Jamaican Designer + Ex-Warby Parker + Ex-S'well Built a $100M-Channel Design Pet Brand — Wild One

Process

The Beginning: A Jamaican Designer's "Why Is All Pet Gear So Ugly?"

Minali Chatani grew up in Jamaica, then moved to New York to study design. Her career spanned top consumer brands — brand creative at Warby Parker, design leadership at S'well. She had an almost physical standard for good design: restrained colors, clean lines, premium materials, photogenic at any angle.

In 2018, she got a dog. And discovered something that, as a designer, she found nearly offensive: virtually all pet accessories — leashes, collars, food bowls, dog beds — were design disasters. Neon pink paired with neon green. Cartoon bone prints. Cheap nylon webbing. Plastic bowls devoid of any aesthetic consideration. Functional? Yes. But place them in a thoughtfully designed apartment, and they looked like a Happy Meal toy in a museum. Minali wasn't the first to notice. She was the first who was a designer capable of fixing it.

She decided to build a pet accessories brand. The standard was simple: if a product wasn't beautiful enough, refined enough, Instagram-worthy enough — it didn't ship. She named it Wild One. The name carries freedom, but also signals breaking the rules.

Phase 1: Not Solo — Bringing Former Warby Parker and S'well Executives

Minali's founding story differs from the solo-founder narrative. She knew her superpower was design and brand. She also knew she needed people better than her at two things: operations and distribution. So she recruited people stronger than herself. She brought on two heavyweight co-founders: a former Warby Parker executive who understood DTC customer acquisition — Warby Parker carved a $1B+ brand out of eyeglasses. And a former S'well executive who understood premium product development and supply chain — S'well transformed a $10 water bottle into a $45 fashion accessory. Combined capabilities: design + brand + DTC growth + premium supply chain. This wasn't a side project. This was built from day one to be the next big brand.

Phase 2: Design as Brand — Turning a Dog Leash into an Instagram Object

Wild One's first collection stunned the pet industry. The leash wasn't neon — earth-toned: terracotta, sage green, sand, muted blue. The collar wasn't printed with cartoon bones — minimalist solid colors with premium metal hardware. The food bowl wasn't cheap plastic — wide-base ceramic, non-tip, non-slip, looking more like home decor on a kitchen floor. The dog bed wasn't a bulky cushion — geometric fabric construction, color-matched to a West Elm sofa. The effect was immediate. When a millennial dog owner scrolled past a Wild One leash on Instagram, her reaction wasn't "that's a dog leash." It was "that color matches my sofa." Wild One doesn't sell pet supplies. It sells a pet lifestyle aesthetically consistent with your home.

Phase 3: DTC + Content — Building the Glossier of Pet

Wild One's channel strategy was pure DTC, selling through their own website. Not because retail is bad — because DTC lets them talk directly to users. Their Instagram isn't a product catalog. It's a curated lifestyle magazine — real dogs and owners, design-forward flat lays, minimalist lifestyle scenes. Users don't come to buy a leash. They come for dog parenting aesthetic inspiration. Wild One's reference brands aren't other pet companies — they're Glossier, Away, Casper — the generation of DTC pioneers who turned functional products into lifestyle brands.

Phase 4: Omnichannel Expansion — From DTC to Target

In 2021, Wild One entered Target — America's second-largest retailer with 1,900+ stores. A brand built on premium design entering a retailer positioned on affordability, without diluting brand value. On Target's pet aisle, Wild One's products act like magnets — amid a sea of neon and cartoon prints, earth tones and minimalist design naturally grab attention. Wild One later entered Petco and other specialty retail, achieving full omnichannel coverage. Product lines expanded from leashes, collars, and bowls into dog beds, toys, grooming, and apparel.

Phase 5: The Wild One Doctrine — Founder Taste Is the Real Moat

After Wild One succeeded, imitators flooded in — pet brands launching earth-toned leashes, minimalist bowls. None replicated Wild One's brand power. Why? Because Minali's moat isn't terracotta. Anyone can make a terracotta leash tomorrow. Her moat is over a decade of design judgment accumulated across top consumer brands. She knows which color combinations read as premium versus cheap. She knows how products should be positioned, lit, and spaced in photographs. She knows which word choices feel elevated and which feel mass-market. These judgments cannot be written into an SOP. They're a designer's intuition, forged through over a decade of aesthetic training. In consumer goods, the founder is the brand's DNA. However refined the founder, that's how refined the brand.

Source: Wild One official · Forbes · Business Insider

Thinking

Moat #1: Design premium in an "aesthetic desert" category

Pet accessories are a classic "aesthetic desert" — functional needs are clear, but the market long ignored consumers' appetite for beautiful things. Wild One's core insight came directly from Minali's time at Sweetgreen: a salad company can command 30% more than the takeout next door, purely through design language and brand identity.

