Courtesy Molly Barela
Why did a new direct-to-consumer digital retailer aimed at the modern dog owner choose the recent String of Lights Market for its reveal last week? Because Dog Dads Supply Co. co-founders Kenny Barela and Keith Cunningham were born and raised in Santa Fe.
Barela and Cunningham met in 7th grade at Capshaw Middle School (now Milagro), and they’ve been friends ever since. Barela started a career in advertising after graduating from the University of New Mexico and now lives with his wife Molly and their dogs in Los Angeles. Cunningham studied marketing at San Diego State University and still resides in San Diego.
Dog Dads Supply Co. sells innovations for dog owners, but losses within their circle of friends inspired a mandate to donate a percentage of all sales to Operation Freedom Paws, a nonprofit that pairs rescued dogs with veterans living with PTSD. Barela, who grew up in the Cerro Gordo neighborhood, spoke with SFR about the new venture just before its launch. This interview has been edited for clarity and concision. (Dave Cathey)
Can you talk about the friendship behind Dog Dads and how it led to a business partnership?
Keith Cunningham, and I are old homies. We have the same group of friends, still very tight.We graduated in ‘98 from Santa Fe High. So, we go way, way back, and we’ve been in contact, obviously, ever since.
Keith works in marketing, so we kind of work in similar industries, but he’s more promotion-based. He’s got the connections. He’s a super outgoing, super awesome, nice—genuine guy. About two years ago, we were on a group text, and he was asking us for business ideas we might be able to do together. Funny enough, I actually bought the domain name DogDads.com. about ten—maybe 11—years ago. I thought the name had something, and so it’s been sitting there for about a decade. So when Keith was firing off these ideas, it came at a time where I was freelancing and wanted to focus on something of my own. I enjoy freelance, but I wanted to use our skills to do something for ourselves and make it meaningful. There had to be an actual purpose behind it. The pet industry is saturated with merch using hokey slogans, and nothing against that, it’s all cute and fine, but I’m a student of design. When it comes to creating new ideas, there’s ways to innovate and there are ways to simplify.
What’s different about Dog Dads gear?
We focused on issues that we see as dog owners. As a designer, I like to streamline things, focus on the form with the function. I think the form has kind of been forgotten. You have things like external dongles to hold a roll of poop bags that works, but isn’t the most efficient and certainly not the most refined way to do things. So our approach shifted to serve the needs of the dog owner in a modern world. We have three products in the pipeline we’ve been working on since June of last year.
First, is a hoodie. Not a hoodie with a slogan, a hoodie with a treat pouch. This is a simple, versatile hoodie. You can take it camping, but also throw a sport coat over it and wear it to work or a meeting or whatever. We’re calling it the treat pocket hoodie. It serves the needs of the pet owner. I don’t like getting treat crumbs in my pockets—the dogs always come sniffing for them, or you’re leaving crumbs in the dryer. We also have external pockets on the back for a water bottle, your phone or a roll of poop bags. Again, it’s just outfitting those simple items with just a little extra something to serve the pet owner.
We also have a double-chamber water bottle. When my wife and I come to Santa Fe, we always drive. LA to Santa Fe is about 13 hours, and we always bring our dogs. One thing we became aware of was how much water we waste because we take a water bottle, pour it in their bowl, they take two licks, and we toss it because we don’t really want to pour that back into the water bottle. If you leave the bowl on the floor, water sloshes around, and we end up wasting water there. We developed a double-chamber bottle where you keep your water up top, and keep the dog’s water on the bottom.
For our third item, we are exploring a design patent. It is an innovative concept around poop bags, which is probably the most ubiquitous everyday utility item of a dog owner. The rolls? I just can’t stand them. A lot of people have these same pain points: they roll away, you can never get it back into the roll or you have those external dongles. Instead of a roll, it’s a square small enough to fit in your shirt pocket. It goes back to the whole utility thing.
Dog Dads launches with a stated goal to support mental health awareness. Can you talk about that and its relationship with Operation Freedom Paws?
Since we got serious about this project a year and a half ago, we’ve said goodbye to three close friends of ours. Friends from Santa Fe. We lost others before, but it was just a reminder we needed to do something impactful with this idea. Mental health concerns are so prevalent right now. There is a loneliness epidemic. All the people that we lost were early 40-somethings from our hometown—two of them were veterans. There’s a lot of struggle there, for sure, but just life in general. Dogs play such a significant role in the mental health benefits for people—both physically and certainly mentally. Operation Freedom Paws was just what we were looking for. A nonprofit that uses service animals for mental health purposes. We didn’t know much about them before, but we’ve since become really close.
Dog Dads is something the owners can really rally around and believe in and support each other. It’s an effort to build community, build camaraderie, and through our partnership with Operation Freedom Paws, we can bring awareness to mental health. Get the conversation going because change starts with the ability to talk about the issue. For that reason, five percent of everything we sell is gonna go to Operation Freedom Paws.
