Developing New Pet Products

Leading UK product design agency for developing and prototyping innovative pet products

At D2M we have over a decade of experience developing new pet products for many clients. We are exceptionally skilled in the design and prototyping of pet products, ranging from automatic pet feeders, portable water bowls and dog collars, treat dispensers and other pet products including a full dog wash solution!

Designing New Pet Products

This is often the most exciting part of the process. It is where we help innovative and conceptualise your ideas and also further concepts and new materials that our creative design team can help bring to the table. We run innovation workshop with our clients as this is a partnership where we start to dig into your vision for the new product whilst helping shape the concept with our knowledge of what is possible to achieve in production.

This part of the product development process often concludes with a commercial viability assessment as price point is often critical for a successful new product launch in the pet product sector. Read more about this inspiring and exhilarating part of the process as your idea start to take shape.

Prototyping Pet Products

How pet product ideas are prototyped depends hugely on the materials used. Textile products are relatively quick to develop and test whilst hard goods products, particular those with integrated electronics can take a lot longer to prototype. This is often the most expensive part of product development and so it is worth ensuring that the new product idea is fully validated before commencing building prototypes.

It is worth considering that most materials used for prototypes are not safe for ingestion by pets. As such testing of prototypes with animals need to managed very carefully.

Manufacturing Pet Products

Due to cost requirements, most pet products are manufactured in China although this is starting to change for the premium end of the market. The process will involve a detailed manufacturing specification once the design of your product is finalised and then sourced the right pet product producer for your idea and your requirements. Quality Control, packaging, shipping, warning labels and instruction manuals all need to be considered at this stage.

Selling a New Pet Product

Now the hard work begins! Selling a new product from a previously unknown brand is very hard work. Retail buyers for larger retailers are incredibly busy and difficult to get hold of and you have no customer base who is out there organically growing your brand talking to their friends and so marketing and a lot of hard work will be required to get your product out there and known. It’s not all bad news, crowdfunding can help promote your new product, platforms like Amazon are low cost ways of getting started and social media can be a good way to build a loyal customer base.

Pet Product Design Case Studies

Below are just a few of the different pet products that we have designed and prototyped. We also source manufacturers and can guide our clients through to tooling and production, if required.

Product design research for a dog treat dispenser

Do you have any innovative pet product ideas?

We’ve worked with a number of clients to bring innovative pet products to the market. Take a look at them and some of the other products we’ve worked on in our case studies section.

The pet product sector is a huge market and one that’s likely to keep growing, especially after all these lockdowns…. So it’s a great time to be developing new pet products. Contact us today and we can arrange a call to discuss your project requirements.

Do we sound like the product design company you've been looking for?

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Secrets, tips & tricks to finding the right product design partner.

Download D2M's PDF guide now and say goodbye to costly missteps and wasted R&D funds.

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What our clients say

Phil and D2M are the best at what they do and I would highly recommend working with them if you are looking for a product design company. From the beginning, Phil's passion and expertise came through when deciding on a partner.

D2M is a great company to work with and one we would recommend for any new product development. One quality we have been impressed with is their minimum viable product approach. Looking forward to working on our next project with them.

We engaged Phil and the D2M team to help us fabricate a prototype for our product on an extremely tight timeline. We would thoroughly recommend them to anyone who needs to take their product from idea to prototype!

D2M were and still are a massive help to me. They are full of knowledge of the industry and helped bring my idea to physical product. They re-designed, refined and have thoroughly tested my idea to create something that is functional, aesthetic and realistic to manufacture.

Genius Alert!!! Phil is one of the best start-up consultants you find out there. In contrast to all other start-up consultants you will encounter, Phil has first-hand experience of what it means to raise start-up funding, build the team and navigate the highs and lows of the start-ups.