August 22, 2012

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Making a living as an actor is not easy. Andrew Feld, the Founder of e-commerce pet services startup FreshPatch.com, knows the scenario all too well. “Casting directors sift through thousands of headshots before selecting the lucky few who get to audition. I was defeating big odds even if I was just invited to read for a part. Whenever I actually booked something, it felt like I had won the lottery.”

Entrepreneur Andrew Feld, and his dog Chloe

After years of scraping by in Los Angeles, Feld decided it was time to take control of his career. “I was tired of having my fate rest on the whim of a casting director and I was ready to try something new.

I’ve always loved animals and I knew that someday I would work with or help them in some capacity. When I came up with the concept for Fresh Patch, I knew it was a winner.”

So Feld, who started out working as an actor in television commercials and music videos under the stage name Andrew Craghan decided to cast and direct his career — as an entrepreneur.

Tired of waiting for the phone to ring, he created his own national pet services company FreshPatch.com, a convenient indoor bathroom solution for dogs.

Today Feld’s company ships living grass fitted within a convenient and disposable container — a stylish alternative to unsightly pee pads, the grass patches are disposed of and replaced when a new one arrives via FedEx. Learn how Andrew Feld traded in scripts for business plans and why you should develop a work-life balance early on.

How I Got Started:

When pee pads and synthetic grass toilets wouldn’t work with my dog Chloe, I developed my own solution to the problem. My wife thought I was crazy.  Every week I would bring home a new box or different type of grass to test with Chloe. It took several months before I had a working prototype.

I tested the product locally in Miami to see if people were willing to pay for a grass delivery service for their dogs. It was very scary early on.  I had invested all this time and money on a vision that was in my head. But I knew I had a hit when emails and phone calls started coming in from across the country.

Today, we are growing our business and the Fresh Patch brand as the ultimate in-home training system for dogs. Our customers don’t waste time, energy, and money on paper pads or synthetic grass that is bad for the environment and not intuitive for most dogs. Dogs instinctively want to “go” on real grass — and now dog owners can give their loved ones a convenient way to do so, indoors.

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