10/29/07

Who We Are

Timali & Co is owned by Tim & Ali Thompson (that would be us!). We have been making small animal and bird toys for almost 6 years now and have loved every minute of it.

Ours is a family business with our two of our young children, Daliah (age 6) and Willow (age 2), making toys right along with us!  Clary Sage (born 7/24/07), our newest edition, will surely be helping in just few years!

How we got in the Rabbit Toy Business

Many times in conversation, someone invariably asks:

"So, what do you do for a living?"

Every time I smile because I know that after we tell them that we manufacture toys for rabbits, chinchillas, and parrots, we will receive one of the following comments:

"You make What????"
"Rabbits play with toys???"
"You actually make a living at that???"
"How on earth did you ever come up with that idea?!?"

When my husband and I first met, we both knew we
had the entrepreneurial spirit.  The problem was, what do we do with it!  I had always loved pets and have worked with animals for many years in many different ways (contrary to popular belief, not all little girls who love animals want to grow up to be a veterinarian!).  I knew my future was tightly woven with my love for pets. I always have known that.

My husband, Tim, on the other hand had lukewarm feelings about animals.  Not growing up with many pets of his own, he did not have the same "calling" I felt I had.  However, he did have a love of his own and that was woodworking.

All the time I would find him making little crafts and dodads for the house.  Just as I did not turn my love of animals into being a Vet, he had no interest in cabinet making or house building. He wanted to be creative!

So here we were, both of us had something that we loved to do but they seemed so different. 

How could we make one Family Business out of our two different interests?

After sometime thinking, the idea of bird toys came to us.  Now, we know that there are a lot of people out there that make bird toys and we wanted our business to be a bit different.  But since bird toys was all we could come up with at the time, we stuck with bird toys.

At the beginning we made some very different toys, and not different in a good way!  To put it plainly, they were UGLY!  But we were learning and we were not willing to give up.  We kept making those ugly toys until we found out how to get good color and how to create designs that were more appealing. 

At this same time, we had accumulated a few bunnies in our life.  Our Netherland Dwarf named Chestnut was quite the spit fire. 

One day, while making bird toys and getting quite agitated that we could not come up with anything more creative than bird toys and also thinking about how bored our bunnies must be, it occurred to me. 

Don't Rabbits Chew Too?

I remembered seeing all the little
chews for bunnies at the store.  In fact I remember not buying those little chews for Chestnut or any of our other bunnies because experience had told me that they rarely paid attention to them. 

But someone, at sometime, thought they were a good idea because rabbits chew.  "Hmmm, Rabbits chew.  Rabbit chew wood.  We are making wooden "bird" toys."

So immediately I took one of our pale
ugly "bird" toys that we had left over (we finally had good color and much better design by now) out to Chestnut.  I put it in his cage and was SHOCKED by his response!  He went after that toy like a dog after a bone!

Quickly I ran back inside and jumped on the net.  I typed in "Rabbit Toys" and was amazed to find rabbit rescues all across the country selling toys! 

Other People Realized Rabbits liked Toys Too!

After weeks of research, we learned what was safe and not safe in rabbit toys (not all Bird toy materials are safe for rabbits!) and started creating toys that were geared towards a rabbits playing habits.

After we put together about a dozen good toys, we sent samples to some of the rescues we found originally.  They LOVED them and the orders started coming in!

Timali & Co was Born!

Since then, we have picked up many new rescues as well as created our own Rabbit Toy website (click here to check it out) and we also started to sell wholesale to Pet Stores.

Ebay was one way we originally started selling our toys (we still use it to this day) and we were amazed at how many chinchilla owners asked us if the toys were safe for their pets too.  So we did the research and found that the materials we were using were safe for chinchillas to.

Thus the start of our Chinchilla Toy website (check it out here). 

A Guinea Pig website is coming soon.

We also decided that our color and design were quite good and that we should not ignore the Parrot toy market completely.  While our main focus is on Rabbit Toys, we also have a great selection of hardwood Parrot toys with very unique design (parrot toy site can be seen here).

What makes Timali Toys different?

Everyday we are amazed at the demand for Rabbit Toys and the lack of Supply. Rabbit owners love their pets just as much as dog, cat, or parrot owners do and they look for the same variety in their accessories as the larger pet owners do. 

Our toys are different the the everyday "chews" available at most retail outlets.  Our toys are interactive.  They are 3 dimensional and easy for the rabbit to throw and run with.

Many people are amazed the first time
they see a rabbit or chinchilla going after a toy for the first time!  Even with half a dozen "chews" lying on the cage floor!

To find out more about the safety of our toys and how your small pet will play with them, please go to the following links:

Rabbit Toys:
www.pet-rabbit-toys.com

Chinchilla Toys:
www.pet-chinchilla-toys.com