In building any pet product, it is important to know the potential design, or what we like to call the “product brief.” It starts with the claims, the nutritional goals, the available processes and, most importantly, the ingredient inventory and availability. We need to know the “must-haves,” the “nice-to-haves” and the “I-don’t-want-to haves.”
Without this input and understanding, product development is constantly changing and frustrating, causing delays and failures, as important, escalating restrictions of what can be used limits the potential paths to success. I like to call it “the degree of difficulty” that a project has. The biggest impediments are ingredient restrictions, flexibility and availability, which can lead to unique processing difficulties, higher costs and inventory issues.
