Why Hilary's Hounds Will Be Your Pet's New Favourite Brand
Ahead of Mother's Day, we meet the owners of Hilary's Hounds
Living North find out how the duo run their business between York and London, and how they’re transforming your four-legged friends into fetch-ing fashionistas whilst keeping them warm and dry.
Hilary’s Hounds was simply a project in 2019, initially for Hilary as she approached retirement. She was enjoying knitting for her two muses Sessel and Syril (a dachshund and Italian greyhound). ‘I wasn’t really supposed to be involved at the beginning,’ Hayley admits. ‘[Hilary] was knitting a few doggy jumpers for my friends’ pets and my own dogs and that’s really where it started. When Covid hit I had a little bit of extra time, and I needed a couple of outfits because my two dogs really don’t like the cold and rain, so I asked mum if she would sew some fleeces for them. She’s good on a sewing machine as well as knitting.
‘Then friends would start asking [for outfits] so I set up an Instagram page which went from 93 followers to around 5,000 within the space of a year and we had to grow really quickly to keep up with demand. I obviously had to step in as well and help mum manage the website and social media. We even recruited another seamstress to help because mum couldn’t do everything on her own. That’s where we are now, and we just keep growing and growing.’
They experimented with styles, colours and sizes, and launched their first small range of plain coloured fleeces in April 2021. They had knitwear and small accessories too, then in the summer of that year they added some new jerseys to the range, including their popular Breton, and in autumn they launched a range of waterproof jackets and the Sherpa Coat. ‘Some dogs have matting issues, they can get fleas, ticks, and there’s things you want to avoid, even in the summer, so some owners prefer to put their dog in a little covering, even in the summertime,’ Hayley explains.
‘When it got to the [first] Christmas, we wanted to do something a bit more fun so we started a Christmas range, and last year we brought out beds and blankets as well and little doggy snoods. We’ve got quite a broad range of doggy apparel and accessories now.’
The duo have slowly expanded their small team and now work alongside a couple of seamstresses, all based in the UK, and are currently an all-female workforce. Hayley manages all the material sourcing. ‘For me, quality is the main thing I look for, before a cute print or anything like that,’ she says. ‘I really want to make sure that the fabric is good quality, and easy to take care of. You don’t want to be messing around with something that needs to be dry cleaned – you know what dogs are like! The wearability and the quality of the product is number one. I source from distributors in the UK and one distributor in the US but everything is made here. So if we order, say from a manufacturer in Yorkshire, for instance Empress Mills, they ship to me in London or to my mum in York.
‘We really love and cherish the fact that we are a small business and we’re a family-grown business. The tricky thing sometimes is not wanting to become a big, commercial, impersonal company. It does have its challenges because you want to keep to everyone’s expectations and ship on time and make sure things arrive on time. There are a few obstacles sometimes when you’re not ordering masses and masses of zips or fabric, for example. But nothing has held us back. Every year we’ve got more and more customers and our Instagram is growing all the time.’
Hayley says Hilary’s Hounds has many returning customers too. ‘The best part is when people send me pictures of their dogs, or cats sometimes, wearing the products and my favourite part of the week is going through Instagram and re-sharing all the pictures. When I hear back from people saying how they were taking their dog out and [their outfit] made people smile, it’s just such a lovely thing to know that you’re making an impact on someone’s day.’
Hayley’s passion for the business is clear. ‘I would say you really have to have a passion for what you’re doing and know what the driver is for you,’ she says. ‘How your customers respond and feed back to you, I think is the most important part. Customer service is such a big part of any brand. If you have good customer service, it doesn’t matter if you make mistakes along the way as long as you are willing to listen and provide a personal response to them. It’s such an important part.
‘Every year has taken me by surprise. If you’d have asked me right at the beginning what I could imagine we’d be doing now, I wouldn’t have believed it. So I think we’re just taking it as it comes and slowly trying to improve the things that we’ve already established. It’s about making sure that we’re still on top of quality fabrics, shipping times, reducing shipping costs, improving the website and making sure that everything that we have as the foundation of Hilary’s Hounds is running really well. That allows us that space to maybe be a little bit more adventurous. I’d love to design some fun products for the summer – things like doggy paddling pools or doggy sprinklers – and maybe bring a few extra fun new products in.’
hilaryshounds.myshopify.com
Olive fleece, from £30
Design Your Own bed, from £80
Cloud Cotton jersey, from £35
