A Determined Woman. A Little Dog Named SHERPA. A Remarkable Story.

It’s in the Bag: How to Turn a Passion Into a New Business is an inspiring business memoir. Entrepreneurs will find invaluable business advice in this remarkable story of how a flight attendant turned an idea into a product category that didn’t exist and created a multimillion-dollar global brand - the iconic SHERPA BAG, the world’s top selling, soft-side pet carrier. Pet lovers who fly with a dog or cat, have Gayle Martz to thank for revolutionizing pet travel on airlines, and for making pet travel in every mode, safer. This is her story.

Gayle’s journey to becoming one of the top successful women entrepreneurs, is not a fairy tale in which everything went smoothly. Her story began in 1987, when she was furloughed from the job she loved as a TWA hostess (now known as a flight attendant). Shortly after, she lost the man she loved, her fiancé, who died in his sleep. Her saving grace was her little dog named SHERPA, who became her life. It was on a cross-country car trip with SHERPA, that the idea of a soft-sided pet carrier came to her.

With a $5,000 loan from her mother, and no real business experience, she started what would become the SHERPA Pet Trading Company from her 600 square foot apartment in Manhattan. She designed the first line of bags, found a manufacturer, a warehouse, and then successfully started to sell the pet carriers to high-end department stores in New York City including Bloomingdales, Sa