Man's best friend has also turned out to be a great business partner.
West Paw, a Bozeman, Mont.-based maker of dog toys, says its business has increased thanks to people adopting animals during the pandemic. Dog owners finding themselves spending more time at home with their pets are also spending more on toys, West Paw CEO Spencer Williams told CNN Business.
West Paw does its own injection molding and other production — and has a loop process to collect and recycle old dog toys back into new ones — and Williams said when COVID-19 first began spreading, he worried the company would have to shut down.
Instead, it began making PPE for area health care workers, and by late spring found that orders were climbing for dog toys again.
"We found that not only are independent pet stores surviving, they're thriving because people were coming in and saying, 'Not only do I want pet food, I want to buy something that's going to make my pet happy,'" Williams said.