How We Source Our Seriously Good Stuff For Dogs

by Nicky Ruggier August 9, 2021

We're going to take you behind the scenes and tell you a bit more about how we source our wonderful suppliers, our manufacturers and even how our pawducts are transported! So you can get to know us a little bit better. Ears up, for here's how we source our seriously good stuff for dogs...

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Our relationship with suppliers

Over the years we have dedicated time to developing and nurturing long-term relationships with our lovely suppliers. We are conscious of suppawting fellow smaller businesses and being as sustainable as we possibly can. This value of ours is reflected in the suppliers we handpick to join us on our pawsitive journey - stay tuned on this, we'll be sharing more on our suppliers in a later blog post!

Our first and longest-standing supplier has become a friend of PupRepublic and of the hoomans & fur-babies in it! We share family news, and Eric told us about his wedding, the birth of his daughter and we see photos of his holidays and of course his dog which is so wonderful to see.

When it comes to our pawducts, we now have long message strings that show a whole history of concept, design, tweaking, and even quality control via photograph! If a customer has a comment or complaint, then that will get fed back to Eric, our supplier, who makes sure the same issues don't arise again - and he's bloomin' good at that!

While China has faults as a nation, the level of quality relationships and quality products that are coming from environmentally aware producers operating with good employee care, is enlightening to see and we are fortunate to have found Eric to work closely with to make this as achievable as possible.

At PupRepublic we have changed suppliers a couple of times for our compostable poo bags for multiple reasons and we finally met our current one, Ivy Sun in Birmingham a couple of years ago. This company checks out really well as a producer of bio-plastics, operating as cleanly as possible, and run by a dynamic team of lovely young women which is lovely to see.

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Factory Audits

Once we sourced our suppliers which was least to say, a long process and huge research induced project, it was all worthwhile and when we had chosen our suppliers, we checked the suppliers' official audits to check for good working conditions and to understand their level of eco-responsibility, something that's very important to us and our fur-babies, Petal, Milo & Tati.

With having a low carbon pawprint meaning a lot to us we do everything we can to reduce the impacts of shipping, packaging and use materials made to last to avoid product-waste and of course, only making sure we supply the best for our customers.

We even introduced our cornstarch biodegradable poop bags for those poopsie moments on daily walks! So our customer have the option of adding this eco-friendly product to their shopping list! And, there is no plastic in the small cardboard packaging they come in making it fully recyclable!

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How are our pawducts transported?

We had to think logistically about how to best ship our pawducts from the factories abroad over to us here in the UK with the lowest environmental impacts as possible.

Any product-based business owner will tell you it's a difficult process to source the right transportation while being eco-aware, and for us the best solution was to choose to ship our pawducts by train vs by air.

Although this sometimes results in delays due to weather conditions such as train lines affected by frozen snow or sea freight when they become iced up, we felt this was the best way for our pawducts to be transported - we just have to get super organised if we feel there's a flux of orders due to come through such as Christmas and summer holidays.

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Why do we use manufacturers abroad?

We did try to source what we needed to provide for our customers in the UK, but we just don't have that kind of manufacturing economy here in this country which is very sad to discover.

Businesses that are able to source their manufacturers here in the UK are either way smarter than us or are able to make tiny margins if any on the products they sell.

This led us to source the manufacturing of our products abroad in a more sustainable way than most, which also allows our products to be as affordable as we can possible make them.

We are always on the lookout for local, sustainable sources so this is something we will continue to explore as our business grows.

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We hope that gives you a little bit more insight into behind the scenes of our pawducts and our small business. We would also like to take this opportunity to thank you for being on this journey with us whether that's as a customer, a follower or an avid reader of our blog, we really appreciate your suppawt.

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