The beginning

A small promise,
made out of fabric.

Boston Made began with pet wearables: jackets and rainwear designed around the everyday reality of a dog’s walk in New England. The starting point was concrete. A garment had to fit, move, and serve a purpose outside.

An early yellow jacket on a workbench still sets the standard the company wants to honor: a customer should be able to understand the promise and judge whether the product keeps it.

Pupwear carries that original consumer idea forward. The wider family may look different today, but the first question remains useful: what are we making, and who does it help?

The name

A dog. A city.
A direction.

The name Boston Made holds two meanings: Boston, Nathan’s GoldenDoodle, and the Massachusetts city that helped shape his ambitions. The name is both personal and an expression of the place that inspired the business.

Boston became a point of reference for the company’s story—a place associated with history, work, ideas, and reinvention. The relationship is an inspiration and a responsibility: a recognizable name has to be supported by something useful.

Our connection to the city lives alongside a broader interest in New England and the people, businesses, and communities that give places their character.

The people

A company grows
through its relationships.

Nathan’s account of Boston Made is also a story about family and the people who made room for him. Howard and Jenny Strickland are part of that foundation. So are the conversations and relationships he describes from Thursday mornings at the Union Club in Boston.

The lesson he carries from those mornings is straightforward: return to the table, listen, and build relationships before you need something from them. That experience informs the company’s interest in publishing, community, and connecting people with useful work.

It is a personal influence on the founder’s story, rather than an institutional endorsement of Boston Made.

The expansion

Different work.
A common thread.

The company’s experiments expanded beyond pet apparel. A newsroom created space for stories. Fenway Web brought the work of building websites to small businesses, churches, and creators. Other projects explored technology, research, parking, and local discovery.

Each serves a different audience. The connection is the desire to make a useful next step easier to find: something to read, a business to discover, a website to build, or a place to explore.

The brand directory explains how these projects fit together. It distinguishes the company’s brands from independent affiliates and Fenway Web’s clients, so visitors can understand the relationships without assuming every organization has the same ownership.

The lesson

Connection should
make things simpler.

More brands do not automatically create a better experience. Each new idea needs attention, and an expanding collection of websites can confuse everyone else.

The direction now is clearer: give each brand a reason to exist, explain who it serves, and make the path between related experiences understandable. Shared design and navigation should help visitors recognize the family while leaving room for each business to have its own purpose.

This is work in progress. The standard is not how many sites we can launch. It is how clearly someone can understand what we do and find something worth returning to.

Keep exploring

One story.
More ways in.

Follow Boston’s history through our stories of the Molasses Flood and the Big Dig. Discover the platforms behind the family in our software directory, or read the latest from the Boston Made Newsroom.

For a playful next chapter, visit the Boston Made Arcade. Explore our corporate governance and compliance libraries to learn about the thinking behind the work.