By Glenn Rolfe

MILLSBORO — It was by all accounts a rather humble beginning.

About 19 years ago, dog lover Lisa St. Clair — from a shed in the backyard of her rural Hollyville Road home outside of Millsboro — began making homemade dog treats for her sick pup.

Today, she is the proud owner of TailBangers, an all-natural dog treat business based in Millsboro that has nationwide demand and appeal for the likes of such treats as Barkin’ Biscotti, Canine Cannoli, Pawcan Twirls and scores of others.

“We ship to almost every state,” said Ms. St. Clair. Hawaii and Alaska are about the only exceptions, she says.

With 65 employees, TailBangers operates on two fronts. Treats, donuts and cookies are baked in the 5,000-square-foot bakery adjacent to her Hollyville Road home and then decorated at the Betts Pond Road complex, which doubles as the shipping/warehouse hub.

Company growth, wholesale demand, a need for more production space and a loan opportunity through Sussex County have fueled expansion plans that include.

• a 3,000-square-foot addition onto the existing Betts Pond Road building,

• expanded retail, shipping and warehouse operations,

• a dog park complex on property along U.S. 113 she purchased from her landlord.

Armed with a $1.7 million low-interest loan through the Excite Sussex Fund, Ms. St. Clair has hopes and dreams.

“My dream would be I want to put a doggie water park in. Like a splash pad and a regular park as well because we have this area,” Ms. St. Clair said. “There will be a lot of green space. I want to make it a fun place.”

“I want to make TailBangers a destination. We are on the way to the beach. We used to do so many bakery tours. I’m not going to allow people to come through the building anymore, but in the new retail shop we’re going to put a small bakery where we kind of do a ‘hands-on, this is how it all started type of thing.’”

The dog park and facilities would be available for people who want to bring their dogs and have a birthday party.

“I’d love a splash park — God willing and the county willing. I’d love to have food trucks,” Ms. St. Clair said. “I think it would be huge. I think it would be a fun addition to Millsboro and to Sussex County.”

Ms. St. Clair said Sussex County Economic Director Bill Pfaff approached her about the Excite Sussex Fund. The offer — too good to refuse, she said — enabled her to purchase property adjacent to her original Betts Pond Road building. That now totals about 3 ½ acres.

“Bill Pfaff is a fabulous guy. He came to me and was like, ‘Sussex County has money. We want to be able to get you this loan.’ I was like, ‘Okay.’ It’s a 2.5% loan over 25 years. It’s unheard of!” said Ms. St. Clair. “What that allowed me to do was we already owned this building, so we just wrapped the mortgage of this building and bought the property out on the highway from my landlord. I own it. We bought new equipment. We rolled a bunch of equipment into this loan.”

While Ms. St. Clair remains dedicated to a personal, hands-on touch, TailBangers has entered the world of automation. A 3D printer machine she has specially made can decorate several thousand cookies daily, with such reward wordings as “Good Boy” or “Good Girl.”

Of course, employees still are tasked with treat decorating.

“We’ve invested a lot in automation. TailBangers will always be a company that is very hands-on and very manual, but at the same time you have to be able to keep up with the demand,” said Ms. St. Clair. “I personally am trying to make a better work environment for my people. We’ve got everything from machines that can cut cookies and make pretzels to machines that can coat the cookies and now we even have a machine that writes on cookies.”

Ms. St. Clair says automation will not reduce workforce.

“None of their jobs will change. A lot of people have a problem with automation because they think you are taking people’s jobs but what it does is it just moves jobs around and enables you to really focus on the things that you need to focus on and make things easier on people,” said Ms. St. Clair. “It opens up a lot of opportunities for us.”

“Now, all of the baking is done at Hollyville Road and we bring finished cookies to be decorated and we ship out of the shipping building,” Ms. St. Clair said.

More space

While one of TailBangers’ biggest accounts was lost when retailer Pet Valu closed during the COVID-19 pandemic, business is booming.

“My competitors didn’t shut down. The pet industry exploded during the pandemic. We lost our second largest customer — Pet Value — over $1 million account. We lost them in December, but we are up 35% regardless. That is over last year’s numbers, but we are still up 15% over the year prior — pre-COVID. We would grow faster if we had more room,” said Ms. St. Clair.

Pet Supplies Plus has assumed much of the slack, which necessitates accommodating pre-orders, where “they pre-order their Halloween and Christmas stuff so they could make sure their cases we stocked,” Ms. St. Clair said.

“PSP is our largest, and they want 1,200 pre-books at a time. A pre-book consists of like 500 cookies. And they are not all the same kind,” Ms. St. Clair said. “On a daily basis we are shipping out 70 orders a day. So, we have to be able to continue doing that while we’re also building these pre-books. The only time we don’t have a pre-book is in the summertime. The rest of the year we are constantly working on a pre-book.”

