Freshly returned from Chicago, where he’d picked up a Global Innovation Award (GIA) at the International Housewares Association’s 32nd Student Design Competition, Gloucester’s David Minogue was hitting the books at Notre Dame University, where he is a Sorin Scholar.
The GIA for Excellence in Student Design, an elegant glass sculpture that comes with a $2,500 cash honorarium, is one more feather in the cap for Minogue, a born entrepreneur, who in his 21 years has created not one, not two, but three thriving businesses. But more of that later.
At the moment, he’s still happily basking in the glory of his big Chicago win — albeit a shared second place — awarded for his latest invention, which he calls PullPal. He said he hopes the deceptively simple dog walking device will save countless senior citizens trips to the emergency room.
According to a 2017 study published in the journal JAMA Surgery, “the estimated number of fractures associated with walking leashed dogs has grown by 163 percent among patients 65 and older in recent years.”
The idea for Minogue’s winning device came to him in Gloucester while walking with his grandmother Donna while she walked her beloved dog Honey. PullPal is designed to reduce the yanking and jerking of the leash that can pose dangerous fall risks for the elderly. Using a dog whistle triggered by a refillable air canister, PullPal interrupts unwanted pulling behaviors, reducing a pet owner’s risk of falls and injuries. The device may look uncomplicated, but it took dozens of prototypes to perfect. Minogue, who says he loves solving problems, says he just kept going until he got it right.
PullPal, one of hundreds of new products showcased at Chicago’s McCormick Place, stirred up the kind of attention Minogue hoped it would from big brand national retailers. And no wonder. The U.S. retail market for all things doggie hit an all time high in 2024 with $64.41 billion and is fast growing.
About half of elderly Americans own pets, more than half of them dogs, so PullPal stands to corner a much needed niche in the market and Minogue stands to make a profit, something that seems to have always come naturally to this 21-year-old.
Here in Gloucester, he says, people may remember him as the 10-year-old who walked the local beaches selling stickers, which he designed. The most popular — a Gloucester fish — sold for $5 each to thousands of beachgoers who stuck them on car bumpers, picnic coolers, water bottles, hats, and just about anything you could stick a sticker on.
Stickers were not this entrepreneur’s first foray into retailing. That, he says, had come years earlier when, after watching a YouTube video on the profitability of the perfume market, he decided to create his own scent. That perfume, a brew of acorns and water packaged in recycled hand wash bottles, failed, despite an ambitious door-to-door sales campaign, to ring up a single sale.
YouTube videos proved quite the classroom for the young Minogue. It’s where he discovered his passion and talent for graphic design that went first into his stickers, then led to his founding of Spade Product & Graphic Design, which serves a national network of clients with logo and branding design, and which, in turn, led to Minogue partnering in Beached Boat, an outdoor clothing line for people like himself, who, when not studying or inventing, can be found surfing or skiing.
You can catch Minogue in full entrepreneurial mode on YouTube (https://youtu.be/n8lIBfuuUQ4?si=Xgoeol6dg40LXc3P), in a video of his TEDx Talk when he was an honors student in the Class of ‘23 at St. John’s Prep in Danvers.
Joann Mackenzie may be contacted at 978-675-2707 or jmackenzie@northofboston.com.