A friend’s challenge, fifteen bowls and a trade show.

Ruffwear is a Bend, Oregon company, but it did not start there. Its founder, Patrick Kruse, began it in southern California: The Bulletin in Bend placed the start in Seal Beach in a 2011 profile and in Huntington Beach in a 2024 report, so the town depends on which article you read. The newspaper says Kruse moved the business to Bend in 1996; the company’s own timeline gives 1998.

The first product was a dog bowl. In 2011 The Bulletin reported that Kruse made it in answer to a friend’s challenge to find something lighter than the metal and plastic bowls people carried on the trail, and that his answer was a foldable bowl of waterproof tent fabric. The company tells the same story in its own words: it says Kruse watched a friend on a mountain-bike ride try to give her dog water from a plastic bag, and asked himself, “If fabric can keep water out, why can’t it keep water in?” Ruffwear dates that prototype to 1992.

According to the 2011 profile, Kruse spent about $33 on materials for 15 bowls, sewn in his garage, and took them to the Outdoor Retailer trade show in 1994, where he came away with orders for 8,000, mostly from L.L.Bean. He incorporated the business the same year. Ruffwear’s timeline describes the same show as the moment the company “puts a new product category on the map.”

Kruse was not new to making gear. The Bulletin reported that he had earlier founded Mariner Marine Works, a sailing-gear maker, and, with two partners, Salamander Paddle Gear, both in southern California; he sold both as Ruffwear grew. Ruffwear’s own timeline reaches further back, to 1973, when it says the young Kruse used his mother’s sewing machine to stitch together his first dog pack.

From one bowl to a full kit for dogs outdoors.

The bowl became a range. By 2011 The Bulletin described dozens of products for dogs outdoors, among them life jackets, coats, harnesses, boots and packs as well as the original bowl. Names on the company’s own pages today include the Front Range harness, the Web Master harness and the Float Coat life jacket.

The mark has its own story. Ruffwear’s timeline says that in 1993 an abandoned junkyard dog found in downtown Los Angeles, named Ursula and taken in by a friend of Kruse’s, became the inspiration for the Ruffwear logo. The company does not name a designer for the mark, and no official colour or typeface specification is published.

Working dogs gave the company a second line of development. Ruffwear says Kruse attended an avalanche rescue dog school in Utah in 2008 to learn what the dogs and their handlers needed, and that it became the supplier of choice for avalanche-dog uniforms at U.S. ski resorts and for international teams; that is the company’s description of itself. In 2019, its timeline says, it created the UniFly guide dog harness.

The company also sets out environmental milestones in its own timeline: it says it reached 100 percent renewable electricity for its U.S. operations in 2021, and that it met a deadline to stop manufacturing with PFAS-containing materials by the end of 2023. Those are Ruffwear’s statements about its own operations. The timeline says that by 2016 the company had 38 staff and sold its gear in 53 countries; in 2011 The Bulletin had counted 23 employees and 25 countries.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are all pet names: PetSafe, KONG, Chuckit!, West Paw, Ruffwear, Kurgo and Butternut Box. Between them they cover much of what an owner buys for a dog beyond the animal itself — toys, ball launchers, beds, collars, leads and harnesses, gear for car journeys and outdoor trips, and food. Pet brands in general sit at many different points in the trade, from founder-run workshops to labels that now belong to much larger groups, and a single name can be sold everywhere from a specialist shop to a supermarket aisle or a delivery subscription.

A pet brand’s identity is usually carried less by a single product than by a name, a colour, a pack and a tone of voice, 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 products 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 advertising have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Still privately held in Bend.

Ruffwear remains privately held. In April 2024 The Bulletin described it as a privately held company owned by Kruse and two silent investors, and in 2011 the paper reported that it had run without debt since 2003; Kruse’s title in both reports is founder and director of research and development.

Day-to-day leadership has changed more than ownership. Will Blount ran the company for about twenty years, The Bulletin reported in May 2025; Ruffwear’s timeline says he stepped away as president in 2021, and the paper says he stayed on as an adviser and co-owner. Brandan Hill was hired as president in 2022 and resigned on 29 April 2025, after which Blount returned as interim president, the paper reported. In 2024 the company added a chief marketing officer, Robin Skillings, a chief revenue officer, Sandella Gansheimer, and promoted Young Joen to chief operating officer, The Bulletin reported, under the headline that the founder was adding leaders “to help take its outdoor dog gear global.”

The same paper had reported in 2011 that sales had grown every year since the company was founded and that its products were sold across the United States and in 25 countries. In 2024 the company’s about page announced thirty years in business, and it still tells the founding story through the bowl.

For a design guide, Ruffwear shows how a single, well-told founding object — a bowl sewn from tent fabric — and a logo with a named dog behind it can carry a brand for three decades. Compare Kurgo, another outdoor dog-gear brand that began with one founder’s fix for his own dog, and West Paw. For this guide we use rust, juniper green and high-desert sand with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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