Before Fika's Freaky Friends, I was working for tech startups in San Francisco. I was grateful to be able to work from home during Fika's puppy phase, but I felt unfulfilled at work without much opportunity to be creative so I was itching to find an outlet for myself.

One day, I took Fika to a pet store and wanted to get her a nice new toy. But I was struggling to pick something from the huge selection on the shelf. First, I considered what animals we were still missing in our toy collection. Then I wondered if Fika had a favorite type of animal. But I realized that this is a silly way to buy toys. Dogs don't know what animals actually look like and they probably don't understand the connection between different toys modeled after the same animal. They just want something fun to play with!

So I thought, wouldn't it be great if the cute and ridiculous nicknames that I give Fika were dog toys? Now that would make it easy to pick something out!

This seemed to be the fun idea I was looking for. So I decided to design something that Fika would love. I created my first designs based on what she was already playing with every day. She plays with her toys in lots of different ways, so I wanted something that would be versatile enough for her to always want to play with.

I placed an order for 4 custom-made toys, and gave them to Fika to test them out. She LOVED them! When I shared videos of her playing with the toys with friends and family, they kept asking if they could buy them anywhere. This is when my idea of Fika's Freaky Friends changed from a fun idea to a business idea and I quit my job to focus on it full time.