The Women Behind the Brands We Love

Women’s Month gives us an opportunity to celebrate the people whose ideas sit behind products we interact with every day.

For Ginnabelle’s, Jacki Little of Gizzls, Leza Marais of Houndstooth Apparel, Ceri Phillips of From The Barkery, and Margie and Paula of Badoodoo are part of that story.

Their stories begin in different places, with different dogs (and, in one case, a very special cat), but they share a common thread: each woman saw an opportunity to create something better.

And that, ultimately, is what makes knowing the people and stories behind the products rather special. These are the women behind some of the South African dog brands we love.

Jacki Little: The Woman Behind Gizzls

Every good brand has an origin story. Gizzls has Gizzy.

Jacki Little’s journey began with her rescue cat, whose illness prompted her to look more carefully at something most of us have picked up without a second thought: the ingredient list on a packet of pet treats.

What she found left her wanting something simpler and more considered, treats that could support Gizzy’s health rather than work against it.

So she made them herself.

Gizzls began in Jacki’s kitchen, with a mixer, an oven and a determination to understand what she was putting into the treats she made. That small beginning eventually grew into a Cape Town pet treat brand centred on carefully selected ingredients, thoughtful recipes and small-batch baking.

Today, Gizzls produces a range of natural treats for dogs and cats, from its Botanical Biscuits and Soft Bites to recipes created with specific functional benefits in mind. The recipes are developed with input from a pet nutritionist and holistic vet, and the treats continue to be baked in Gizzls’ own Cape Town bakery rather than outsourced.

It is a wonderful story. But a wonderful story alone does not make customers come back. The quality does.

At Ginnabelle’s, Gizzls is one of those brands we see customers return to time and time again. They find a treat their dog loves, they see the benefits it brings, and they come back for more. 

That, to us, says more about the brand than any origin story could.

The care that began with Gizzy is still evident in the way Jacki approaches the products today, in the ingredients she chooses, the recipes she develops and the standard she expects from what carries the Gizzls name.

Leza Marais: Where Houndstooth Apparel Meets Fashion

If Gizzls began with ingredients, Houndstooth Apparel began with another familiar frustration: why should something practical have to be ordinary?

For founder Leza Marais, the answer was that it shouldn’t.

Before Houndstooth, Leza had spent years working in fashion. Her experience as a stylist and designer gave her an eye for fabric, proportion, construction and detail—and when she turned that eye towards the canine world, she saw an opportunity to create dog apparel that treated design and function as equally important.

Houndstooth Apparel followed.

Houndstooth Apparel is crafted and curated around quality, design and sustainability, and Leza’s fashion background is immediately apparent in the collection. There are tailored coats, collars and leads, but also the unmistakable sense that someone has considered how each piece should sit, move, feel and, naturally, look.

It is an approach that makes perfect sense for dogs.

A beautiful coat is of little use if its wearer cannot move comfortably. A collar may make a style statement, but it still has a job to do. A lead must feel considered in the hand while standing up to the decidedly unglamorous realities of daily walks.

Houndstooth occupies that lovely space between the two.

There is fashion, certainly, but never at the expense of the dog wearing it.

That balance is what makes Leza’s work so distinctive. She takes the things dogs genuinely need and gives them the attention normally reserved for objects we choose purely because they are beautiful.

The result is a distinctly South African interpretation of canine style: polished but practical, design-conscious without taking itself too seriously.

Call it hound couture, if you like. The dogs, thankfully, remain blissfully unaware of how chic they look.

Ceri Phillips: From The Barkery, With Love

Some brands are born from necessity.

From The Barkery was born from the rather delightful idea that dogs deserved their own menu.

The story begins in 2011, when Ceri Phillips and her husband were restaurant owners and their two black Labradors, Barkley and Bentley, were very much part of the family.

Dogs visited the restaurants too, and Ceri began wondering why the humans should have all the fun.

Her answer was the 4 Paws Menu, featuring wholesome treats made especially for canine guests.

It might have remained a charming restaurant detail. Instead, Ceri kept going.

She did not want to create just another dog biscuit. The treats needed personality. With her team, she developed dog-friendly frosting and began decorating biscuits with names and playful little messages—woof, yum and other sentiments far more interesting to a Labrador than anything one might find inside a fortune cookie.

Barkley and Bentley received their own special boxes for birthdays and Christmas.

Eventually, a question presented itself: why shouldn’t other dogs have them too?

And so From The Barkery took shape.

There is still something celebratory about the brand today. Its colourful biscuits, shapes, personalised details and gift-worthy creations understand a particular truth about modern dog ownership: sometimes we simply want an excuse to make a fuss of them.

Margie & Paula: The Creative World of Badoodoo

Then there is Badoodoo, the creation of mother-and-daughter duo Margie and Paula.

If some founders begin with one product and spend years perfecting variations of it, Margie and Paula seem constitutionally incapable of stopping at one good idea.

And we mean that as the highest compliment.

Badoodoo is the sort of brand where you discover a beautiful dog bed and think you understand the brief, only to encounter grooming products, bone broth, Pawfume or pillow mist around the next corner.

There is a playful expansiveness to the range, as though every small ritual of living with a dog has been examined and met with the question: could this be better?

That instinct began with their own dogs.

Margie and Paula started Badoodoo after struggling to find the kinds of products they wanted themselves. Rather than accepting what was available, they began imagining their own alternatives.

What followed is a brand built around the details.

That does not mean creating products simply for novelty's sake. The charm of Badoodoo is that its ideas still have to earn their place. Products need a purpose, but Margie and Paula also understand that purpose and pleasure need not be opposites.

A dog bed can be comfortable and beautiful.

A grooming product can be useful and lovely to have in your home.

Even the everyday routines of dog ownership can be made a little more considered.

For us, that sense of possibility is what makes Badoodoo so enjoyable to stock. There always seems to be another idea coming, and, quite often, it is something we had not realised we needed until we saw it.

The People Behind the Products

It is tempting, particularly in a world of immaculate packaging and perfectly styled photographs, to think of a brand as the finished thing.

A logo. A website. A product on a shelf.

But brands begin much earlier than that.

They begin in kitchens and studios, at sewing machines and restaurant tables. They begin with ingredient labels being read more carefully, a coat that cannot quite be found, a Labrador who deserves his own birthday biscuit, or a mother and daughter wondering why an everyday dog product cannot be made differently.

That is what we have loved most about bringing these stories together.

There is no single formula for creating a great South African pet brand.

Jacki Little built Gizzls from a desire to rethink what went into the treats she gave her beloved Gizzy. Leza Marais brought years of fashion experience to Houndstooth Apparel and applied the principles of thoughtful design to dogs. Ceri Phillips transformed an idea for a restaurant dog menu into From The Barkery. Margie and Paula turned their search for better products for their own dogs into the ever-expanding world of Badoodoo.

Different women. Different ideas. Different brands.

But behind each is the same willingness to look at something familiar and imagine it better.

As a retailer, Ginnabelle’s gets to join the story much later.

To Jacki, Leza, Ceri, Margie and Paula, thank you for trusting Ginnabelle’s with the beautiful things you create, and for bringing so much imagination, quality and care to South Africa’s pet industry.

We are very proud to have a little piece of each of your stories on our store. And our dogs, it must be said, have done rather well out of it too.