small dog travel bags

small dog travel bags

small dog travel bags

MONTAGUE CENTER – Moti Zemelman has the kind of job that a lot of folks dream of having: working at home selling something they’ve created and successfully marketing their product on the internet so they can, among other things, be stay-at-home parents of young children.  Moti found a unique niche that allows him to work from his Montague Center home (or anywhere he can bring a laptop); an internet business that taps into the astoundingly large amount of money that Americans spend on their pets every year, projected to be over 70 billion dollars for 2018. What he offers is the illusion of nobility for pets worldwide; dogs and cats become their own noble ancestors by having their visage placed into a Renaissance painting via the wonders of Photoshop!

It is impressive the way that the pictures are melded into each other by Moti with this professional imaging program. He is able to create texture and lighting effects that blend even a not-so-great snapshot of a pet into the shoulders and neck of a famous portrait from the 14th to 17th centuries. Velvets and silks provide rich backgrounds for shiny eyes, fur and teeth; tongues loll above lace collars and paws peep out from embroidered cuffs; the clothing, heraldry, and accoutrements befitting a ruler elevate purebred and mutt, canine and feline, into royals. Presumably, the animals themselves are unaware of their new status, and surely don’t care about the authority of art history or the status of long dead Europeans. There is a surprisingly good business in creating these anthropomorphic time warps for doting pet owners, and more than one business engaged in it, as an internet search will quickly reveal. Moti believes his training and experience as a fine artist and long time digital photographer give him an edge on his competitors, and after surveying his competition on the giant craft network of etsy.com, I would agree. There is something more “alive” about the Renaissance pets that Moti creates, with the colors, lighting and sharpness of detail matching the painting they are placed in.

Like many good ideas, this one sidled into the artist’s life through another business before becoming the main focus. Moti had previously caught the wave in making custom iPhone cases and rode it until a proliferation of copycat businesses cut into his market share. Creating them at home with a dye-sublimation printer that heat-set images on aluminum, he was, at the peak of the demand, printing, assembling, and shipping a hundred cases a day.

“It was like gangbusters: it was insane. Except, people were copying the business and also the designs I did that went viral, like the ice cream sandwich one: people stole it left and right, taking the design straight off of my website.” Moto started looking at what he could do that was more unique and people couldn’t just copy. “People would occasionally send me photos of their pets and say, Can you put this on a iPhone case? and I would do it, and one person sent a picture and said, Can you make my pet look like a king? so I took some random painting of a king from Renaissance and superimposed the pet into the painting and printed it into the case.” Then he thought, Why limit myself to this tiny little phone case? The Renaissance Pet went online as a separate website and the business grew over the last four years.

Moti used to do the booths at Renaissance fairs and dog shows, but now he is mostly working online with search engine optimization strategies. So far, he has done about 800 portraits for customers, with sizes ranging for 8×10 inches to 32×48. The prints can be made on canvas or on photopaper, and customers have a choice of a few simple frames for the canvases.  

There are about 45 templates of Renaissance paintings available on his website, and Moti also has a list of character types that people can select according to their pets personality, and he can match with other paintings that are available in the public domain. He has also done a few character requests for more modern themes, but there are sometimes copyright issues with those characters. A portrait of Alexander Hamilton shot up in popularity after the musical became a big hit, and the founding fathers have all been selected by pet owners at one time or another.

“I’ve done enough portraits that people spread my name, and there’s links on a number of related sites. Some articles have come out on Bark Post and a few online dog magazines,” said Moti. “But my most viral moment in this business has been a portrait I did for the most famous Instagram cat, Nala Cat. I don’t know how this particular cat is the one that gets all the attention: she has very blue eyes and is white and fluffy, but somehow it is surprising she has 3 million followers!” Moti did a portrait trade with them, using a painting of Queen Anne of Austria that he had never used before. “It’s one of my better portraits, and Queen Anne become one of my more popular options.” In return, Nala Cat did a couple of posts on Instagram of the painting, “and they have an online video of Nala where I can see the painting in the background, placed prominently in their home.”

The portrait artist has no pets of his own due to allergic family members, but he loves animals and has lived with many dogs and cats over the years. There is a memorial aspect to the portraits; people will often have one done in memory of a pet they have lost. In addition, there are lots of possible tie-ins within the burgeoning pet industry: “I’m definitely looking for businesses to team up with for promotions and stuff. If there is a dog grooming business, or vet to team up, I would do a portrait to hang there,” said Moti.

Interested in catapulting your furry friend back in time to become a jester, King Queen, beggar or knight? Check out the website for small dog travel bags.

See the whole archived article here: https://montaguereporter.org/themencode-pdf-viewer/?file=https://montaguereporter.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/October11_2018.pdf

Nina Rossi
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