Pluspunten
dogs, dogs, dogs, dogs, and dogs (because it has to be 5 words)
Minpunten
TL;DR: Stay away from this place at all costs. You will never be paid enough, respected enough, or valued enough to make what will be demanded of you here worthwhile. To call Max-Bone a company would be a gross overstatement of the term. It’s more like....a glorified Etsy store. It’s just a tiny group of people helping run an online storefront. On the surface, max-bone has a great concept: luxury pet clothing and apparel that is designed with a modern aesthetic. Where it begins to fall apart is in its ownership and management... After an unsuccessful fashion line, the CEO (a former dental hygienist) started another business - max-bone. I started with the company because I thought it would be a great opportunity to have more responsibility at a rapidly growing startup - before I started I was told they made a few million the year before (a lie) and they were rapidly taking on new and larger accounts (a lie) and so I was excited to contribute my 10 years of fashion industry experience. Unfortunately, no matter how hard I tried to establish any sort of organization, I quickly realized it would be impossible. The owner is extremely vapid and self absorbed, a caricature of the Beverly Hills elite. She judges everyone by their looks and clothing, who they know and how many Instagram followers they have. She treats employees like the help, the way she would treat her gardeners or housekeepers. Everyone is expected to strategize the business vision for her while her role is essentially doing nothing. She has no real skills or business savvy (she would routinely burst into tears after investor meetings because they were too hard for her). Each individual team member is/was good at what they do, but you can’t accomplish much when there are no strategic foundational goals. Whenever she talks about the company, she never mentions the dogs or their owners and customers. We would have customer based events where she would sit isolated with her friend and husband because she didn’t want to speak to the “have-nots”. It seemed that she didn’t care about the dogs. She would develop products on her own that ended up being unsafe. None of the products were tested, which I constantly tried to impress on her the importance of. But this was always shot down because it was “too expensive”. She only ever talks about herself being such a great, “visionary” (her own word) business woman. For the first two years, there were four or five girls at a time cramped into the back office of a retail store, which also doubled as a stock room for retail product and a shipping and receiving dock for large orders. We literally couldn’t move, there were some days, people didn’t even get up to use the bathroom because they couldn’t get around all the boxes. One day we all got together and begged for just a simple wework space. But after she toured it, she said we should be grateful for our space because wework “was disgusting”. She was always complaining about money because the company was and still is not doing well. She complained that our salaries were too expensive and would regularly threaten not paying us if she didn’t make “x” amount of dollars by the end of the week or month. There were even a few instances where pay was purposely withheld and entire pay periods were missed altogether. Meanwhile vast amounts of money were spent on custom decor for an equally as expensive new office space (after the wework debacle) and pop up shops in Aspen and Southampton and the decor and construction work to outfit these spaces - more than enough to pay the first priority of any business, which are salaries. If you like being paid regularly and without being made to feel unworthy of your salary, don’t work here. She feeds off of drama and was constantly pitting coworkers against each other, gossiping to each one behind the others back and creating a constant chaos of conflict among the team. It seemed like every week was a new drama that none of us wanted but her. She even at times criticized how much we ate and eventually stopped allowing us to eat at our desks. All of this is to say that, the success of a company can only be as good as the leadership, authenticity and vision of the one who is leading it. Someone who can solve problems and not childishly use their team as a punching bag when things don’t go their way. The greatest thing about this job was the love I had for my work. I loved getting to know our customers and their dogs. I loved their comments about how much they enjoyed the products (it was the only time I would get positive feedback on my work) and I loved seeing their photos. I really felt like I was making people happy with the product and I got to play with dogs a lot! There are soooo many other stories to tell but the point is, this place is not worth any amount of your time, energy, or skills. She made me feel devalued, dehumanized, and less confident about my work. Working under her was a constant barrage of abuse, insults, humiliation, and disrespect. My saving grace was a few lovely coworkers who felt the same way I did. Please do not be taken in by appearances, because like most things in the max-bone world, it’s all for show. EDIT: This is a repost after the company tried to have this review taken down so… that should tell you all you need to know.