When Tristen Gratz launched her business, she just wanted a way to make her car payment every month.
Working an unfulfilling job as a customer service representative in an insurance firm, Gratz remembered the days she traveled the Rocky Mountains and the Grand Canyon. While she was fine staying in Largo, she wanted a way to ensure the nature she saw growing up remained intact.
"I became enamored with the beauty in nature, so I set out to preserve those treasures," she said. "And I love animals, so I married both. It was breaking my heart, the contribution of pollution to my planet. I wanted to do something, I just didn’t know what to do."
In 2014, Gratz launched EcoBark Pet Supplies. It creates leashes and harnesses made out of sustainable materials, including recycled water bottles, hemp and bamboo. She launched the business on Amazon for a simple reason: It's where she bought her own clothes.
"I didn’t know much about marketing — I had three degrees in history and had no idea what I was doing, so the obvious answer was to go straight to Amazon because I bought from it," she said. "I would put my son to bed and I would study extensively how Amazon worked. It was probably four hours every night, and I would stay up and research, research, research."
Five years later, she was selected among six small businesses in the nation as a contender for Amazon's Small Business of the Year spotlight.
"It was my CEO who said, 'I want you to apply for this,'" Gratz said. "And I said, 'No' and they said, 'Just do it, you never know.' I was so excited [when I was chosen], I screamed and jumped for joy."
An initial $1,500 investment from Gratz's personal funds — "My entire life savings at that point" — has turned into a million-dollar-a-year in revenue for the company. Products are also sold on Chewy.com, Walmart, Better Homes and Garden and Martha Stewart's websites.
Gratz believes in addition to the products being eco-friendly, using biodegradable plastic for shipping through Amazon is what helped her stand out among the applicants.
"All the shipping materials are biodegradable, which eliminates thousands of plastic bags," she said. "We just switched over because of how many bags go to Amazon. It's more expensive, but helps save a lot of plastic bags. That's probably what made us stand out."
Gratz is focusing on a slew of new products coming out from the company, including a heavy duty harness line and new colors for the products.
"I think I was two months in, three months in and I got 10 sales in a day and I was ecstatic about that, saying, 'Oh my God, I can pay my car payment,'" she said. "I would never dream it can be over a million in sales a year."
