It pioneered the outdoor dog gear category, but will fans pay for Ruffwear’s pricey new line?

You’ll find no shortage of dogs sporting Ruffwear collars, leashes, and jackets in urban and suburban dog parks, but the products are designed specifically for wilderness adventures, and originated in outdoor retail. By the brand’s own telling, it owes its start to the Outdoor Retail show in 1994, when an L.L.Bean buyer encountered Ruffwear’s maiden product, a collapsible dog bowl, and ordered 8,000 bowls.

The brand has abided by its outdoor-gear origins, eschewing categories like pet costumes that serve no function on a camping trip, but it had never produced a line as technically advanced—or expensive—as its new Ridgeline Collection.

“We really sat down and asked ourselves, ‘If we could design the ultimate product line and remove price as a constraint from what we do, what would it look like?’” Rob Little, Ruffwear’s president, told Retail Brew.

The line incorporates not one, but two technologies from other outdoor-gear brands: magnetic closures from Fidlock, and fabric from X-Pac, an elements-withstanding material originally developed for racing sails. Together, Fidlock’s and X-Pac’s tech “created the foundation for a whole new line of products for us that would be the pinnacle of the pet industry when it comes to outdoor performance,” Little said.

But unencumbered by cost limitations, the prices ended up significantly steeper for the line, which the brand describes as “groundbreaking,” than for other Ruffwear products.

The Ridgeline body harness, for example, costs $180, triple that of its popular Front Range harness. Similarly the Ridgeline collar sells for $50, compared to its $20 Front Range collar; and the Ridgeline leash costs $70, compared to its $25 Front Range counterpart.

While those price points aren’t for everyone, for Ruffwear the line is meant to reinforce the brand’s mission to “to find solutions for dogs” that enable them to “be able to go anywhere and explore anywhere,” Robin Skillings, Ruffwear’s CMO, told Retail Brew. Skillings said the new line helps reinforce Ruffwear as “the leader” in the outdoor dog gear category that it helped pioneer.

Befitting a dog brand, Skillings said the new premium line helps Ruffwear keep “marking our territory.”

Thinking outside the boxer: While Ruffwear products are popular—even ubiquitous—in urban dog parks, you’d never know it from the brand’s promotional and product shots, which center around outdoor adventures in remote and wilderness settings.

Promotional videos and photography for the Ridgeline collection, for example, were shot on the Isle of Skye in Scotland.

Skillings said Ruffwear in this regard is like Patagonia, which promotes its clothing and gear in outdoor settings even as, say, its fleece vest over a dress shirt constitutes the “Midtown uniform” for some finance bros.

“What Patagonia does really well is they create inspiring storytelling…in the outdoors,” Skillings said. And when consumers see Patagonia-outfitted adventurers on Mount Everest, “they’re like, ‘Well, of course that’ll work for me walking through Central Park.’”

Ruffwear’s ethos, and its visuals, similarly align with what brand executives call the explorer archetype.

“Everything Ruffwear writes in copy, any of our content always speaks from this explorer archetype,” Skillings said. “That truly keeps our brand authentic.”

It’s also why Ruffwear is decidedly less cutesy than much of the pet industry in how it talks about dogs.

For the love of dog: As dogs have in recent generations completed their journey from the backyard doghouse to to the living room couch, it’s become a truism that pets are considered full-fledged members of the family.

Pew Research found that 51% of Americans consider their pets to be a member of their family as much as their human relatives.

Pet-focused brands tend to adopt familial language, with brands like Petco typically referring to their customers as “pet parents” and Chewy dubbing its products for humans as its Pet Parent Shop. Pets in the household, meanwhile, are often referred to as “fur babies” in product descriptions on Chewy and other sites.

But Ruffwear steers clear of such language. Skillings said that’s part of founder Patrick Kruse’s philosophy of dogs.

“Patrick views dogs as true companions,” she said. “And the reason we don’t say ‘pet baby’ or ‘fur baby’ and things like that is because there’s a semblance of ownership with that, or hierarchy.”

Nor will you see Ruffwear referring to its customers as pet “owners.” Instead, in the Ruffwear universe, dogs and humans are in the same pack, explorers all, and the relationship is one of reciprocity.

“As humans, we just kind of take a step back and watch how our dogs are exploring—it opens up a new sense of exploration for the human, too,” Skillings said. “It’s less speaking of an ownership, like a human above a dog, and really trying to centralize this beautiful connection between humans and their dogs.”