start thinking okay what foods do i need and what would help me with training and so we make puzzle toys that help with training what would be better for exercise let’s get some frisbees out there to really find this as a place of joy and connection and for us to be at the intersection of that is just a real privilege so i think that’s one of the blessings of this time that is so very hard for all of us is to recognize that pets can help us lower that stress.
