At just 17 years of age, dreaming of starting his own business to follow in the footsteps of his heroes Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, Harry Scott the Founder of Thirsty Dog, quit school in 2018 and has never looked back. The Good Pet Home caught up with this delightful young man to hear all about this hot new product.
Congratulations on launching Thirsty Dog. It's a great concept. How did you come up with the idea?
A friend of my mums came around one day and had this rudimentary drink bottle for dogs, which looked cheap and nasty. It didn't function very well either nor was it stylish. It appeared that there wasn't any major brand or real innovation happening in this space and was a real problem that a lot of dog owners can have, or might know they have. "How do you give your dog fresh water, on a hot summer day when you need it most?".
So it was a great niche to offer people the option of a higher-end bottle that would be much more functional and stylish.
How old are you? Being a young entrepreneur, did people take you seriously at the beginning when you were trying to develop the product?
When I started working on the idea, I was just 17. I would say my close friends and parents were skeptical about my decision to leave school, but they supported me. I didn't have many responsibilities, I was living at home, and they knew from a young age, I knew what I wanted to do.
What are the bottles made from?
There are two main components to the bottle. There's the Cup and then the bottle. The bottle is made from a simple BPA Free Polycarbonate. And the Cup is made from a durable BPA Free, Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene. Also, the silicone seals are BPA Free food grade Silicon.
As a small business, we all want to be sustainable, what are some of the key sustainable actions Thirsty Dog has implemented that may be of interest to our audience?
At the moment we're putting a massive effort into refining packaging that protects our shipments coming from China. We've eliminated the need for extra shipment boxes which used to protect our cartons from damage while being on the pallets. But we found this to be unnecessary and now we ship them as cartons ready to be dispersed to our retailers. Secondly, we've managed to make our white boxes entirely out of cardboard and craft paper. And have opted for paper stickers opposed to plastic.
There are a few other things we're working on, like making the bottle entirely out of recycled plastic resin and using more shipping company's which are carbon neutral.
I've noticed a few brands have tried to copy your design, that must be a compliment, but also frustrating?
Yeah, it's very frustrating, especially being just a small start-up. There's a lot of bottles out there now, but I guess any good idea is eventually going to be copied and sold for less at some expense to the manufacturing process or materials used. It's now just about innovating faster than they can copy, having a better product, distribution, and branding. We're working on a few exciting improvements to the bottles, and are currently developing some entirely new products that we want to get out into the world sometime this year.
Thirsty Dog drink bottles (the bottle every dog owner should own) are available to shop now at The Good Pet Home.
