Welcome to BurrowSwap 🐹💜
I’m Alex, the creator behind BurrowSwap, based in Essex, UK.
BurrowSwap was built around one simple idea:
Why replace the whole product when you can just swap the style?
For most of my life, I worked constantly. After spending 13 years working for an investment bank and over 25 years working overall, life suddenly changed when I was made redundant.
As stressful as that period was, it also gave me something I’d never really had before… time.
Time with my children.
Time at home.
Time to slow down and rethink life for the first time in decades.
I have a 15-year-old son and a 10-year-old daughter, and spending proper time with them completely changed my perspective on what I wanted my future to look like.
I tried finding another role that allowed some flexibility and hybrid working, especially around school runs and family life, but most positions in my industry wanted full-time office attendance in London. I didn’t want my daughter left home alone for hours every day while I travelled back from work, so after a long period trying to figure things out, I made the decision to become self-employed.
That journey took around 17 months.
During that time, I lost my dad, faced a lot of uncertainty about rebuilding my future and honestly had moments where I had no idea what direction life was heading in.
Somewhere in the middle of all of that, I was introduced to 3D printing and what started as curiosity quickly became an obsession.
I originally created two completely different products before BurrowSwap. Both ideas actually worked really well, but without huge funding behind me, the small manufacturing challenges and development costs made them difficult to even get started. Still… you never know what the future holds.
At home we have two beautiful dogs and at their mum’s house the kids have cats and hamsters too, so animals have always been a huge part of family life. I loved seeing how creative people became with their pet setups online, but I also noticed most accessories looked very similar, with very little customisation or personality behind them.
One day, I built a hide using bamboo and started experimenting with interchangeable sleeve systems around pet accessories instead… and that’s where BurrowSwap was born.
The idea slowly evolved into creating one interchangeable system that could work across different products and eventually different animals too.
Now, instead of replacing full hides, bowls, sand baths, tunnels, or future accessories every time you want a different look, you can simply swap the sleeve and completely refresh the setup in seconds.
The goal has always been to create products that feel:
- creative
- fun
- personal
- interchangeable
- affordable
- and genuinely unique
Whether it’s hamsters secretly building underground sleeve collections, dogs demanding matching bowls, cats judging everyone’s design choices, or birds spying from above trying to steal the ideas… BurrowSwap is about bringing personality, creativity, and fun into pet accessories.
And honestly… who knows where it could end up one day.
Maybe even monkeys 🐒
BurrowSwap is still very new and balancing work, family life, and building this dream at the same time can definitely get chaotic — but it’s also been one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever done.
This isn’t some huge company with massive investors behind it.
It’s me designing, printing, testing, packing orders, learning as I go, fixing mistakes, improving products and trying to build something genuinely different for people who love creating beautiful setups for their pets.
The dream is simple:
To build one creative interchangeable system that can continue growing across all kinds of animals and accessories while giving people the freedom to make their setups feel truly their own.
Every order, follow, share, message and bit of support genuinely means the world to me, especially at this stage of the journey.
So thank you for being here from the beginning 💛
— Alex
Founder of BurrowSwap