“You can have something plain, and something classical and beautiful that will definitely reflect that classic beauty of the collar, but you can go to town and tell a whole story on the neck of your dog, and we have a whole line of accessories that go along with it. So you can choose of over 100 different decorations, and basically have a collar that no one else in the world does, and that makes Hot Dogs super fun. We do. We do it for cats. We do it for horses. We’ve had a cow at a wedding that wore a collar from us. We have a goat. We’ve done chickens. We’ve done little chicken identifiers. We’ve even done some people stuff. We are open to suggestions. If you come to me with your requests, and I will do my best to fulfill them. ”

“Give yourself the opportunity to try something that might make a huge difference in your life, and others, and others. I am a Montrealer that goes and tells the story of Montreal to all of the people that I meet. The quirky-ness of the language, the mixed-up English and French, the quirky-ness of Moving Day, and the quirky-ness, there’s a lot of quirky-ness in the city, and that interests people. People are tired of the boring. People are tired of the same old. The quirky-ness, the weirdness, the out of the ordinary is something that the city has quite a bit of, and do it. Contribute to it. Start a business. Make it who knows. You know, you could have the next great invention. ”

“Every piece is concepted by hand. We start from the beginning of the story to the time we deliver it to you. It goes through all of our hands, all of our steps so that what I would give to you is a gift from ourselves to you. They’re individual. They’re customizable. They’re created literally with love and old-school techniques. Nothing is commercially made. We cut all of our own leather. We have two lines, actually, a leather line and a non-leather, vegan line, but all of the concepts are done by hand or produced by hand, really delivered to you still in a commercial way so that we can provide them to stores and to other facilities, but each piece is really an individual, almost piece of art. ”

“For me, conversation is huge. It’s huge in my business. It’s what makes long-term relationships with my suppliers, with my stores that sell my products, with end-user customers that come and find us. Montrealers should network with each other because in my career of doing this, I met fantastic creators, artists, and musicians, and other people, and who knows how that doesn’t create a fabric for your own business, you know? You might need an illustrator or something. Why not use someone that you’ve met that has that same interest in growing something in Montreal? Montreal’s just got a shine. “

“But what’s nice is that as this community returns, and people learn these old-school skills, I think that it allows other manufacturers such as myself to come back and look at what you’re doing over here, and how can I use it to help with what I’m doing over here. It’s hard to be alone in the island. Now that there’s more population around our little island, that makes it much more interesting. It opens the gate really to create a lot more product. But for me, manufacturing is hugely important because without that, everything looks the same. What I do is individual, and I can feed that in a client that is looking for something that is emotional for them. “

“And for the first six months of the business, brand had completely handmade in the kitchen with findings, cutting leather, old school, putting things together, and peddling them to local stores, trade shows, event, and now 24 years later, I’m pretty happy to say we have our own facility. We sell stuff all over the world, across Canada, through the U.S., into Europe, Asia, and one by one, we will bring those dogs to the Hot Dogs family, make them both self esteem and beautiful. “

“I was born in Montreal. I grew up here. I was like an old hippie, kind of traveled around, lived in the country, came back to the city when I had my daughter. I was always an entrepreneur. I always had some kind of business on the go from the time I was in my teens really, and had various things that I played around with, and then 24 years ago tomorrow, I started Hot Dogs All Dressed. “

“That’s what I want, Montreal not to be overlooked. To see that everything we do, we do because we love what we do. And the city supports us in that the quaintness of it, the smallness of it, the village aspect of it, makes networking easier, makes you be able to gather a group together to make that voice heard.”

“The unique thing about Montréal, for me, that’s always been a decision as to why to stay, is this work-life balance that you have here. You have a great outside of work life. At the end of the day, isn’t that most important?”

“I’m bilingual, and we wanted a name that was familiar to both French and English people because who knew it was gonna go past neighbors, friends, and cousins. And, ‘hot dogs all dressed’, as it turns out, is a uniquely Québec expression. Nobody says it anywhere else in the world, but here. So, we made this thing.”

“That’s what I want, Montreal not to be overlooked. To see that everything we do, we do because we love what we do. And the city supports us in that the quaintness of it, the smallness of it, the village aspect of it, makes networking easier, makes you be able to gather a group together to make that voice heard.”

“The unique thing about Montréal, for me, that’s always been a decision as to why to stay, is this work-life balance that you have here. You have a great outside of work life. At the end of the day, isn’t that most important?”

I think that the focus has to stop being on the nonsense of the past. I think that we really do have to focus on the people that have stayed and are willing to sit there and give their blood, sweat, and tears to this city, to make it sing. You know, and not every time you get through an election process, or through a major overhaul of the city, it just kind of dampens everybody’s will to show off the things that we do the best, showcase the stuff that we do here. And we do beautiful things, and we do it in multiple languages, with multiple faces, and multiple cultures. And that is very well preserved and is not quaint. It is powerful.