'Really big circle': Bozeman dog toy company profiting from focus on local, sustainability

Inside of the West Paw factory off Frontage Road in Bozeman, CEO and founder Spencer Williams greets each employee by name as he walks by.

Williams points out each machine in the factory and offers insight into the manufacturing processes. One such device is an employee-directed injection-molding machine that was forming the “Toppl” toy — a round, multi-use enrichment toy for dogs.

“The really neat thing about the injection-molding toy line is that it has become the biggest part of our business over the years,” Williams said. “It’s allowed us to grow in ways we couldn’t have imagined back in those early days. But it also has a tremendous ability to have automation added to the process.

“The robots are helping our team make the world’s best dog toys right here in Bozeman.”

West Paw is a U.S.-manufactured dog toy and treat business. Williams originally opened in Livingston in 1996 but relocated to Bozeman two years later. He grew up in Columbus and is a fifth-generation Montanan.

The company was recently featured in Business Insider, where Williams discussed West Paw’s U.S.-based manufacturing process and the increased attention toward his business model as conversations increasingly revolve around tariffs globally.

“As a domestic manufacturer, and there’s two things that I like to always remind people of: We’re manufacturing (in the U.S.) because it’s our mission in this company to make an impact in our regional local economies,” he said. “The second thing is that we are the kind of company that pays the tariffs. The tariffs are rarely paid for by the foreign companies, they’re actually paid by small businesses around America.”

Williams said West Paw pays many tariffs because it receives materials from other countries, but also because it exports products around the globe.

“When we export our product to Canada — which is a great market for us — we’re the company that’s paying the retaliatory tariffs that Canada put in place after we started tariffing Canadian products,” Williams said. “And yet, because most of our product is made right here, we’re also benefiting from the increased attention that made in the (U.S.) is receiving.

“It’s like anything: There’s good and bad in it.”

Williams said his vision balances making profit with having a positive impact.

“West Paw is the kind of company that wants to contribute to our community,” he said. “The way in which I thought that would work best is to create jobs. Instead of cutting a purchase order to a foreign country to make the product, let’s make it ourselves — and that is certainly a lot more complex — but it fits that vision of, ‘Let’s make our impact larger in our community’.”

West Paw partners with various businesses across Montana for molding materials and production design. They work with Kalispell-based Steel Reality Molding and Manufacturing — an injection mold making and plastic injection molding company — and Bozeman-based Salient Technologies, a product design and development firm.

“We’ve always loved West Paw’s perspective, their mission statement,” Salient Technologies President Stephen Sanford said. “Like Spencer said in the Business Insider article, it’s not always about the bottom line. We have an incredible ecosystem in the valley and beyond, that really helps new business and established business create new products and new technologies.”

Salient Technologies is just one of the Montana companies with which West Paw is connected.

“We’re not only one company making an impact, but we’re connected with really leading incredible companies in their fields right here in Montana,” he said.

West Paw also partners with local ranches and meat processors for dog treats. One is Pioneer Meats, a processing company based in Big Timber that develops and produces West Paw’s high-reward dog treat, Beef Sticks.

“The local business and the local people are the backbone of our company,” Pioneer Meats owner Brian Engle said. “We rely on them and they rely on us. There’s basically 20-people families in the Big Timber area that rely on Pioneer Meats and we rely on our customers, including West Paw.

“It’s a really big circle that comes around.”

The nutrient-rich organ meat created at Pioneer Meats is sourced from four Montana regenerative ranches. In 2024, the Beef Sticks received PEOPLE’s Pet Product Award for Best Jerky Dog Treat.

“We use beef liver, beef lung, beef heart, kidney and spleen to help use more of that raw material that gives more value back to the ranching families,” Williams said. “Brian, the owner of Pioneer Meats, has been an incredible partner in innovation and developing that supply chain alongside us and working with ranchers has been incredible.”

Additionally, Williams said a major mission of West Paw is to remain environmentally sustainable. He was inspired by a pair of socks made from recycled bottles he saw in the late 1990s at Schnees in downtown Bozeman.

“I was like, that’s crazy,” he said. “I want to do that for toys. So we figured that out. We also figured out how we were going to use recycled plastic in our toys. Five years ago, we launched our SeaFlex line of products, which has 12 1/2% ocean-bound plastic. It changed the industry.”

Most toys from West Paw can be recycled and the company has a program for thoroughly chewed toys. They are sanitized, ground up and put back into the molding machine.

“From the beginning, a focus on minimizing negative impact to the environment was really important to me,” Williams said. “We’ve been able to see how our focus on recycled materials, our focus on minimizing waste, serves both a value around minimizing harm to the planet, but it also — when you eliminate waste — you save some costs. We win both in terms of how we treat the planet, we win in terms of how we profit.”

Williams said he aims to create opportunities in Montana communities by creating jobs focused on dignity and diversity.

“We have an incredibly talented, hard-working team who have all often learned what they’re doing here by being a part of this company,” he said. “It takes a whole community to grow a business and I am super grateful for employees for how they’ve helped us grow — from manufacturing, to sales, to marketing.

“Everybody has left their fingerprints on this company.”