After 30 years in the pet trade, Bill Lowe of Perfect Pets, Richmond, Va. has seen it all. He knows what works, and he knows the pet industry is continually changing, and he knows that he must change with it.
Right now, his 5-year old store reflects the latest evolution in pet preferences of his customer base.
Perfect Pets
“With us, the trend is everything dog. We’re really in a dog market.”
To that end, he has downsized his bird and aquatic lines, and is setting his sights on making the store the place to go in the area for dog products, and more specifically, canine nutrition. Even the cat category is small, and he doesn’t foresee it getting much bigger anytime soon.
Perfect Pets—The Dog Nutrition Authority
“We have the largest selection of All-Natural and Holistic dog foods around,” he said, explaining that more and more, people care about products they feed their pets.
Helping to craft this strategy was the recent pet food recall. Bill remembers the surge of new customers looking for safe, nutritional products for their pets.
“Food was stripped from all the grocery shelves, but we didn’t have any products that were pulled.”
His store was the go-to source for information during that period, and the end result was a healthy increase in loyal customers. “You’ve got to have quality products,” he said.
“I don’t go in for any economy brands—they can always get that somewhere else.” In his clean, 10,000 sq ft store, Coastal Pet products occupy a significant amount of space.
“I have about 30-35 feet of Coastal—collars, leashes, pads, tie outs, harnesses and leather—it’s hard to keep it all in stock.”
We Like Small Dogs
A line that’s doing particularly well for him is Li’l Pals, a fashionable line for petite dogs and puppies.