04 — Lumi Pawtners
What happens when you help build a startup from scratch?
Co-Founder · Product · Brand · Customer Experience · Marketing
2023 - Present
Lumi Pawtners started with a simple idea: make walking dogs after dark safer. As a Co-Founder, I helped turn that idea into a consumer brand—working across product experience, brand development, creative direction, e-commerce, Kickstarter, customer relationships, partnerships, events, and the many unexpected challenges between an idea and a product in someone's hands.
Impact:
Funded in 26 hours
Kickstarter reached its funding goal in just over a day.
Project We Love
Selected by Kickstarter as a featured project.
From idea → market
Helped build the product, brand, and customer experience from concept through launch and distribution.
The Short Version
It started with a pup named Sloan.
Lumi didn't begin with a market opportunity. It began with a dog named Sloan. After being diagnosed with Progressive Retinal Atrophy (PRA), Sloan began losing his eyesight, and his confidence changed too. His pawtner, Jeff, started tinkering with ways to help him navigate the world more safely. What began as a homemade solution eventually became an early version of the Lumi harness.
If this could help Sloan, how many other dogs—and the people who love them—could it help too?
That idea became Lumi Pawtners.
Bringing Lumi to life.
We were a small team of engineers, developers, and creatives who believed in the product and its potential to help dogs and their people see and be seen. There wasn't exactly a job description, we built the plane while it was in flying. I collaborated on product decisions, helped guide the design and content of our ecommerce website, contributed to the Lumi Pro companion app UI (in development), and advocated for features supporting service dogs and their handlers.
On the brand side, I led our voice and guidelines, created digital and print materials, produced photo and video content, and managed an external social marketing team. I also built an influencer and brand ambassador program with sales-based commissions.
We weren't really selling lights. We were selling the confidence to walk your dog after dark.
Taking the leap with Kickstarter.
We weren't introducing just another dog harness. We were bringing a new approach to pet visibility to market, combining powerful wearable lighting with the comfort and practicality of an everyday harness. That meant showing people how the technology worked and why it mattered before they could experience it themselves. I helped shape the campaign's storytelling and creative direction, developing product graphics, animations, photography, video, and content that brought Lumi to life.
The campaign raised $24,197 from 130 backers, giving Lumi its first community of supporters.
Beyond the launch.
Getting Lumi into customers' hands was only one part of the journey. Our illuminated harness went from an early prototype to a manufactured product available through major retailers and online marketplaces, including PetSmart, Chewy, and Walmart. Lumi also gained national exposure through coverage on CBS Saturday Morning and other media segments, along with celebrity influencers and ambassador collaborations.
I supported that growth through retail presentations, sales collateral, trade show events like SuperZoo, and partnerships with organizations including Butte Humane Society and Dog Squad Rescue.
Trust me when I say there were challenges, too. We’re talking manufacturing delays, product and manufacturer changes, tariffs, international shipping delays, product malfunctions, lost packages —things beyond our control which meant communicating directly with customers, addressing concerns, gathering feedback, and finding solutions.
Brand wasn't just how we presented ourselves. It was how we responded when someone was disappointed.
What Lumi taught me.
Building Lumi gave me a much wider definition of design and entrepreneurship. Being part of a small team that took a physical product from an idea to something manufactured, sold, and used by real customers around the world was an experience unlike any other.
Building something you believe in isn’t easy. Startups come with big ambitions, competing priorities, difficult decisions, and plenty of unexpected challenges. Learning to navigate those differences while keeping the bigger picture in mind became as much a part of the experience as creating the product itself. Design doesn't end with the product. It's the packaging someone opens, the email explaining a delay, the relationships you build, and the experience someone has with your brand long after making a purchase.
Every interaction teaches someone what kind of company you are, and it also teaches you more about who you are.
That's the perspective I bring to product, brand, and customer experience work today, grounded in real-life experience and the person I strive to be.
