Product development consultant: Kool Jack Cooling Dog Vest

CLIENT

Loran and Linda Ebarb are a dog-loving couple from New Orleans, LA. They found a need for a more effective dog vest that keeps dogs cool in humid, hot weather. With this idea in mind, they came to LA NPDT for our one-stop-shop product development services. As a result, a unique Kool Jack dog vest was created.

They’ve seen how their dog got quickly tired of overheating due to the fact that dogs don’t sweat. Other dog vests on the market use evaporative cooling, which is ineffective in the humid weather of Louisiana. Therefore, Mr. and Mrs. Ebarb brought forth the idea to incorporate ice packs into the dog vests. That feature promotes cooling without relying on weather conditions.

Thanks to our short-run production capabilities in Pakistan, our product development company successfully manufactured the first batch of dog vests.  Shortly after, the couple began mass production. They found themselves very satisfied and happy working with us previously on the design and prototyping of the Kool Jack Dog Vest. So, next time they returned to us in order to create a website and video promotion material for further marketing a new product.

Every invention of prototype design and development begins with the market research & discovery stage. So, our team started exploring the pet product market. Firstly, our designers and engineers analyzed the current competition and similar pet products to identify the opportunities for achieving a better product-market fit. And secondly, they discovered that the competition’s positive and negative feedback provided significant insight into the pet product market’s needs and problems.

Based on the competition research, LA NPDT designed the Kool Jack to combine the two cooling methods. As a result, we were able to capture a larger geographical market for dog vests, both for humid and arid weather.

Our invention prototyping services and capabilities in fabrics accelerated the prototyping stage. Subsequently, that allowed for an easy iterative process. The prototypes we produced provided the customers with the hands-on ability to review the product. That, in turn, gave us the feedback necessary for optimizing the design prior to the manufacturing.

For the website creation our product development company team of graphic designers, web developers, photographers and videographers came together for a couple of meetings. During the discussion, they identified the reasons why the Kool Jack dog vest product was unique and created the best way to highlight it.

Meanwhile, we started casting dogs to use the vest for the video footage and photography needed. At that same time, our copywriting staff was working on the storyboard for the video and content for the website. After several drafts, mockups and brainstorming meetings we came up with a great design and animations for the footage taken.