TailBangers has split its website link to address retail and wholesale.

“Ninety-eight percent of our business is wholesale, only 2% is retail, so our goal is to increase our retail,” Ms. St. Clair said. “We’re doing a lot of with our retail website trying to get brand recognition and really going direct to consumers.”

Rough times during COVID

Except for a brief shutdown, TailBangers was in production throughout COVID. It was vastly different.

“We shut down for two weeks when the pandemic first hit. I shut down my website for an entire month — so stores couldn’t order from us,” Ms. St. Clair said. “When we shut down, we had 50 employees. When we came back, I had eight. Those were tough days. Everybody was so afraid. We have electro-static sprayers. It was like you were walking into a hospital. We got rid of our retail store. Nobody was allowed in or out.”

“Slowly but surely, we got our people to come back. They started being like, ‘Okay, it’s safe in there. Lisa is doing all these things.’ I fed my people. I cooked for them all the way up until July (2020),” said Ms. St. Clair. “Nobody left the building. You were in quarantine. Once you got there you were quarantined. We had strict rules. We just did away with masks for now, but we don’t let anybody in the front doors that isn’t an employee other than certain vendors, things like that.”

In the beginning

“I was in the restaurant business and I was looking to get out of it. But I couldn’t at first. So I started the (TailBangers) company in 2003 with a business partner — Cheryl Myers. I bought her out after about six years. But she stayed on; she is just really smart with money. She keeps me in line. She is like one of my best friends in the whole wide world,” said Ms. St. Clair, noting the success Ms. Myers has had as owner of AmeriSpec Inspection Services Delaware, a home inspection company.”

The first TailBangers move was down on Long Neck Road.

“We used to be where Paradise Pub is now, in that strip mall,” said Ms. St. Clair. “We would be wrapping pallets on the sidewalk. We did have a garage door. If a load didn’t get picked up we’d have to unpalletized it and bring it back in. It was a nightmare.”

On Long Neck, they weathered two hurricanes.

“They would say we’re going to get this 9-foot storm swell, and it would always happen in the fall when I am gearing up for Christmas. I would evacuate the entire building, pack up every cookie in there and every piece of equipment and move it out of there,” said Ms. St. Clair. “I knew when I was looking for a new place to be, I did not want to be anywhere near the water. So we moved into Betts Pond Road — this location.”

She bought it Jan. 24, 2014. “We were able to move in April 1 of that year,” said Ms. St. Clair. “At that time, we had the bakery here. The bakery in one part, decorating in the other part. After 1 ½ years we were outgrowing this place. And that has been the case ever since I started the company.”

It’s a woman’s world

Aside from grand expansion plans, Ms. St. Clair is pursuing another noteworthy distinction.

“We’ve always been a women-owned company. This past year we’ve gone after getting the certification to be a Women Owned Business, which opens up a lot of doors for us as a company,” said Ms. St. Clair. “It’s basically a six-month process. Government background checks. It would make me eligible to get government contracts. Big companies like Cosco and BJs Wholesale and stuff like that, they have a certain amount of business that they have to do with minority and women-owned businesses. It gives you an opportunity not to get in the backdoor but kind of get in the side-door.”

“I’ve earned the mantle. I’ve been knocking it out myself for 18 years. I deserve to be able to put that on my products,” said Ms. St. Clair. “We have way more women that work here than men. Women driving forklifts, running equipment. For some reason it just attracts women. I don’t know if it is just the dog thing or what. It just attracts women.”

In addition to WOB designation, Ms. St. Clair is seeking SQF (Safe Quality Food) certification for those who desire to go above and beyond food safety.

SQF certification, Ms. St. Clair said would show “our facility is clean, that we can manufacture human food. I don’t think there is a dog owner out there that has not eaten one of our dog treats. If you feed our dog treats to your dogs, you’ve taken a bite of our treats.”

However, she has no plans to actually produce “human” food. “No, I just want the certification,” she said. “It shows the dedication we have to the product, to our customers and to their pets.”

Challenges ahead

There are hurdles that need to be cleared for TailBangers’ future plans.

“I don’t have county water-sewer. In order to do any expansion, I’d have to increase the size of my septic system. I’d have to move my well. County sewer and water is like a mile from me,” said Ms. St. Clair. “I’m working with my architect, engineers. Every time I think I am ready to go and we’re going to get the approvals, there is just ‘one more thing that you need.’ And now with prices of lumber and building materials, the amount of money I had set aside for this expansion that was incorporated in the loan is about half the money that I need to do the buildout. So, we’ve just got to sell a lot of dog treats. I’m not worried. It will happen.”