From wrist injury to walking revolution: How one Dublin engineer reinvented the dog lead

DCM Editorial Summary: This story has been independently rewritten and summarised for DCM readers to highlight key developments relevant to the region. Original reporting by Irish Times, click this post to read the original article.

Carl Stainthorpe had a bike accident in 2019 that left him with a seriously damaged wrist. His recovery was slow and painful, and trying to walk Romeo, his energetic border collie, hurt like mad if Romeo pulled strongly towards a particularly attractive scent.

Stainthorpe bought a hands-free lead, assuming it would solve the problem. It didn’t. He subsequently bought several more that also failed to do the job efficiently, and with frustration mounting, he decided to design and make his own.

At the time, Stainthorpe was working as an engineer with Amazon Web Services, but he’d always had a passion for design and making things work better. “The problem-solving mindset is the same whether you’re designing electrical systems or dog leashes. It’s just different scales and different problems,” he says.

Stainthorpe’s take on the hands-free dog leash was initially designed to meet his own needs, not least because the legacy of his accident was an arthritic wrist.

However, he could see that many dog owners struggled to control strong or reactive dogs that pulled constantly on their leads. This sparked the idea for what has become Madra World, a Dublin-based start-up producing hands-free leads that eliminate wrist strain.

“Turns out the hands-free angle doesn’t just work for people with wrist pain, arthritis or mobility issues,” Stainthorpe says. “It makes urban dog walking in particular much easier for everyone, especially on footpaths and in crowded places. The dog lead was invented over 2,000 years ago. The Romans had them, and they haven’t really evolved since. They don’t suit modern life, where people are trying to hold a dog, a phone and maybe a cup of coffee all at the same time.

“The lead is fully adjustable and can be worn around the waist or across the body. It comes with ergonomic ‘traffic grips’ for close control when needed, and it’s been designed to distribute weight properly, not destroy your hand and wrist.

“No other hands-free leash has the traffic grips, yet they’re critical for safety in urban environments. When you need emergency control, you can stop your dog instantly. The design is minimal with a sleek aesthetic that’s not bulky or over-engineered. The City Leash is a quality product engineered for easy city walking.”

Stainthorpe started Madra World as a side hustle while still working at Amazon. He bought an industrial sewing machine, took sewing lessons and sourced suitable raw materials in Europe and China.

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He began producing small quantities of the City Leash in 2023, and they sold steadily. Demand eventually reached a point where it became impossible for Stainthorpe to do his day job and produce the leads, and in July 2025 he quit Amazon to throw himself fully into developing Madra World. “I was in a good job with Amazon, so it was a fairly big leap of faith to give it all up,” he says.

Stainthorpe is an electrical engineer by profession, but his path to a successful career wasn’t all plain sailing. He hadn’t thrived in the secondary school system and ended up dropping out at the age of 15.

He subsequently began an electrical apprenticeship and qualified at age 20. At this point, he says, “I copped myself on a bit and went back to college to get an honours degree at what was then DIT Kevin Street.”

He started work with Amazon Web Services as a technician after college and was promoted to chief engineer three years later. His expertise is in data centres.

Getting Madra World to where it is now has taken a lot of time and an investment of around €15,000, most of which was spent on an industrial sewing machine and raw materials for prototypes. Beyond that, the venture has been bootstrapped, with Stainthorpe working for nothing while building up a steady revenue stream and adding collars and harnesses to the product line-up.

Stainthorpe has recently completed the New Frontiers programme at TU Tallaght, and while he found it invaluable, especially in the areas of mentorship and business development, he says the ecosystem here is biased towards tech start-ups.

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“I get it. Ireland isn’t really a hub for manufacturing, and there are better returns on tech investments,” he says. “However, that said, it would be good to see more support for physical product businesses. Manufacturing has different challenges and timelines than tech, but we’re still creating jobs and exporting Irish products.

“My main focus for now is Ireland with a small presence in the UK and we’re aiming at customers that want a locally made, quality product that’s both functional and well-designed and not a cheap online alternative that doesn’t do the job.”

Stainthorpe says that if an overly boisterous dog manages to damage its lead, Madra World offers a repair service in the interests of sustainability. And, although the human part of the tether is one-size-fits-all, if a customer needs a longer tether, that too can be accommodated.

The company’s biggest competition comes from long-established and widely available brands that haven’t brought anything new to the table in the last 20 years, says Stainthorpe, who adds that ramping up production while maintaining quality has been a big challenge.

An even bigger challenge for him now, however, is deciding how best to scale the business as demand grows and the product range expands. Does he keep manufacturing in-house and hire staff, or does he subcontract to a producer that meets his criteria for ethical manufacturing?

“It’s a dilemma for sure, because manufacturing is not like software where you can just spin up more servers,” Stainthorpe says.