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Private Label, Gold Standard
How BarkDine helps pet brands scale with traceability, flexibility, and a legacy of innovation.
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Issue #209
June 30th, 2025
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🫢 When he launched his pet food business, he never thought he would be getting a letter from Hugo Boss
This week, we are speaking with Mark and Erik Johnson, the father-son duo who founded BarkDine, a private-label manufacturer of premium-quality natural animal chews.
Mark, with over 30 years in the pet industry - from training and showing dogs to launching treat companies - how has your hands-on experience shaped BarkDine’s approach to product development and innovation?
My three decades in the pet industry, starting as a dog owner and trainer, shaped BarkDine's product development by emphasizing customer and canine needs. My experience in showing and breeding dogs highlighted the importance of diet for overall health and appearance, which in the show world is very much critiqued.
Working as a sales rep for pet food distributors provided Mark with extensive knowledge of canine nutrition, beneficial ingredients, and their impact on health. Visiting hundreds of retailers taught him about pricing, presentation, positioning, and the critical role of product education in sales.
Transitioning to manufacturing, Mark leveraged his background to understand raw material selection, proper processing, and pricing. Early manufacturing roles involved on-site visits to packing houses to identify available materials and negotiate fair prices. While raw materials were cheaper in the 1990s, the focus now is on sourcing safe and beneficial materials and collaborating effectively with packing houses by providing clear specifications.
Erik, having grown up inside this business, how has that early exposure shaped your understanding of today’s dog owners and their evolving expectations?
This has been an interesting evolution, to say the least. I believe what sums up everything in a simple phrase is “Fur-Baby”. Millennials, of which I am one, have paved this path of pet ownership to recognize our pets as family members, with a large percentage of millennials owning pets before starting families.
Both my wife and I owned a dog before meeting, and we both had worries about whether our dogs would get along with each other because both dogs were so heavily integrated in our lives, it had to work, like a prerequisite. We laugh about it now. But this is the new age of pet ownership, and pet owners today truly want the best for their “Fur-babies”. They are more engaged in what they are feeding them, washing them with, or even sleeping on. Some dog socials have more followers than celebrities. Ask someone in their 20’s or 30’s if that seems odd, the answer is no. Ask someone in their 60’s or 70’s and you get a different answer.
Walk us through your white-label development process. From ideation to production, what makes BarkDine a go-to partner for brands aiming to launch or scale a premium treat line?
It starts with an understanding of the client, their background, and the sales channels they are choosing. We can help with positioning depending on the channel with our deep understanding of the competition in the marketplace. When the products are chosen and the positioning is understood, we become very valuable to our clients post-launch. Most brands starting out do not fully understand their Inventory turnover rate in that first year. The importance of keeping inventory is critical.
To help alleviate a circumstance where a client may have tremendous growth unforeseen, we operate on a shorter horizon than most processors when it comes to production. This keeps scheduling flexible. In order to keep scheduling flexible, we must have strong vendor and logistics relationships. The point being, our operation is built to help mitigate the unforeseen factors.
Marc & Eric Johnson
What elements of your proprietary process - from sourcing to packaging - set BarkDine apart in terms of quality, consistency, and customization for private-label partners?
Our process is simple and clean for products that are not simple in the slightest. The exciting aspect of producing natural chews and treats is that they are not all produced the same. We have developed through experience and experimentation over the years that perfect amount of time, temperature, and airflow for each raw material to produce a finished product that highlights the intended use. For example, something like the popular bully stick, intended for chew time and duration, we process the product to form a thick “Skin” that produces a higher tensile strength.
Our first priority is that the product is premium quality and made for end-consumer satisfaction. Consistency is a moving target when you are working with natural materials, but we size by length and weight ranges with sorting machinery - again with the intention to satisfy end consumers’ expectations. When it comes to Private Label and customizations, there are ways we can shape materials, but that’s nothing new. At BarkDine, we look at ways we can innovate the natural chews and not just with shape. We are paving the way for brands to introduce functional natural chews, in a category that has long been recognized as a commodity.
