For Richard and Tiffany Kelley, a furry friend in need is a furry friend indeed.
The couple, who own Downtown Brooklyn’s Flossy Pet Pawlor, held the store’s second annual dog coat and shoe drive on Oct. 11. A torrent of heavy rain was not enough to stop dog owners from Harlem, Dyckman, the Lower East Side, and Flatbush from making their way to them. The Kelleys said they had more than 200 coats for the event and were able to give away more than 40 by the end of that day.
The drive, organized through the Kelleys’ nonprofit, Pets Lives Matters Inc., is quickly becoming a staple for their five-year-old grooming, daycare, and boarding business — and has turned their store into a community gathering spot.
Flossy is open and welcoming to residents moving into Downtown Brooklyn’s new towers and maintains ties to longtime Downtown Brooklyn and Fort Greene families. The shop promotes pet care and encourages local youth to look toward pet grooming for employment, while sponsoring programs that connect animals with area kids and older adults.
Richard and Tiffany are Brooklyn-born and raised: Originally from Bedford-Stuyvesant, they now live in Fort Greene. After spending some time in North Carolina, they returned home and wanted to start a business. Richard said the idea for Flossy Pet Pawlor came to him when he realized there was a scarcity of nearby pet grooming options.
“I would walk my dog, and I realized that there’s no grooming in the area,” Richard said, “and [there] should be one closer in this area. I thought we could get one of these containers that was on the next block and convert it.”
Before working with pets, the Kelleys ran a record label business. That taught them how to create a business concept, organize, promote, and build a team, but Richard said the record industry wasn’t really a fit. “I couldn’t be the best version of myself in that industry,” he confessed. “I was being a lesser me and I knew it.”
Flossy began in two side-by-side shipping containers at Downtown Brooklyn’s Fleet Place. The Kelleys converted the shipping containers into a grooming operation and improvised through a lean first year; Richard estimated they saw about one client a week. A last-minute groomer cancellation forced him to study grooming videos overnight before handling nine dogs the next day. Nail-trimming, once his biggest fear, became a specialty that now brings clients from as far away as Prospect Park and even New Jersey.
The couple used the container as their store for three years. They said the clientele grew from roughly 2,000 customers there to more than 4,000 after they moved to their current downtown location on Prince Street. Tiffany said Flossy now gains “at least two to three new customers every day,” including residents moving into nearby buildings — Richard said they are getting 15 to 20 new customers a week.
Flossy Pet Pawlor’s staff includes relatives and young people referred through nonprofit and at-risk programs; one employee who arrived through a summer placement has been working with them for four years now. Tiffany said some young workers arrive withdrawn, but animals help draw them out. “The pets help more than not with their demeanor,” she said.
That’s one reason the couple established their nonprofit, Pets Lives Matter, in October 2025. The Kelleys want to reduce barriers that can prevent lower-income owners from obtaining vaccinations and grooming for their pets. In the future, they want to be able to provide mobile vaccine services, youth instruction in pet care, and eventually create a grooming school.
“Pets saved my life. 100%,” Richard told the AmNews. Working with animals, “changed the core of me. It changed the person I am –– my life’s 100% changed from five years ago.” The business, he said, made him more patient, more grounded, and more intentional about giving.
The Kelleys are also developing “Bingo and Pups,” an event to bring older adults together for games, prizes, and time with dogs.
During the coat drive, some visitors told the Kelleys they had lost jobs and could not afford winter gear for their dogs. Others found out about the event through TikTok and Instagram, where the store’s grooming videos are reaching a wide range of audiences.
Every three days, Flossy Pet Pawlor’s owners post a compilation of all the dogs they’ve groomed on social media. “At the end, if it’s the right dog, I rub their nose with my nose. I do a compilation of those, and I post it,” Richard said. “I’m getting over 200,000 likes, 180,000 views; stuff like that, so that’s trending right now on our TikTok, on our Instagram.
“A lot of people come in; I see them in the comments, they’re like, ‘Oh my dog, I’ve got to come and get a little nose kiss for my baby.’ That’s how they’re finding out about us all over.”
