11/30/2024
Happy Small Business Saturday from Eileen & Garry!
In 2018, Garry and I opened our original location in Downtown Los Angeles with little more than a small SBA loan and a lot of sweat! After a 24 hour round of final construction and set up completed by the two of us, neighbors, friends and staff, we opened our doors on National Dog Day, August 26th. I couldn’t stand anymore and left Garry to finish up at 3 am, with equipment and boxes still piled practically to the ceiling in the room where the play park would be. I honestly thought, there is no way we will be ready by 8 am. When I returned a few hours later, I saw Pupper Club for the first time and couldn’t believe it. We’d actually done it.
In November of 2020, with the pandemic still keeping much of the city closed, our journey brought us to San Diego, where we built a brand new facility in a 3600 SF space. After 2 years of construction, a fancy architecture firm and the best contractors money could buy, we finally completed the build and opened our doors. As much as we loved what we had accomplished in this new location, after a year, the space was just too expensive an undertaking for a still baby of a business to sustain. Instead of leaving the neighborhood and customers we had come to love and who we knew depended on us, we looked across the parking lot to a space that felt much like our original space. In this older space, with lots of charm and a few bruises, we rebuilt Pupper Club in a former yoga studio. With another small loan and no fancy architects or big construction firms, we recreated our original San Diego facility as best we could and opened our doors 2 days after closing the first facility, on October 1, 2023.
Here we are 14 months later in a facility we, our staff and customers have grown to love. As we continue to improve the space a little at a time, we are welcoming new puppers into our pack. Over this Thanksgiving Holiday, we are caring for over 25 puppers, which is a record for us! The space can only accommodate 35 - 40, so we’re beyond excited to have so many wiggly butts in our care and the trust of their amazing humans. Thank you for being a part of our story! 🙏🏻🐶