How we choose products
We buy one of everything and live with it for a month. Roughly half of what we test never makes it onto the site.
We buy it ourselves, at full price
No free samples, and no supplier gets told we are testing. We buy the thing the way you would, from wherever it is sold, and it arrives in the packaging you would get. A sample sent by a factory is always the best one they made that week. It tells you nothing.
The month
Then somebody takes it home and uses it properly, not carefully. What that means depends on the thing.
- Textiles go through the wash at least ten times at the temperature on the label, and once at the wrong temperature, because that is going to happen to you eventually.
- Ceramics and glass go in the dishwasher every day for a month, on the bottom rack, next to something heavier.
- Beds and blankets get slept on nightly by an actual animal, then washed, and we check whether they still fit the frame afterwards.
- Harnesses, leads and collars get walked in rain and mud, clipped and unclipped a few hundred times, and left wet in a car boot overnight.
- Toys go to the most destructive dog we can find, and we time how long it takes. That number is the point of the test, not a pass or a fail.
What fails
The same handful of things, over and over. Printed patterns that lift after four washes. Glaze that crazes in a dishwasher. Zips on bed covers that split the second time you take them off. Buckles that feel firm in the shop and go loose once webbing has softened. Foam under 8 cm that never recovers its shape under a heavy dog. Any fastening that needs two hands and a knee.
Failing the month is not a moral judgement on the maker. Plenty of it is fine for a year. We just do not want to be selling it to you again in a year.
The questions we ask before anything gets listed
- Is it better than the one we already own, in a way you could describe to somebody in a sentence?
- Can it be cleaned by a person who is tired? Machine washable beats spot clean every time.
- Does it survive the animal, or does the animal survive it? Both have to be true.
- If it broke, could it be repaired or replaced in part, or is the whole thing landfill?
- Would we put it in the front room? For the Home + Pet range that is the whole test.
Who makes it
Most of the range comes from small manufacturers in the UK, Portugal and Poland, including the ceramics we have made in Stoke. We visit or video call every workshop before a first order, ask who is on the floor and what they are paid, and we will not place an order through a broker who cannot tell us which factory the goods are coming out of.
We are not going to claim more than that. We are small, our orders are small, and a supply chain audit is not something we can honestly say we have done. What we can say is that we know the name of the person who makes each thing.
When something goes wrong later
A month is a month, and some faults only show up in the second winter. When a pattern appears in what customers tell us, the product comes off the site, even if it is selling. A few things have been pulled that way already. We would rather lose the line than keep taking money for something we now know fails.