Six Sigma, a Westie Named Abby & a Full Rebrand: Kelly Ison on Building Wonder Bark

Kelly Ison is the founder and CEO of Wonder Bark, a Georgia-based dog treat company she runs with her husband and business partner, Robert. After more than 25 years in corporate leadership, she launched the company in 2012, and today Wonder Bark is sold through distributors and retail shops nationwide. It's a self-funded, certified woman-owned business. Logan calls it his first pet-industry conversation on the show, and it turned into a masterclass in running a business on process.

From Connecticut to corporate to Georgia

Kelly grew up in Fairfield, Connecticut, and spent part of her childhood in the Midwest. She met Robert while they were both working in corporate jobs in Sarasota, Florida. When it came time to move the business, they looked at the whole country and picked Georgia, partly because it was close enough to haul everything themselves: treats, packaging, and equipment, in two or three rounds of U-Hauls. Six years later, they call it home. "If we're in the car, we look in the rearview mirror, we see mountains," she said. Like Logan, she talks fast, and she's learned to appreciate how Southerners take their time getting to the point of a story.

Six Sigma and the power of a playbook

In corporate, Kelly led global teams for large companies, managing customer service and later telecom for mobile devices, often on 3 a.m. calls to match other time zones. Along the way she went back to school for a degree in quality and became a Six Sigma process-improvement specialist, helping departments find their own weak spots and cut waste. She and Logan compare notes on working at companies with no documentation, where every question means tracking someone down. Her advice is to treat processes as "evergreen": write them down, then keep tweaking them. That habit is how she and Robert started Wonder Bark, with standardized emails and letters long before ChatGPT, and it's how they got through their rebrand.

A bookstore, a recipe book, and Abby

The idea started in a bookstore, where Kelly found a children's recipe book for dog treats with a bone-shaped cutout on the cover. Robert, who worked in HR and recruiting and wanted something different, told her they could make it a business. "I remember distinctly saying to him, are you freaking crazy?" She was traveling constantly for work, so she baked at home whenever she could and built one base formula she could turn into several flavors. Their Westie, Abby, inspired the brand. Robert taught himself Photoshop and drew the logo from a puppy photo of Abby with her hair sticking up, and the dog on the bag has never changed, though she's traded her glasses for outfits. Abby was also their taste tester. If she didn't want a treat, she'd turn her head and wait for a different one. Abby passed away last December.

Treats built around memories

Wonder Bark's flavors are built around moments that owners share with their dogs: PB&J, S'mores (made with carob) for camping trips, and Rise and Shine, with turkey bacon, banana, and peanut butter, inspired by Abby begging for breakfast bacon. There's also Farmers Market (sweet potato and cranberry) and State Fair (carrot and apple), which Kelly hears is a hit with horses too. Every recipe uses chia seed instead of eggs as the binder because egg prices swing so much, a lesson the pandemic drove home. Early batches got harder the longer they sat on store shelves, so the formula was reworked when production scaled up to a co-manufacturer. Kelly eats the treats herself at trade shows. Some customers have placed 30 or 40 orders in a year, and those orders often come with free extra bags.

What the rebrand really cost

The company was called Einstein Pets until 2025. The new name came out of a weekend whiteboarding session: "wonder" for joy and fun, "bark" for the dog, and about a year and a half to secure the trademark. The switch had to happen fast for legal reasons, so they couldn't sell through the old stock. They threw out the packaging and took the loss. Then their co-manufacturer shut down production, and the empty shelves made some customers think the company had gone out of business. To recover, they brought on an independent national sales rep team. Distributor purchase orders went from every three or four months to roughly monthly. Kelly says they might have doubled revenue this year without the rebrand, but the name fits who they are now. "Dunkin' Donuts is now Dunkin'. You don't have to stay the way you were forever."

Growing at a turtle pace

Kelly has strong opinions about outside advice. They didn't outsource fulfillment until 2025, and only last year did they start taking Fridays off. She's turned down investors after watching other founders lose control of their vision. "It's better to go at a turtle pace." She's let go of a demanding private-label customer after 10 years, and after almost 15 years without a price increase, Wonder Bark is moving every bag size to one price on January 1, 2027. Her biggest piece of advice is to know your exit strategy within your first couple of weeks in business. That could mean handing the company down, selling it, or simply closing it when you're done, but have a plan, and a contract if a buyer keeps you on. For anyone sitting on a big decision, she says to start with one sticky note on a whiteboard and one standardized email.

Listen to the Full Conversation

In the rapid-fire round, Kelly picks Interstellar (she's watched it five or six times), a festival lineup of Teddy Swims, John Legend, and Johnny Cash, and Outback's bang bang shrimp from her days working for its parent company. She recharges with hiking, her deck garden and hummingbird feeders, and free Wednesday yoga in Canton, and her fun fact is that she once got a phone call from Rodney Dangerfield the day after meeting him. What gets her up in the morning is Robert, who "sees the vision and keeps me on brand." Find Wonder Bark at wonderbarktreats.com, on social @wonderbarktreats, and in retailers listed on their website. Catch the full episode below.