From poly ski rope in Alliance to a family-owned collar maker.

Coastal Pet Products began in the basement of a pet shop in Alliance, Ohio. The business magazine Smart Business, in a profile published on 23 August 2019, wrote that the company grew out of that basement beginning in 1968 and moved into its first facility in 1974. The magazine named Jim Stout as its founder; the company’s own history names two founders, the brothers Jim and Tom Stout.

The company tells the early story in more detail in a history published on its blog in July 2022. Tom Stout, it says, owned a pet shop called Alliance Pet and liked to experiment with new products in its basement. Making horse feed baskets from poly ski rope gave him the idea of making dog collars from the same material, at a time when collars were made of leather. Other pet stores showed interest, and Tom took on two partners in a venture then called Mustang Products. It took off, the company says, when his brother Jim began selling for it from his home in Massachusetts, bringing in orders from large wholesalers that were too big to make by hand in the basement.

The brothers then went out on their own and, according to the company, formed Coastal Pet Products in October 1968. Jim chose the name. Coastal says he had grown up as a farm boy in Ohio, always fascinated by the Atlantic Ocean, and that he now jokes the name fits because the company sells its products coast to coast. By 1974 the business had its own factory. Tom left in the early 1970s, the company says, but the experiments he had started led to its two lasting changes.

Nylon webbing, and a buckle shaped to the neck.

The first of those changes was material. In 1975, the company says, it moved away from poly ski rope and began making collars and other products from nylon webbing, which it describes on its About page as double-ply web. Jim Stout calls it the turning point. Smart Business credited him with transforming the pet products trade when his nylon webbing leashes and collars overtook traditional leather.

The second was hardware. In 1977, according to the company, Jim Stout invented a curved buckle, shaped to sit more comfortably on the dog wearing it, and called it the Kanine Buckle. Smart Business also named the Kanine curved buckle among his innovations. The company adds that Jim later invented other restraint products.

Coastal says it still designs much of its own production. Its About page describes in-house proprietary machines built for its manufacturing processes, a growing role for automation in nylon and leather work, and an in-house testing laboratory. It says it maintains a facility where it produces many of its collars, leashes and harnesses; Smart Business described the building as a manufacturing and distribution facility beside a man-made lake on a former cornfield.

On where things are made, Coastal is specific about scope. A July 2024 post headed “Proud to be an American Manufacturer” lists collections in which, it says, certain products are made in the USA, among them the Coastal, Li’l Pals, Circle T and Water & Woods collections for dogs, and the Safe Cat and Turbo collections for cats.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are all dog toy and accessory names: Planet Dog, Petstages, ZippyPaws, Petmate, Multipet, Coastal Pet and Lupine. Toy and accessory brands for dogs sit at many different points in the pet trade, from small workshops that still carry a founder’s story to names that now belong to larger pet-products groups, and a single brand can be sold everywhere from an independent pet shop to a national chain.

A pet brand’s identity is usually carried less by one toy or collar than by a name, a mascot and the promise printed on its packaging, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its production or grown far beyond the town where it started. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its toys, collars and leads are actually made.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its products are made and how its packaging and marks have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A second generation, a house of collections, and a move towards a brand.

The company is run by the next generation. Smart Business reported in 2019 that Jim Stout’s daughter, Kim Stout, was president. She had taught public school in Maryland, the magazine wrote, before joining the company in Alliance full time in marketing, becoming director of sales and marketing and then president. In a January 2019 interview on the company blog she said she had returned to Coastal in 2000 as a regional sales manager for the mid-Atlantic, and described Coastal as still family owned. Among her favourite lines she named the Circle T rolled leather dog collars, which she said are hand-crafted through more than sixteen steps, from bevelling and dressing the edges to rounding the collar. “We’re private,” she told Smart Business.

Coastal sells under a set of collection names rather than one mark, and its own pages list Coastal, Li’l Pals, Circle T, Lazer Brite, K9 Explorer and Bergan among them. Smart Business reported that Coastal had acquired an Oklahoma-based company known mainly for cat toys in 2015, and kept its product team separate for the first three years. The magazine also described a partnership with Wolfgang Man & Beast of Salt Lake City, which keeps its own brand and design while Coastal manufactures and distributes for it. Kim Stout summed up the shift: “We’re a manufacturer that is moving to a brand.”

For a design guide, Coastal Pet shows how a name picked by an Ohio farm boy for the Atlantic, and a curved buckle designed for a dog’s neck, can carry a family maker of collars and leashes from a pet-shop basement to a range of named collections. Compare Lupine, the New Hampshire collar and lead maker, and Ruffwear, the dog-gear company. For this guide we use Atlantic blue, webbing red and sand with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Coastal Pet’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.