Hi Doggie Person

I was going to start off this mail, with "It's been another busy week here at Long Paws", but frankly it's always busy. The scale just ranges from busy to manic to peeling my eyes out crazy. As my wife likes to tell me, she knows she comes second in my life, and actually that's the polite version.

That said, we have been doing some very exciting things. Firstly, and this relates to our title of this blog. A couple of weeks back, my wife and I were doing a garbage pickup - actually Lisa is part of a group that does one in the Dollis Valley (NW London area) every Sunday - I joined into a local community one in Hampstead Heath (real credit to the guys that organised this - I was just a tag along). Anyway, I was actually really impressed - most people pick up their waste. Of course every time I came across a dumped used poop bag, I did want to scream "Poop Porter", but I refrained. Most of the mess I found was from bags that had been dragged off by the foxes and eaten in the thick bushes.

Anyway, while doing the pickup, I started thinking of how else Long can help with reducing waste (we've already gotten rid of most single-use plastic from our products). And the answer is that we have now confirmed that we are able to start producing more environmentally friendly products - we're looking at using webbing made from recycled plastic bottles on some of our collars, leads and harnesses. This includes day to day recycling, as well as plastic recovered from the oceans. And furthermore, we can also now use natural cotton and natural hemp to produce products. 

I'm not sure if you are aware of this, but a lot of what we do is in the Private Label space - people or companies who are looking to launch their own brand of products come to us for help. Many of them are dog parents with strong Instagram followings looking to turn their Instagram into a business. Using the trusted relationships we have with the factories we've been working with for years, and using our experience in shipping, design, production, etc, we help them take their ideas from a concept to ready-to-sell products. The moral of that story is that we can now offer a range of environmentally friendly options for our private label customers too.

As I was saying, that was the first exciting thing we've been working on. The second is that, as part of that same Private Label offering, we are working with a large football club to grow their merchandise range to include better quality pet accessories. I can't discuss what we're making for them or when you will see them in store, but it's all very exciting... and needless to say, helping to keep us extremely busy.

And the third exciting thing we've just managed to finish, is to have our product catalogue completely redesigned. I should say catalogues, as we have a 'current range' with everything available now, and we have our Autumn release, which is going to see a lot of new products, product enhancements, and more...
If you would like to take a look at the latest version of the catalogue, you can find it on the website. And that does remind me (in case the week wasn't busy enough), we need to update the catalogue and website to include the new Environmentally Friendly options.

Anyway, it's time to get back to it, so have a great week.

All the best
Elan, Lauren, and the rest of our Long Paws Team