So what's going on with the bowl stands?

Here’s the story: the bowl stands that were made in December did not meet our quality standards for a number of reasons, as illustrated below:

Holes cut for the bowls were too large. Which when in use, cheapened our beautiful concept by creating an obnoxious rattle-trap.

The adhesive used for the silicon was not permanent.

The edge quality wasn’t to our specifications. See those little “tabs” in the radius of the cut-out? This is left over from the punching process. Our manufacturer did not clean up the edges to our specifications before painting.

The manufacturer says there is nothing they can do about this, as the punching process in this gage of metal creates this rough edge finish. Which is frustrating, because it didn’t look this way on our original prototype.

We are doing several things right now to fix these problems and ensure that the product we release into the market meets our quality standards, ultimately because we care a whole lot about YOUR satisfaction with our product.

1) We have gotten quotes from laser cutting and water-jet cutting manufacturers to fix the edge finish problem. Due to cost, it is likely we will be choosing the laser cutting process. Tolerances on the V.2 design are tighter on the bowl holes, eliminating the “rattle-trap” effect.

2) We have located a permanent adhesive for the silicon! This adhesive, paired with a lower durometer (softer) and thinner silicon, has fixed the peeling problem. Versions of the bowl stands with these modifications are in testing as we speak with some of our resident doggie testers!

Meet Rolf! Happy new companion to Lisa & Don Lehman.

Rolf is enjoying testing the blue bowl stand with grey silicon. So far, the silicon is sticking, and Rolf is satisfied.

And here again is Charlie, cute little guy belonging to Big Hearts Fund Vice President Melissa Scaglione and her fiance Peter. Charlie is testing the white bowl stand with red/orange silicon.

And here is Charlie, sharing with his friend Romy the Westie!

We promise to keep you updated as work on these progresses. We need all the help we can get! To make a donation to help us speed up the manufacturing process (we are also trying to begin accepting applications for aid!) please visit our donations page, or shoot me an e-mail: christy@bigheartsfund.org.