Eureka 440: Bark Air 

0:15You're listening to Eureka on Monocle Radio, brought to you by the team behind the entrepreneurs, this show all about inspiring people, innovative companies and fresh ideas in global business. I'm Tom Edwards. Matt Meeker is the founder and CEO of Bark, a company on a mission to make dogs happy. What began with toys has grown into a full-on brand with treats, food and even travel thanks to the launch of the world's first airline designed for dogs. Since its maiden flight in 2024, Bark Air has helped our four-legged friends and their people jet set between cities like New York, Los Angeles, London and Paris with more routes coming down the runway.

0:58So how do you go from squeaky toys to chartering planes and why focus only on dogs not pets more broadly? Well here is Matt with more on how the journey began.

1:16our mission is to make all dogs happy so if you have some customers there walking around your office or your home hopefully we've had the opportunity to make them happy but if not we're trying to get to all of them and make them all happy we started that in toys we've added some consumables like treats and food to that mix. Most recently, about a year ago, we added travel with an airline called Barguer to help dogs and their people travel together. So really, it's anything that we can do that will make dogs happy. Because of the way we started, that was really about making my dog happy and getting him the right products.

1:59He was a Great Dane, oversized, didn't fit in New York City, wasn't catered to. So it was really about making him happy and learning how a commerce business worked. The expansion just came about very naturally. It was about listening to the customer, solving their problems, solving our own problems like air travel with a Great Dane is impossible. So how do we get him from Florida over to London? It's impossible. So solving that problem, it really wasn't about, let's look at the latest Harvard business study and where there's some white space in the market, how do we fill it? But I think more so the questions are about why dogs, why not cats?

2:40Because more of the industry norm is you serve pets.

2:48The main reason for dogs and not cats is we know dogs. We feel we understand the relationship between dogs and their people. And the relationship between cats and their people is just a different relationship. Not better, not worse. My mom's the cat person in the family. But I would characterize the cats as roommates and the dogs as, like, best friends, as the sayings might go. So you just have a very different relationship. And that's something we feel we understand deeply. And then because of that, it taps into the brand and our opportunity to more authentically dream up new solutions or new products to serve that relationship and those customers.

3:32The most important thing is you just get started. You say, like, how do we do one flight? And that involves finding a plane and getting someone to loan it to you or sell it to you for a day or two. Then backing yourself into, we've got this plane. How do we sell it? How do we get people onto this plane? How do we make them aware? So creating the campaign around that, launching it to the world. We were excited about it. I had no idea what the reaction would be, but it seems to be very positive so far.

4:02When someone tries it, we blow them away and they keep coming back and we see a lot of return customers. And then they tell that story to others. You know, we're fortunate that we have, when it comes to customer experience and customer support, we have the best person in the world, in any company of any shape or size, who is, sorry for the pun, but on board with this venture and leading that. And so we've really designed every step of the experience incredibly well. We do a lot of things, like there's the spa treatment on board, and your dog has a spa treatment. And we serve them their water and their treats first before the humans get any sort of refreshments on board.

4:48And everything is designed around them, but it's really the little things. It's the fact that they're not put through a stressful security environment to board. They don't have to be stuffed into a duffel bag and placed under a seat so that they can just sit on the lap or on the floor next to their person's feet. From our side, it's little things like when they walk into the door of the airport, we greet the dog and we greet the dog by name. The person's almost secondary. It's, hi, Hugo. Thanks for flying with us today. Who's this that you brought along with you? And if you don't have the dog and you haven't flown with them or experienced the world with them, when something that small happens, it is the greatest stress relief you've ever seen.

5:35It's just like, oh, thank God they get it. They understand. And so it all falls away from there and you just feel so much more comfortable and welcome and at ease.

5:54That was Matt Meeker, the founder and CEO of Bark. And you can learn more by heading to bark.co or air.bark.co for more about the airline. And that's all for this episode of Eureka. We'll be back at the same time next week. Do keep an eye and an ear out for the entrepreneurs, available every Wednesday. Eureka was produced by Laura Kramer with audio editing by Jack Dewars. You can listen again and find out more at the swishnewmonocle.com. That's where you can join the club and subscribe to Monocle Magazine too. If you want to get in touch with the team, do email Laura on lrk at monocle.com. I'm Tom Edwards.

6:31Goodbye, and thanks for listening to Eureka.