How LickiMat® was Invented

The Story of LickiMat® - The First Ever Lick Mats

By 2016, Joe and Hazel Clarke had already spent nearly a decade in the pet industry with their boutique accessory brand, Hamish McBeth—named after their beloved West Highland Terrier. The company specialised in premuim leather collars and pure wool jumpers. 

The brand was very successful in boutique pet stores but being premium, the products were not suited to large pet stores. So the company decided to move into other pet prodcts areas and experiment in developing quality plastic feeding products. The designer pet bowls had achieved notable success, inspiring them to explore new innovations in pet feeding.

Joe’s next idea was to reinvent the humble dog bowl by adding a new purpose beyond simply holding food. Using the same base mould which they had used for the Hamish McBeth bowls, his innovation became the world’s first (and still only) oral health bowl, the OH Bowl™.

This clever design features a textured rubber pad that encourages dogs to lick after each meal. The licking action helps gently scrape the tongue clean, removing odor-causing bacteria, while also stimulating saliva production to naturally clean teeth, gums, and the mouth.

Around this time, their family grew with the arrival of Mackie, another Westie who quickly bonded with his older brother, Hamish. Though Mackie was house-trained within a day, Hazel soon noticed occasional indoor accidents and excessive licking of the tiled floor. After some research and consulting their vet partners, she discovered these behaviors were linked to anxiety and self-soothing.

That revelation sparked a “light bulb moment”: dogs needed something safe and satisfying to lick—but nothing like that existed on the market. Drawing inspiration from their OH Bowl samples, Hazel and Joe began creating treats to smear over the textured rubber surface, which both dogs loved. This led to the birth of a brand-new concept of lick mats and the brand LickiMat.

Initially, Hazel planned to design just one mat, but Joe persuaded her to make three. The result was the original trio of designs : LickiMat Buddy™, Playdate™, and Soother™.

To focus fully on this new direction, the Clarkes sold Hamish McBeth in 2014 and dedicated their energy to pet feeding innovations.  In 2016, they introduced the revolutionary LickiMat at Interzoo in Nuremberg, showcasing the concept with only drawings—no physical samples, as they had yet to secure a manufacturing partner.

Despite that, the presentation was a hit. The concept’s ingenuity and innovation led to their first order of 40,000 units, and production began in earnest.

The rest, as they say, is history.

Patent Information:

https://patents.google.com/patent/US20200196566A1/en