She'd never sewn professionally but had the basic skills she needed. Ginkinger had started sewing years before as a hobbyist, and she made things like children's Halloween costumes and curtains in her spare time. Her first hire was Cynthia Ginkinger, a North Port resident who needed a job that worked around her son’s schedule. “I call them collar crafters because there is a certain art to handling the material.” “It’s not complicated, but there is an art to it,” Wood-Ellison said.
The artful canine florida how to#
She also advertised for people who knew how to sew, which is a difficult skill to find today, she said. So she began splashing them with patterns, colors and holiday themes, and the company grew steadily. Martingale collars that tighten if a dog pulls during a walk are useful for dogs that can slip their heads out of traditional collars, but six years ago it was tough to find a stylish one, she said. Wood-Ellison began by designing fashionable and highly functional collars. Technology has given entrepreneurs like Wood-Ellison a way to take their products directly to consumers in national and even global markets. "I think it's more common than some people would think," Cooper said. But Southwest Florida has the resources for these companies to be successful. If there's a gap, it's the mid-sized companies, he said. The area has a few big, well-known company names, like Tervis and PGT, that manufacture here, but many smaller operations are thriving in anonymous industrial parks in the area, too. There are a number of manufactures in the Sarasota region, said Kevin Cooper, president and CEO of the Greater Sarasota Chamber of Commerce. “I knew how to market it and advertise it.”
“I started my own website because I was an online marketer, so I knew how to do my own website,” she said. Today she and her four employees sew 50 to 60 products a day in their workshop in Venice, then sell them directly to customers through and Wood-Ellison’s own online shop. She started The Artful Canine in 2009 with an idea and a sewing machine in her spare bedroom and has since grown it into a small manufacturing business producing dog collars, leashes and accessories. So she decided she needed to create a job rather than look for one. Wood-Ellison had been laid off three times from marketing jobs, and her skills just weren’t in great demand in the Sarasota area. It took collars and leashes to pull her out of that slump. VENICE - The Great Recession left Joanne Wood-Ellison in need of a new career.
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