Since 2018

founder

Product Design

business operations

Branding

Founding A design-forward pet brand

Founding A design-forward pet brand

Founding A design-forward pet brand

To address a gap in the market of thoughtfully designed pet furniture, I began making my own. By combining limited drops, refined product visuals, and personalized customer care, I grew a niche cat-furniture brand to 2K sales, 13K favorites, achieving a 4.9-star average review — even becoming an "Etsy's Pick".

Challenge

Design products for pets that are unique, useful, and aesthetically harmonious.

What I Did

I oversee every step of the unikkatt design process. I head all design and fabrication, as well as safety testing. I also work with vendors to procure all materials, build client relationships and handle all end-to-end customer experience.

design
  1. Each ingredient is structurally integral to the design. More than Scandinavian minimalism — this keeps the wall-mounted pieces lightweight.

  2. Minimizing user effort minimizes any pain points or user error, that might occur with assembly.

  3. Each design has a valuable function — solving an actual problem.

impact

Through streamlined design, limited drops and engaging customer experience, I've turned five main listings into consistent bestsellers. The flagship wall-mounted cat steps bundle alone drove over 87,000 views, 5,547 favorites, 828 orders, and $99.9K in revenue, while three complementary products added more than 48K views, 3846 favorites, 964 orders, and roughly $52K in additional revenue.

Insight

Pet owners trust vets to manage their pet's health, but desire transparency and autonomy. They're dependent on systems they can't access and availability they can't control. Situational necessity is just as valuable as trust.

“ What happens if there's an emergency?”
– Judy, Dog Mom
insight

Core design principles not only kept products streamlined, straightforward, and valuable, but also aesthetically balanced. A foundation of trust and integrity has helped the brand flourish. Building and maintaining client relationships based in open communication, respect, and care resulted in near-unanimous satisfaction and over 100 repeat customers.

“ Thank you for making such pretty and stylish cat furniture.”
– Kimberly, unikkatt Customer
Insight

Pet owners trust vets to manage their pet's health, but desire transparency and autonomy. They're dependent on systems they can't access and availability they can't control. Situational necessity is just as valuable as trust.

“ What happens if there's an emergency?”
– Judy, Dog Mom
Outcome

Through taking this project step by step using the 5 phase design thinking process I was able to uncover real user needs, and design a product that served those needs.

reflection

Throughout this journey the product design is happening at two levels; the physical products, and the brand. The success of each hinges on the other.