That logic transferred directly to dog gear: when every competitor is competing on function and price, you compete on design and identity. A muted Scandinavian-palette harness isn't just a strap — it's an Instagram declaration that says "I'm a dog owner with taste."

This pattern repeats across categories:

• Mejuri (jewelry) → made self-gifting design-forward rather than reserved for special occasions
• Allbirds (shoes) → made walking a shareable lifestyle statement
• Wild One (pets) → made dog walks a shareable identity card

Moat #2: The Walk Kit bundle strategy

The Walk Kit isn't a discount bundle — it's a decision friction reducer + AOV booster + use-case framer in one product.

Buying a collar alone requires three decisions: What size? What leash length? What color poop bag holder? Three decisions, three dropout moments. The Walk Kit collapses those three decisions into one — and by showing the "complete walk scenario," it increases purchase intent dramatically.

The general formula: bundle products that the user needs in the same scenario, price it 5–15% below individual items, but average order value increases 50%+. Bundles also typically have lower return rates because the customer bought the whole experience, not just an item.

Moat #3: The pop-up as inbound B2B discovery channel

Most consumer brand founders think of retail like this: build DTC first, grow big, then pitch buyers. Wild One accidentally discovered the reverse path — the pop-up made buyers come to them.

The logic: buyers at premium department stores (Bloomingdale's, Nordstrom) are constantly looking for novelty for their categories. They actively walk new pop-ups, markets, and emerging neighborhoods. A design-forward pop-up signals: this brand already has real consumer traction, the product has visual differentiation, and it can bring new customers to the department store.

For consumer founders: a well-located pop-up serves both B2C (retail validation) and B2B (wholesale discovery) simultaneously. It's the most efficient use of physical retail capital in the early stage.

On Forbes 30 Under 30 and revenue as a proxy

Wild One is one of the rare cases on this site where specific revenue figures aren't publicly disclosed. Instead: Forbes 30 Under 30 (Retail & Ecommerce, 2020) + 3× annual growth + Target/Nordstrom/Bloomingdale's distribution serve as verifiable proxies for commercial scale.

Forbes' 30 Under 30 in retail/ecommerce requires substantive revenue growth and industry traction at time of selection. Wild One had achieved premium department store distribution and a 3× annual growth rate — sufficient evidence that the business model was validated at time of writing.

Action

Step 1: Find the "aesthetic desert" in your category

Scan consumer product categories with this filter:

• Products work well enough, but the visual design and packaging is stuck in 2005
• The top brands have almost no shareable Instagram product photography
• Consumers can only choose between "cheap and ugly" vs "expensive and barely acceptable"

Categories that fit: pet gear, kitchenware, outdoor equipment, home cleaning, baby accessories, office supplies. These are all "aesthetic deserts" waiting for a design-first challenger.

Step 2: Build your Walk Kit equivalent

Find 2–3 products in your category that users need simultaneously in the same scenario. Package them into a named bundle (not a "combo" — give it a real name like "Walk Kit", "Starter Kit", "Travel Set").

Pricing rule: bundle price is 10% below the sum of individual items, but at least 50% more than your cheapest single product. This pricing simultaneously rewards upselling (the bundle feels valuable vs. a single item) and raises AOV.

Step 3: Run a 2–4 week pop-up in a high-foot-traffic location

Goal: not sales. Discovery.

Pop-up location criteria:

• Your target consumer is already there (creative workers, young professionals, pet owners…)
• Minimum 500–1,000 passers-by per day
• Your target retail buyers shop the same area (open near Nordstrom if you want Nordstrom buyers to find you)

During the pop-up, collect: customer emails, product feedback, repeat buyer data. This is the story you'll tell retail buyers later.

Step 4: Engineer being found instead of pitching

Don't cold-email department store buyers first. Get your product into places where those buyers already go:

• Design-forward craft fairs and pop-up markets (Renegade Craft Fair, local design markets)
• Editorial media (gift guides, holiday roundups) — these drive both consumers and buyers
• Vertical Instagram accounts (10–50K followers) that your target buyer follows

When a buyer contacts you first, your negotiating position is fundamentally different than when you reach out cold.

Step 5: Build your email list before your Instagram following

Wild One has 500,000 email subscribers — a private asset they own regardless of platform algorithm changes. Every offline touchpoint (pop-up, event, party) should have an email collection mechanism:

• QR code for a "product survey" in exchange for a small gift
• First-purchase discount for sign-ups
• "New product early access" waitlist

Email lists are the most risk-resistant distribution channel for consumer brands: no platform dependency, no algorithm risk, 5–10× higher reach than Instagram for the same audience size.