Two childhood friends from Merseyside are on the verge of national success as they have now signed a deal to roll out their dog care products nationwide.
Lyndsey Fearns and Becky Dutton-Geraghty, childhood friends from Runcorn, developed a soothing dog paw balm throughout lockdown which quickly became a success when they took the product to market on Instagram in 2021. They then took the balm to Etsy where it became a UK bestseller in only 10 days, and have since achieved similar success when opening a website and broadening their range of products.
Lyndsey and Becky's success did not go unnoticed, and soon they were trialling their all natural, all dog-safe products in seven stores of one of the UK's biggest pet retailers, Jollyes. They have now signed a deal with Jollyes to stock their products in store nationwide.
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Becky and Lyndsey are both self-professed dog lovers. Their own four-pawed pets are Odie, a Jack Russell, Meika, a Chihuahua, who both belong to Lyndsey, and Bungle, Becky' "little" Pomeranian.
The duo told the ECHO of the success of their "Paws Right There" range, which started on Becky's kitchen table as a "hobby" during lockdown, making a safe balm for her Pomeranian, Bungle, who was suffering with dry paws. Becky said: "It started off well back in lockdown.
"I do a few home remedies myself. I've got a little Pomeranian, Bungle, and one day he had dry paws. I decided to do a bit of research online and just thought, do you know what, I'll have a go at making some [of the remedies] myself, and it's spun off from there really."
Very quickly Becky had enlisted the help of Lyndsey, her childhood best friend and manager of the Runcorn Jollyes, and soon the pair were working on development. Becky added: "Without lockdown the conception wouldn't have even happened. I worked very long hours in a very demanding job in retail recruitment so I would never have had the spare time to be able to follow the passion.
"I work on this full time now. I didn't go back to [my old job] after lockdown after this project grew organically and I decided to run with it.
"There's been a lot of research and development, and it was batch 103 that we decided to take it to market. I think every time we found a new essential oil that would work on a dog, the range naturally expanded.
"We went through a lot of batch making and recipes until we found the perfect formulation for us.
"We originally didn't have a website and we launched it on our Instagram. At the time I also did pet portraits and the following from that took to the balms really well.
"The launch on Instagram went really well and then we launched onto Etsy, and within ten days our anxiety calm balm was a bestseller for the whole of the UK in its niche category. On the back of that success we then rolled out the website a month later which has had a lot of success as well."
It is the duo's first experience with a business enterprise. When asked if they were nervous about having their products tried and tested by people up and down the country, Becky said: "I wouldn't say we're nervous.
"We're more excited because it's something we've been building towards since the start. So we've sorted prepared ourselves mentally but we know there'll be a lot of hard work over the next few months."
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