Against all odds  

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her interactive dog toys. After a difficult start, which took ten years, turnover is virtually doubling year by year.
“Shame on giving up on oneself,” might summarise Nina Ottosson’s entrepreneurship in brief. In principle, no one believed in her business plan at the start. Banks turned her down and no financiers showed any interest. She simply had to roll up her sleeves and get down to 10 years of hard work from 1993 to 2003. House and home had to be put up as security to obtain cash and get the business moving.
Today nobody turns their nose up at Nina Ottosson and her company Zoo Active; quite the contrary. She explains that many of those who did not believe in her initially have actually come back to apologise. They then go to the premises in central Karlskoga (Sweden) where Nina has built up her successful production facility. With the investment made in new modern milling machines, Zoo Active has now outgrown its premises and needs to look for a larger, more suitable site – but it will never leave Karlskoga, Nina says.
Background and creativity
Nina Ottosson has a keen interest in dogs and has always striven to stretch both herself and her dogs in different ways. She began to “put the finishing touches” to a toy for dogs that would provide fun for the rest of the family at the same time. Nina thought logically that animals are driven by food, thus something that stimulates the dog and then rewards it. She sat at the kitchen table at home and drilled holes in balls of different types which she then stuffed with candy and tested on their two dogs. At night she continued to work as a nurse’s assistant and during the daytime she developed her product. Nina took her prototype along to a local inventor’s association to get help to apply for a patent. Then she had to find the right plastic and the right producers. This was the birth of “Qulan the ball” with holes into which the pet’s owner can stuff candy that falls out when the dog rolls it. This was in the early 1990s and the toy became the basis for the company that Nina Ottosson started in 1993. The same year she produced the “Dog Smart” and “Dog Spinny” made of wood, which have become best sellers alongside the “Qulan”. Nina has taken much of her inspiration from children’s toys, because children and dogs are amused by similar things.
Products and more
Nina only uses hardwoods such as ash and beech in her toys, and this has contributed to her success. A special kind of…