Some businesses are born from a grand plan. Zaley Designs was born from a bad Etsy purchase.
Back in the summer of 2012, Brittany Keegan was a college business student planning a future in photography. Then she ordered a dog collar online, and it was, kindly to put it, a disappointment. So, she did what any determined maker would do: she fired up her mom’s embroidery machine and made a better one herself.
When the photography industry shifted, Brittany pivoted fully to dog collars. Her early goals were modest and incremental two collars a month, then one a week, then beyond. Today, Zaley Designs sells personalized dog collars and leashes through Etsy, her own Shopify site, and Chewy.com, shipping anywhere from 10 collars on a slow day to 150 a day during the post–Black Friday rush.
The Metal Buckle Problem
From day one, Brittany set her collars apart with real metal hardware, gold and silver buckles instead of the plastic clips most competitors used. It was a great differentiator with one big catch: personalizing metal is hard.
CO2 lasers won’t mark shiny metal, so Brittany originally outsourced engraving to a local trophy shop with a rotary engraver. The results were faint and hard to see, a real problem when your customers are buying personalization they can barely make out in product photos. Worse, the arrangement meant 25–30 minutes of driving each way, multiple times a week. That’s more than two hours of windshield time every week just to get names on buckles.
Brittany did her homework and found that fiber lasers could produce the crisp, black marks she wanted on metal. She even tried to convince the trophy shop to invest in one. They passed. So through a referral from Kristen at Bad Tags, already a happy TYKMA Electrox fiber laser owner, Brittany connected with TYKMA Electrox and brought laser engraving in-house.
She named the laser “Turbo,” after the very first customer buckle it ever engraved.
What Changed When Engraving Came In-House
Sales went up, because customers could finally see the product. Deep black and frosted laser marks show beautifully in product photography. Shoppers can now see exactly what their pup’s personalized buckle will look like before they buy, and that clarity directly translated into more orders.
Turnaround got dramatically faster. No more drop-off and pickup cycles. An order comes in, and the buckle gets engraved right there in the shop.
Hidden costs disappeared. Less gas, fewer errands, and hours of reclaimed time every week.
And reliability? Four-plus years, zero issues. On peak production days, Turbo runs all day without complaint. When we asked Brittany to describe the machine in a word, she didn’t hesitate: reliable.
Inside the Zaley Designs Workflow
Every collar is made to order, with a printed order form traveling alongside it through production. At the engraving station, Brittany pulls up the order, copies the customer’s name and phone number, and pastes it into her laser file template on her Minilase Pro SE a big step up from retyping everything by hand.
Logo-only buckles for Chewy orders run in batches, and Brittany’s dad is 3D-printing a custom jig that will let her engrave 9–12 buckles at a time.
Her favorite workflow trick? Instead of nudging the product itself to fine-tune alignment, she uses a piece of metal flashing to micro-adjust position a simple, clever fix that saves time on every setup.
What’s Next: Taking Copy/Paste Out of the Equation
During our conversation, we flagged an opportunity: TYKMA’s Icon Interface software can pull order data directly from Shopify or Etsy. Type in a sales order number or scan the order traveler and the customer’s name and phone number auto-populate straight into the laser file. No copying, no pasting, no transposition errors.
At 10–30 collars a day, copy/paste is manageable. At 150 a day during the holiday rush, automation starts to look very appealing. We’re excited to explore it with her.
Brittany is also sending us buckle samples for free applications testing. She stumbled onto something interesting: engraving slightly out of focus can produce a subtle, mirrored finish that some customers prefer over the bold standard black mark. She can achieve it on her smallest buckles but not the larger sizes, so our applications team is going to help her dial in repeatable settings the right way, without the risks that come with defocusing reflective material.
The Takeaway
Zaley Designs is a story we love: a maker who spotted a quality gap, differentiated with better materials, and then removed her biggest bottleneck by bringing laser marking in-house. Better product photos, faster turnaround, lower costs, and a machine that’s been running flawlessly for over four years.
Thanks, Brittany — and Turbo — for letting us share your story.
Bring Metal Laser Engraving In-House Today!
Interested in bringing metal marking in-house for your business? Contact the TYKMA Electrox team to talk applications, or send us your parts for free sample testing.
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