From Pack Leaders to Pet Portraits: How BeFunky Powers Hounds Hideaway’s Creative Side
For Lacey Vance, caring for animals has always been her calling. When she opened her first dog daycare, Hounds Hideaway, in 2015, what began as a single location for daycare, boarding, and grooming has grown into three thriving facilities across Arkansas – with a fourth opening soon. As the business expanded, so did a new creative outlet. Vance combined her marketing background and lifelong love of merchandise with BeFunky, using the platform to turn customer photos into custom designs that captured each pet’s personality.
Today, while her team looks after nearly 250 dogs every day, they also create personalized ornaments, pillows, shirts, and keepsakes. BeFunky makes it possible to transform ordinary snapshots into polished artwork, giving pet parents products that feel less like purchases and more like lasting memories.
The BeFunky tie-in is serendipitous . . . a lot of our employees also have a creative side, so we started involving them in making our staff merch.
Growth That Stays Personal
The growth of Hounds Hideaway has always been measured in more than numbers. Each new location opening has been a milestone, but for Vance, the real achievement has been maintaining the same “small business feeling” that made the first site special. Even as the company expanded into multi-location operations, it never lost the personal touch that keeps pet parents coming back.
Just as important has been the growth of her team. Every manager and supervisor at Hounds Hideaway began as an entry level pack leader. Over time, they gained the experience and confidence to run lucrative businesses and lead large teams of employees. “They are now running multi-million dollar businesses and large staffing levels all based on experience they have gained from working here. We are very proud of them!”
These milestones tell the story of a company that not only serves pets and their families, but also creates opportunity for the people who make that service possible.
From Daycare to Design
Vance’s passion for merchandise reaches back long before Hounds Hideaway, and that passion found new life as her business grew.
As far back as college (plus every job since), I've always had an obsession with merch, specifically graphic tees.
What started as a few staff shirts soon became a creative outlet for employees who also wanted to be involved. Together they began experimenting with designs, and customers quickly took notice. Pet parents started asking for products that featured their own dogs, and those requests turned into a retail line inside Hounds Hideaway’s storefronts.
Demand grew rapidly, leading to the launch of an Etsy shop – ArkyBarkyArt. Before long, Vance dedicated an employee full time to custom merch. For many customers, ordering a personalized product became as much a part of the Hounds Hideaway experience as daycare or grooming.
BeFunky as a Creative Partner
As Hounds Hideaway’s merch line developed, Vance needed a design platform that could handle the wide variety of photos customers sent in. BeFunky became the solution she relied on to expand their Etsy shop.
I honestly can't remember how we found BeFunky, but it is our favorite tool and we use it daily to help make custom, personalized pet merch!
Vector Painting GFX is used to give pets a soft, stylized look that works beautifully across products like apparel, garden flags, and ornaments. Vance explains the impact this makes on her business. “Most of our buyers become repeat customers because they love the way their dog looks with the effects added.”
The Background Remover and Cutout tool make it simple to place a pet on a clean background, while Deblur and Clarity rescue blurry or low-resolution images. The Expand tool plays an important role as well, allowing the team to restore cropped details like missing tails or ears. These features ensure that no matter what kind of photo a client provides, the finished product looks polished and professional.
For Vance, how effortless the process feels from start to finish is just as important as the results. “We have definitely used other tools, but I like BeFunky best because it's easy, and the intuitive nature of the program makes the editing process faster . . . I don't have a photo editing background but am still able to turn cute pics of dogs into works of art in much less time than I used to.”
Consistency across devices has also become a key advantage. Vance points out that BeFunky “drives the same whether on desktop, mobile, or iPad . . . super helpful when using a stylus to cut out tiny parts of a photo on the iPad!” That flexibility allows her to work wherever she is, with the same smooth experience every time.
A Business Shaped by Care and Creativity
Hounds Hideaway is more than a pet care company. It is a place where community, growth, and creativity come together. At its core, the business remains dedicated to providing dogs with a safe, enriching environment for daycare, boarding, and grooming. And with BeFunky, that mission has expanded into custom merchandise, giving pet parents meaningful products that capture their dogs’ personalities. These designs are more than retail items – they are a way to deepen the bond between pets and families while showcasing the creativity of her team.
To support Vance and her team directly, visit their Etsy shop or follow their socials for a daily dose of pet content. And be sure to try BeFunky today to experience just how easy it is to turn your photos into original keepsakes.
