August Newsletter
We hope you are having a great summer! We’re hard at work behind the scenes to give you even more resources designed to help furry owned and operated businesses thrive, especially in this rapidly changing business environment. In this newsletter is a call for potential paid creative work, a link to a new (public) blog post, a member feature, upcoming office hours to get your top questions answered, and an open dialog about what’s new in your professional world.
Call for Artists, Photographers, and Writers!
As we grow our membership, we’re looking to establish relationships with furry creatives so that we can commission works of art, photography, and written content for future newsletters, social media posts, blogs, and more. Here is a brief list of what we’re currently looking for:
Graphic Design: Help creating printed marketing materials (brochures, postcards, etc.)
Illustration: Visual elements for our marketing materials and blog articles
Photography: Photographs of fursuiters and furry vendors conducting business or in business-adjacent situations, such as Dealer’s Den photos, fursuiters in business situations and/or attire, furries engaging positively with local businesses, etc.
If you would like to be considered for future projects, please get in touch with us with your contact information and examples of your work (portfolio website or gallery is preferable for easy viewing).
How Furry Are You At Work?
Here at the Furry Chamber of Commerce, we’re very proud to have a varied mix of furry professionals in our membership community; people who work a regular day job and have a furry side-hustle, businesses that are not necessarily furry-focused but are owned and operated by furries, and people who have made furry their full-time careers. Purely for curiosity's sake, we thought it would be a fun exercise to ask the community how they balance their furry and professional lives, and if there is some overlap, to what degree that expression of their furry interests looks like at work.
We surveyed both members and the public, who represent a wide range of industries from blue collar to white collar, as well as full-time fandom professionals. We got a great mix of responses which we’ve included in the participants’ own words, as well as some interesting data we’d like to share with you in a rare public blog post.
“Participants answered on a scale of 1-5 with 1 being ‘I’m very open. I would wear a fursuit to work if the opportunity presented itself’ and 5 being ‘Absolutely not. Furry? Who’s furry?’ We asked respondents to go into more detail about the reasoning behind their ranking in our survey and to share more about what either compartmentalizing their furry life from their work life or, if applicable, being open looks like for them.”
Read the full public blog here to see what everyone had to say!
Newsletter Changes
After a lot of consideration, we will be switching this newsletter to go out on a quarterly basis rather than monthly. This may change in the future, but we felt that this was the best way to keep you informed without overwhelming your inbox. But as a reminder, Chamber Members are encouraged to join us on the FCoC Discord where we’re sharing ideas and engaging with fellow members on a daily basis. Not a member yet? Come sign up to join the lively discussion!
Member Feature: Cool Down Coyote
Based in Reno, NV, Cool Down Coyote is a provider of electrolyte drinks that are dye free, crystal clear, and fursuit safe. Simply add water to their sticks of electrolyte powder for a clean and tasty hydration solution that won’t stain or damage your fursuit.
As a company created by furries for furries, for every sale of their electrolyte powders and accessories they will donate one serving of their tasty beverage mix to furry conventions so that fursuiters always have a delicious and fursuit-safe hydration option available in the fursuit lounge.
“It’s our goal to promote clean and tasty hydration to furries without the worry of damaging precious fursuits”
Right now you can get 20% off their 20 stick packs using the code EARLYBIRD at checkout. Offer ends Aug 31, 2025.
Connect with Cool Down Coyote by visiting their website at cooldowncoyote.com or their social media @cooldowncoyote on Instagram, Blue Sky, Twitter (X), and TikTok.
Upcoming Office Hours
Chamber Office Hours, held on our Discord, are a dedicated, free-form time for members and prospective members to connect, ask questions, and get support with furry business initiatives, marketing, networking, and more.
Here are our upcoming office hours for the quarter so you can come prepared with your questions and get some feedback.
Thursday, Aug 14 at 10 AM Pacific
Thursday, Aug 28 at 10 AM Pacific
Thursday, Sep 11 at 10 AM Pacific
Thursday, Sep 25 at 10 AM Pacific
Thursday, Oct 9 at 10 AM Pacific
Would you like to host an Office Hours session or request a deep-dive on a specific topic? Get in touch with us with your ideas and we’d love to help!
How’s Business?
Between tariffs, postage increases, and more, it feels like the hits just keep on coming for small businesses. Do you have some business challenges you’ve recently faced you’d like to discuss? Whether you’ve found a solution you’d like to share with others or are seeking more info on a topic, we’d love to hear from you!
We’re always looking for ways we can better serve our community, both members and the furry public, so we want to learn more about the active challenges furry businesses are facing so we can do our research and offer the best and most up-to-date resources wherever we can. You can reach us either via email or our Discord.
We’ll be back in November for our quarterly newsletter, but for now, thanks for reading!
-Buddy
