Building a Family-Owned Dog Treat Brand and Scaling in Amazon's Store with Dewar Gaines

Dewar Gaines grew up in a family of dog breeders and became more focused on pet-food ingredients after losing a dog to rawhide poisoning. He left a comfortable marketing career after identifying an opportunity for single-ingredient, wholesome, natural treats. He and his brother began hand-slicing and dehydrating sweet potatoes in their parents’ kitchen; within 90 days, they were selling at farmers markets around Birmingham. Cutting uncooked sweet potatoes was difficult enough that the business eventually adopted a titanium-bladed mandolin, after his brother ignored advice to wear a metal glove and cut himself.

Gaines Family Farmstead’s mission combines pets as family, sustainable sourcing, and relationships with other family businesses. Dewar said the company buys from family-owned farms and uses family-owned manufacturers for its bags and cardboard, while valuing the ability to call founders and CEOs directly. At Birmingham’s Pepper Place market, the first customer’s dog spit out a sweet-potato treat, though the owner still bought a bag; the company sold about $100 that day. Farmers markets funded all early growth, exposed weak first product iterations, and supplied immediate feedback on pricing and demand.

Dewar initially recognized major potential in March 2020, when Costco and Tractor Supply approached the company at a trade show just before COVID shut the world down and erased its momentum. Amazon later invited him to Seattle for a holiday gift-guide photo shoot; he appeared on the cover of Amazon’s app, and a simple 30-second home video posted by Amazon received 27 million views in roughly 72 hours. The exposure sold out the company’s warehouse, Amazon inventory, and distributor inventory; there were no sweet potatoes available for 17 days. Dewar called the viral event almost business-ending because the company was not prepared, but it helped create momentum into 2023, when Costco and other major partnerships closed and the company raised capital.

With a team of 21, Dewar sees speed as Gaines Family Farmstead’s advantage over large pet brands. He said big companies require many layers of approval, whereas he can use an AI agent to design a new bag in five minutes and launch it within three weeks. He would also launch on Amazon before retail if starting over: retail purchase orders can reach $2 million with payment delayed 90 days, while Amazon lets a small brand compete around attributes such as family ownership, an American supply chain, and limited ingredients. Amazon’s IP Accelerator connected him with recommended trademark attorneys, securing the trademark in about two weeks and unlocking Brand Registry and A+ content.

Dewar identified Fulfillment by Amazon as the most transformative Amazon tool because building the infrastructure to ship hundreds of packages daily is complex. FBA—and its evolution into Amazon Warehousing and Distribution—lets the company scale quickly; Amazon can ship 10,000 boxes far more easily than Gaines Family Farmstead could from its own warehouse. Subscribe and Save is equally important for a consumable pet product: 40% of the company’s Amazon revenue comes from monthly subscribers. Dewar watches how quickly subscriptions rise after launching a product, treating recurring purchases as evidence that the product and positioning are working. He singled out longtime customer Robert Clark as an example, moving from farmers-market buyer to subscriber.

Dewar said he spent roughly 1,000 hours during the past year training AI agents, beginning with ChatGPT’s premium service and later separating specialized agents so every question would not depend on one enormous conversation history. His personal assistant, Axiom—or “Axe”—helps him manage the business, and one computer used in the system cost about $7,000. Amazon gave Gaines Family Farmstead, one of eight companies, early beta access to its Anthropic integration. Claude now handles about 95% of inventory planning, including what to buy, when to ship, whether inventory should go to FBA or AWD, and when the supply chain needs replenishment.

For aspiring sellers who feel overwhelmed, Dewar’s advice was to jump: entrepreneurs may assess risk differently, but today it costs nothing to create an Amazon listing and test whether an idea is real. He attends Amazon Accelerate because sellers can challenge Amazon employees directly, and he said those employees have revisited contentious decisions after hearing that sellers are also Amazon’s customers. His final message was that entrepreneurship is both challenging and rewarding: whether someone makes dog treats or candles in a kitchen, they should move forward, go live, accept that people may think they are crazy, and become comfortable with the risk.