Made in Maine vests keep dogs visible during hunting season

Ann Bryant/Sun Journal

Dog safety products made in Maine, Dog Not Gone, keep pets and hunting dogs visible during hunting season. Julie Swain was given a design and asked to create the bright orange vests. Swain and her husband, Bill, operate the growing, part-time, visibility products business from their home in Kingfield. Julie, above, along with her daughter, Maggie, display vest model, Max on Monday.

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- Ann Bryant/Sun Journal

Ann Bryant/Sun Journal

Dog safety products made in Maine, Dog Not Gone,  keep pets and hunting dogs visible during hunting season. Julie Swain was given a design and asked to create the bright orange vests. Swain and her husband, Bill, operate the growing, part-time, visibility products business from their home in Kingfield. The couple's dog, Max, poses with a vest Monday.

 

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- Ann Bryant/Sun Journal

Ann Bryant/Sun Journal

Dog safety products made in Maine, Dog Not Gone,  keep pets and hunting dogs visible during hunting season. Julie Swain was given a design and asked to create the bright orange vests. Swain and her husband, Bill, operate the growing, part-time, visibility products business from their home in Kingfield. Julie is pictured Monday with daughter, Maggie, and vest model, Max.

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- Ann Bryant/Sun Journal

KINGFIELD — The northern woods is ablaze with orange vests but hunters are not the only ones decked out in orange this hunting season. Canines brought along for the hunt and those who roam their own back yards are just a little safer with a Maine-made product called Dog Not Gone vests and collars.

A Kingfield couple, Julie and Bill Swain, have worked to develop the durable, light weight vests and collars into a part-time business they can run from their home, Julie said Monday.

A "ski bum and white water raft instructor," Julie visited the northern Franklin County area a couple times before trading a system analyst position in Portland to "follow your heart instead of what you think you should do," she said.

She started sewing fleece items and opened a shop in Kingfield that was geared toward winter skiers on their way to Sugarloaf.

A bird hunter approached her with a design for a vest for hunting dogs and offered it to her if she could sew a lightweight, durable vest out of a material called 10 Mile Cloth, she said.

While many vests are made of nylon, the vests can tear as the dogs go through brush. This material is strong but light enough so that the dog doesn't overheat, she said.

Although this transpired about 12 years ago, when she closed the fleece shop she abandoned the dog vests, she said. Then she married and the couple came back to it about six years ago.

An order for 200 vests kept her working through a winter while waiting the birth of her first child. The couple realized they could sell more if they "ramped it up with commercial production," said Bill Swain, who works as an independent consultant for others while also doing the marketing piece of the dog visibility product.

Swain and some of his friends were brainstorming ideas for a company name and logo and played off the saying, "dog begone," changing it to "Dog Not Gone," an appropriate name for the canine safety products, Julie said.

A factory in Skowhegan, Dirigo Stitching, now does the actual sewing while Julie covers management and sales for the product with sales running about 5,000 a year. Local access to quality control and keeping the product made in Maine has been an important aspect of their success, she said. Although labor costs for sewing done in Mexico would be cheaper, the couple are committed to keeping the work here in Maine, she said while praising the Skowhegan firm that also sews awnings.

"People love Maine . . . they love that it's made in small towns in Maine," she said of the business that has grown mostly by word of mouth and provided vests and now an orange collar that slips over the dog's collar for dog owners along the East Coast. The next move is to include a line of vests for smaller dogs and to take the product national, she said.

The material is purchased from South Carolina keeping the product entirely U.S. made.  Maine stores have carried the vests and collars including Reny’s, the Kennel Shops and LL Bean.  

“I was at Reny’s and noticed they had lots of orange items for humans but nothing for dogs,” Julie said. She contacted John Reny whom she found supportive of  Maine-made items, she said.

Working as a bookkeeper in the Sugarloaf community, Julie can maintain flexible hours working at home while tending her daughter and awaiting a second child in January, she said. Both she and Bill enjoy the outdoors and are happy with the quality of life they've found in the small Maine town.

More information can be found on their Web site, www.dognotgone.com

abryant@sunjournal.com