About Founder
Meet Mia
She didn't set out to start a pet brand.She set out to find a jacket that wouldn't embarrass her dog.
The Person
Mia spent 20 years in the fashion industry — across design, production, and brand strategy — working at the intersection of aesthetics and craft. She knows what good construction looks like. She knows what it costs to cut corners. And she knows the difference between something that's designed and something that's just made.
Every morning, before any of that, she walked Bruce.
Bruce is a Golden Retriever with strong opinions about trails, an enthusiasm for strangers, and no patience for gear that doesn't let him move the way he wants to. Together they've covered city blocks, mountain paths, and long stretches of road between the two.
And somewhere along the way, Mia started noticing the same thing every time she looked for gear to put on him:
Nothing was good enough.
Before the Brand — She Listened First
Before Mia designed a single piece, she went looking for the people who cared most about this problem.
She walked neighborhoods. She visited dog parks. She sat with dog parents on trail heads and in coffee shops — the ones who clearly thought about what their dogs wore, who had returns piling up and strong opinions about what was missing.
She listened to what they needed. What kept failing. What they'd been asking for that no brand had delivered.
That research didn't inform the brand. It became the brand.
Every design decision at Panda Jin traces back to a real conversation with a real dog parent who told us exactly what wasn't working.
The Moment She Stopped Waiting
She'd heard the same story too many times.
Dog parents who'd returned jacket after jacket. Who'd spent more than they wanted to on something that fell apart by winter. Who'd finally given up and stopped trying — walking their dogs in whatever was available, not whatever was right.
"There's just nothing good out there."
She heard that sentence in dog parks, on trails, in conversations with the kind of people who clearly cared — who thought about what their dogs wore, who noticed the difference between gear that worked and gear that just existed.
They'd said it with the quiet resignation of someone who'd decided to accept it as fact.
Mia hadn't accepted it.
She went home, opened her sketchbook, and started with the one question that had been sitting with her for years:
What would this look like if someone who actually knew what they were doing decided to care?
That sketch became the first Panda Jin piece.
Bruce was the first to wear it.
He hasn't stopped moving since.
The Way She Builds
Three beliefs shape every product Panda Jin makes — not as policy, but as the natural result of who Mia is and what she learned from the people she listened to.
The first is that pets are family. Not accessories, not props. Bruce has a full life — trails, cities, long trips, early mornings — and the gear he wears should support that life, not just survive it. Every dog wearing Panda Jin deserves the same.
The second is that design should never ask you to compromise. Mia spent 20 years watching brands treat aesthetics and function as a trade-off. She never believed it. Good design solves real problems without announcing itself. You feel it in how something fits. You notice it when it doesn't fail.
The third is that quality shouldn't be exclusive. The best outdoor gear for humans isn't reserved for professionals. Neither should the best gear for dogs be. Panda Jin is built to a high standard and priced so more dogs can actually wear it — on real trails, in real weather, in real life.
Mia still walks Bruce every morning.
Some days it's city streets. Some days it's a trail with an elevation gain that makes her regret wearing the wrong shoes. Some days it's a trip somewhere neither of them has been before.
She started Panda Jin because she couldn't find what she needed. She keeps building it because thousands of dog parents told her they couldn't either.
Panda Jin is still young. But the dogs wearing it are already telling us what to build next — and we're still listening.
