the artful canine venice 752 commerce dr ste 11

The artful canine venice 752 commerce dr ste 11 how to#

Jeremy Ellison, Wood-Ellison’s son, expects the growth to continue. The company’s new space at 752 Commerce Dr., Suite 11, in Venice, has plenty of room for expansion, and The Artful Canine could feasibly quadruple its output there.

Growth slowed to 12 to 15 percent last year after the move to the new Venice workshop. That number grew 400 percent in 2010 and then by about 100 percent a year in the years that followed. The Artful Canine ended its first year with a minute $5,000 in sales. The company manufactured about 20,000 products on a 1960s Singer tacking machine until Wood-Ellison finally upgraded this July. Then those pieces are grouped with fasteners and sent to a tacking machine that secures the hardware. Her employees cut and pair the fabric with the nylon before the two are attached with an industrial sewing machine. There are five steps between when Wood-Ellison receives the materials and when a customer finally gets one of her products in the mail. The plaid fabrics, for example, come from the United Kingdom. The collars are manufactured in Venice, but some of their pieces are produced overseas. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything grow that fast.” “I love watching this evolve and I love being a part of it,” Ginkinger said. The company has changed dramatically since those first few home-stitched collars that Ginkinger made for The Artful Canine. Now Wood-Ellison and her four employees have the industrial building well stocked with racks and boxes of the nylon base, narrow decorative fabrics and small metal pieces used to make the collars. As she added more people, machines and designs, the business needed another new home and it moved into an industrial space in Venice. The duo outgrew that space quickly and moved into a small Port Charlotte retail space with a large back room they used as a workshop.

Wood-Ellison refinished and air conditioned her garage in 2010 so they could work there. The operation was small enough that Ginkinger could pick up a batch of collar materials, sew them at home and return the finished product. She'd never sewn professionally but had the basic skills she needed. Ginkinger had started sewing years before as a hobbyist, and she made things like children's Halloween costumes and curtains in her spare time.

Her first hire was Cynthia Ginkinger, a North Port resident who needed a job that worked around her son’s schedule. “I call them collar crafters because there is a certain art to handling the material.” “It’s not complicated, but there is an art to it,” Wood-Ellison said.

The artful canine venice 752 commerce dr ste 11 how to#

She also advertised for people who knew how to sew, which is a difficult skill to find today, she said. So she began splashing them with patterns, colors and holiday themes, and the company grew steadily. Martingale collars that tighten if a dog pulls during a walk are useful for dogs that can slip their heads out of traditional collars, but six years ago it was tough to find a stylish one, she said. Wood-Ellison began by designing fashionable and highly functional collars. Technology has given entrepreneurs like Wood-Ellison a way to take their products directly to consumers in national and even global markets.

'I think it's more common than some people would think,' Cooper said.