Dog friends... there are many new products and changes to the TinyHorse line-up. It will take a few blog posts to introduce it all in a digestible manner. Today, let’s talk about the changes to products you’re familiar with: the Lead-All leashes (Regular & Minis!).
For those who don't have time for all the details, scroll and read the items in bold.
In May of this year, we celebrated two years as a company. We launched with one simple product: the 21-inch Lead-All leash. They were sold individually and customers received a complimentary central ring if they purchased six. Here’s the first video we ever launched.
Within 3 days, with no advertising money, this video gained over 10,000 views. We were flabbergasted! We didn’t have a website and offered our e-mail address at the end of the video as a way to contact us for orders 😂😂😂.
I actually love many things about this video (it was filmed by Toronto's Faye Blais, who has done all our "major" videos including the latest). It's a detailed description of the initial product and how I used it, and I'm pleased to see that most of the original elements are still in play. (However, I must note that we now discourage walkers from leaving leashes on the dogs in the car with one end hanging down as we did in our initial video. You can clip both ends to the dogs or just use a pick-up/drop off leash and clip them into the system as you unload them. We found it’s possible for the clips of loose leashes to snap onto paws in the car. Boo! This mishap is simple to avoid, so please avoid it!)
Any way... this original product, the 21-inch leash, has been discontinued! Why?! The user experience of the shorter length just wasn’t standing up to those of the 29-inch and adjustable leashes. I happily walked my packs on the shorter leashes for over a year, but when I began to introduce the 29-inch leash and the adjustable, there was no turning back. I liked the extra length and the ability to stagger the pack. I began to steer dog walkers away from purchasing solely 21-inch leashes. And for this latest reboot, I decided to pull the plug on them all together. (That said... if you are convinced the 21-inch leashes are the best and want them as a custom item, send us an e-mail.) So that's significant change numero uno.
Secondly, I began experimenting with the length of the adjustable leash. Originally, it adjusted from 21 inches to 29 inches. It covered the basis of both our fixed-length leashes. Pretty snazzy, I think. But with the 21-inch out the window, I felt free to stretch further into space. With feedback from walkers and my own experience, I settled on a new adjustable length that extends from 25 inches to 35 inches. It's short enough to maintain control, but extends to make long leashed walks comfortable. I recommend starting your walks with the leashes adjusted to the shortest length, then add more length as necessary. The length of the fixed leash (29 inches) sits smack dab in the middle of the adjustable leash's range.
Thirdly, the mini leashes now come in the adjustable format too. Yay!
The fourth item is the two major quality upgrades to the leashes. Both of these improvements are based on feedback from dog walkers whose service is quite intensive and involves a fair amount of bushwhacking. Webbing was ripping easily, and the plastic slides of the adjustable leashes were breaking. At first, we were replacing these leashes with our "heavy duty" option. Then, as our customer base began to expand, it just made more sense for us to deal with the possibility of these breakages before they occurred. We upgraded the thickness of the webbing to three grades higher than our original product, and we replaced the plastic slides with metal ones. I think these enhancements look and feel superb, and I'm excited to see how they perform -- we know they'll be put through all kinds of tests!
With the change of webbing, we lost one colour (that lovely bright Kelly green, I'm sorry to say) and added four more: brown, beige, gold and bay blue. The new colours inspired us to create more colour combos for those of you who want a fast "click & check-out" shopping experience.
The fourth change is relatively subtle, but its the one with the biggest impact on our workshop. We changed our thread type (now 16 different nylon threads to match the leash colours) and the style of stitching (now one line of zig-zags). This was possible because we bought a new industrial sewing machine! We've saved every penny TinyHorse has made and poured it back into the company, and this machine is our most significant purchase yet. Thank you! As long as you keep supporting our company through your purchases, we'll keep upgrading our workshop to your benefit! There's more news about the workshop, but we'll save that for another post.
The final item is the industry discount. We are tired of dealing with discount codes! Customers were missing out on them and they were cumbersome to describe. So, we've standardized the industry discount to 20% and it is automatically added to your shopping cart once you've reached six leashes. Here's the extra exciting part... before, you'd get the discount only on multiples of six leashes, so if you wanted to buy eight, for example, you'd have to pay for two at the regular price. Now, the industry discount will apply to any number of leashes after you hit that quota of six! That's big time savings.
After months of working in "secret," I'm thrilled to share these changes with you. I hope you enjoy the Lead-All leashes more than ever. Please send us your feedback any time... it plays a massive role in the development of existing and future products.
Happy walking,
Taylor Leedahl