This is Part II of How We Started Ferguson's Treatos. If you're looking for Part I, you can read it here
So I was 5 months into maternity leave, now a little sleep deprived as my previously great sleeping newborn finally 'woke up’ and no longer did those 4 hour naps during the day.
Looking back maybe it was this sleep deprived induced state of delusion that made us decide we were going to start a business.
Because if we really knew the realities of small business in Australia and what it was going to take to get it off the ground, I don’t think we would’ve started.
Anyways, we decided on two important things when we started:
- Our new business venture was going to be 100% online to minimise start up costs
- We were going to start a product based business as all our service based businesses had failed terribly in the past.
A few weeks of research later, we had narrowed it down to two products:
Scented Candles or Air Dried Dog Treats.
Talk about chalk and cheese!
Both had really good demands online and had enough room in the market for us to improve on product and differentiate ourselves.
The one thing that led us to choosing Air Dried Dog Treats over Scented Candles was actually just Fergus.
We thought it would be so much more fun to start a business with our dog (and the love of our life) and we weren’t wrong!
The next step was to find a pet food manufacturer that could work with us to produce the treats we had in mind.
This was definitely Fergus’ favourite part as he got to test out all the samples!
Next part we’ll dive into how we found and partnered with our manufacturer…