Ladies and gentlemen, thanks for visiting SportLeash! We understand you have plenty of options out there in the pet industry so we want to thank you for your interest in SportLeash. We're a small team, just two normal guys trying to do something we love...with the furry animals we cherish!
To give you a little background on how the SportLeash was conceived, I first have to introduce you to the inspiration behind the products, Griffey.
Being that Griffey thinks he's always training for the Iditarod and there's an infinite bucket of peanut butter at the end of our run, you can imagine how difficult managing him can be. Instead of the painful leash-on-the-arm situation, we looked into plenty of other alternatives.
Finally, one day back in 2008 I had a Camelback on and put the leash handle through the chest strap to create my own little faux hands-free chest harness system...that's when the lightbulb went off! Not only was I able to control him better than any arm or waist leash, it was naturally comfortable while I ran. And that's exactly when we set out to create a chest harness to run with....and that's exactly when SportLeash was born!
For the first few years we came up with sketches, we bought the domain, and we brainstormed....but we never really properly raised our little baby. Finally, back in the fall of 2013, after tearing through too many cheap leashes, Griffey, myself, and our friend Matt set out to create a line of products that were not only sexy and functional, but were only the best quality we could find. If we wouldn't put our stamp of approval on them, we weren't going to offer them up to anybody else. So we set out to create a product, and ultimately a company, that would resemble the sporty, high quality of Under Armour. We set out to create the Under Armour of the pet industry. Here are some of the stops along the way...
Back in 2008, our first sketches ended up resembling more of a backpack with a chest attachment.
Fast forward until fall 2013, and subsequently, our first prototype came out very similar.
Finally, after months of testing and optimizing the system, we're near the end product.
We realize that some people (especially women) didn't love the chest harness and after months of testing we could never come to a perfect solution on it's function. But we did realize in all of this...that people loved the hands-free waist leash system. Unfortunately, as we found there weren't many good ones out there. So we set out to create a good looking, high quality waist leash system that would rival the chest harness. After plenty of testing and hundreds of miles up and down Santa Monica we closed in on a final product!
And all the while, we were intent on creating the best running, hiking, and hands-free leashes that you could find. It turned out, we realized that it'd be pretty damn convenient to have an everyday recreational one to use while your picking up groceries, pushing the stroller, or just multitasking with the phone in your hand. That's why we created our athletic-inspired, hands-free Recreation Pro leashes. You can use them on your walk in the morning drinking coffee and responding to emails or you can hit a 5 mile run in the evening...either way, this leash is an all purpose leash that's perfect for everyone!
And as I come to an end of this inaugural post, I want to note that this is only the beginning. The SportLeash team has plenty of tricks up our sleeve and we're already working on some awesome, innovative products to debut by the end of the year. We're extremely excited about the future of SportLeash and we certainly hope you'll join Team SportLeash on this wild ride!
Reynold Krieg
Aug 06, 2014