Hello Phoenix!

A couple weekends ago marked the first local show we’ve done since moving to Arizona nearly 3 years ago. In truth, we have let the business float with online sales for the past few years – amid the move, having a third kid, and just trying to do more as a family to make a better work-life balance. When we started the O’Fallon Antler Company (now O’Antler) 8 years ago, we hit the ground running and booked as many pet expos, vendor fairs, and farmers markets as we could fit into a logical schedule/map. We even drove up to Maine to buy an RV for a “tour” of the country where we did several shows from Tennessee to Florida, Texas, to California, and more. We didn’t let Brielle slow us down. She was a generally happy girl and enjoyed being with us everywhere we went. Not to say the other two haven’t been just as happy, but we’ve certainly not had the time or stamina (or space!) to keep the travel life going once they were born.

As you can see from our recent website changes, we’ve done an overhaul of our business image and name, really just to simplify and to give a sleeker look to our website. This overhaul was something we’d been planning for over 2 years, but just finally got the chance to implement. And with that, we were ready to put our name out there in Phoenix. Side note – we live in Gilbert, which is a big city on its own (just under 300,000 people) and whose boundaries are hard to tell apart from Chandler, Mesa, and Queen Creek. Our house is on the edge of the Gilbert/Queen Creek border, so it’s a 30-minute drive into Phoenix for us. Still, we are all a part of the Phoenix metropolitan area, so I often tell people who aren’t from around here that we are from Phoenix. After all, it’s the capital of Arizona, and who hasn’t heard of Phoenix?

James made a pretty easy 45-minute drive to Steele Indian School Park in midtown Phoenix for the Doggie Street Festival on Saturday, January 28, while I stayed home with the 3 girls and took them to a birthday party. Our booth was probably the only one there without a sun canopy (lesson learned – next time) and James got a nice mild sunburn that turned into a tan overnight (why can’t that happen to me?) but it was a successful day as far as dog shows go. He made 53 sales and sold about 95 antler chews. And most importantly, he got our name out there and made some new contacts from the Phoenix area. We will definitely be back for next year’s Doggie Street Festival in Phoenix!