Modern Dog Beds

There are usually two things that come in to mind when you hear the word “modern”. One is “fashionable” or “in” and the other is “contemporary” or “technically advanced”. One of our latest developments in dog beds is the Raised Tuffies dog bed. This was an idea that came on the scene a few years ago, but it was pickled in our pursuit of other things and because I couldn’t really see how it was going to be implemented. Only about 10 months ago did I come across a page on the internet, which showed garden furniture.  I was merely looking for web site design inspiration when I saw what gave me the light-bulb moment to pursue the next generation of dog beds for us. It was a plastic garden chair formed in one piece giving it a double wall. With my limited knowledge of plastic forming, I thought this, sensibly priced, chair would have been a simple vacuum formed product. I called upon our fantastic vacuum formers who produce our Chewproof dog beds, the Really Tough Tuffie. They are very keen and very keen on dogs, which turns out to be incredibly important during the process of developing the product. The main lady came to see the chair and the verdict was straight away that this one was an injection moulded item, which is out of our bounds as the TOOL itself would be in the region of quarter a million Pound Sterling……!!  So could it be vacuum formed? Yes, we could have a go. Anything can be done for money of course, but not everything can be sold if it costs too much, so out of the various plastic options I went for one particular type, which was the cheapest and the plastic formers were confident that it would form well and be strong. The tool was developed, which is in itself a lengthy process starting off with me using every saw, knife and cutter to hand carving out my dream bed in several layers of building foam that I had glued together. Making foam models like this is almost only possible in the summer where you can be outside because all the tiny bits go everywhere and they are slightly static so they cling to your hands, your arms, your clothes and even your hair. Finally, in-between running the business of making our top quality dog beds, I finished the foam model. Here it is and you have to use your imagination to understand that it is of course hollow.

The next part of the development takes loads of time and I will try and illustrate this in next week’s article.