You’ve experienced notable growth in recent years. What were the pivotal decisions or moments that helped unlock that next level of scale or capability?
We have experienced controlled growth. We have consistently taken risks to grow our business, any entrepreneur knows that feeling. What sticks out the most was moving from a 7,000 sq ft. Facility to 40,000 sq ft. And added several new dryers. We bet on ourselves, we bet on our products, we bet on our people. By no means did we need that space at the time, but we knew what that space could accomplish in scale and capability, and that has been the absolute focus since the move.
As a family-run business, how does that dynamic influence your operations and long-term strategy? Do you find it creates a competitive advantage in building trust with brand partners?
Internally, we work so well together that it creates a competitive advantage. Our visions are aligned, and our partnership is strong. When it comes to building trust with our brand partners, it is not the first thing we promote. Our strength is in our company and what we produce. Successful family-run businesses from inception to scale are not very common, so it is a testament to how we work together and operate.
With demand growing for traceability and ethical sourcing, how is BarkDine integrating sustainability into your supply chain, for both your own standards and client expectations?
This is very important in reference to how customer expectations have changed over the years. Today, customers want to know more behind the scenes. We are proud to support sustainable farms and ranches when available. The disconnect with sourcing natural chews from these types of outfits is the volume. Unfortunately, the steer only has one pizzle and 4 tendons, so if the goal is to supply a client with 100,000 tendons, I need that outfit to process 25,000 cattle to generate the volume. Scale of production matters for efficiencies in production and logistics.
With that said, we have teamed up with a company and a founder who has a rich history in the sustainability movement, and we are working to help solve this issue by aggregating these operations all over the country, lessening the logistical deterrent to be a consistent supply chain. By nature, natural chew companies are a value-add business, upcycling a rendered product and elevating it to be a nutritive and highly desired product for dogs. We are always evaluating opportunities to give our customers more options with material claims beyond Made in the USA.
Where is private label headed in the pet industry? What trends do you believe will define the next 3–5 years in manufacturing, brand partnerships, and innovation?
We believe Private Label / White Label is going to be the most strategic position in the pet industry. There are thousands of independent pet stores around the country and many of them have multiple locations. How do they set themselves apart from the competition down the street beyond their customer service? We believe there will be a push in the market for more independent retail, brick and mortar, mom and pop stores that would like to put their brand on their shelves or online store when it comes to treats and chews.
They need their customers to think of them when their competition has evolved not only down the street but also from the URL. This inherently creates a need for brand partners to be thinking about innovation and what they can do to set themselves apart with their offerings, their claims and their story.
What’s the question potential clients never ask—but should—before choosing a private label partner?
Do you plan on growing your capacity? - This question seems to come up when it’s too late.
You’ve built something from the ground up, as a family, in a booming industry. When you take a step back, what are you most proud of?
We are most proud of the fact that we are people who have come from humble beginnings, and through sustainable growth, we have been able to create jobs for good people to earn a living wage, opt into healthcare benefits, and provide opportunities to advance in their careers. We have overcome many hurdles just to get to this point and have taken challenges head-on with this business. We are not from a manufacturing background, but we have taken every lesson as learned. Pride is shown in our work, but most of all, we are grateful for the people who have helped us along the way.
Is there anything coming down the pipeline for BarkDine?
We are excited to be adding a new production line to our facility this fall. We have invested in low-pressure raw forming machinery to give our clients even more treat options. We will have the capability to mix and formulate, giving us a much wider breadth of product options beyond natural animal chews and organs. We plan on developing formulas with unique ingredient meat and veggie mixes in the form of trainers, chips, sticks, or completely customized treat shapes we develop with our clients. Always keeping that same BarkDine premium level of quality that all of our clients have become accustomed to.
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