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 Additional
Income For a Dog Daycare Through Retail
How to Create Additional Income for your Dog Daycare With Retail.
First and foremost
don’t go after the retail end thinking that you are going to be competing
with Petco, Pet Supermarket or any of the other big box pet supply
houses. Don’t even go into it hoping to put the local pet stores in your
area out of business. Retail for the Dog Daycare business is more of a
targeted guilt or emotion based sale as the average consumer will not come
to your store looking to buy dog food, they will go to Wal-Mart or another
store to meet those needs.
Your retail
customer is already going to be a client of one of your other services. This
works both for and against you. As I mentioned people are not going to be
walking in off the street to purchase their pet essentials at your store.
They will however be willing to pay more since they are already in your
store and will rarely if ever haggle price on your retail items. Keep your
retail simple and limited to small items like toys, leashes, collars, and
grooming products if you offer grooming services. The goal is that not to
have a lot of dead inventory sitting on shelves that you have already paid
for from the manufacturer, but have yet to sell. Big pet supply retailers
actually make a significant cash INVESTMENT in the retail product they
provide with guaranteed returns of between 15% to 50%. You however
should not be making large INVESTMENTS in retail as the Dog Daycare owner,
you should make small purchases to resale at a higher price later.
One last note on retail:
Always look twice
at web sites that offer wholesale pricing to stock your retail items. The
majority of these will already be marked up once. Go online and apply for a
state resale certificate for your state, so you can actually buy products
from manufactures at wholesale prices.
Below you will find pet product wholesalers and their website addresses
where you may purchase wholesale pet products to sell in your Dog Daycare
Center or off of your Dog Daycare website. Some of those listed do require
that you are an actual retailer and have a resale certificate and others
require a minimum dollar amount per order. With this list you will be able
to purchase every imaginable pet product currently available 24 hours a day
7 days a week 365 days a year at a very reasonable wholesale or below
wholesale price. The main advantage to providing you with this list is that
you will be able to find everything that you need to supply your Dog Daycare
using just 1 or 2 of the companies provided below.
For those companies
that require a State Resale Certificate, this is actually very easy to
obtain, generally it requires that you contact your State Department of
Revenue and provide them with you SS-4 (Form from IRS with your Federal
Employer Identification Number), Physical Address (Location of Your Store),
and local county/city business license (available at your local governments
administration building or tax assessors office)
List of Wholesale Suppliers
Lupine Collars and Leads
A New Hampshire based company providing collars, leashes and harnesses both
retail and wholesale. The main advantage to buying Lupine products is that
they have great customer service, and provide a huge discount on your
initial purchase when you buy a retail display. A display set with roughly
$1500 in retail collars and leads will cost around $500 on your initial
purchase. They provide a relatively inexpensive way to add a small retail
section to your dog daycare facility. All of their products are guaranteed
for life, even if chewed, which provides a good selling point to your
customers.
www.lupinepet.com
KINGWHOLESALE.COM
Kingwholesale.com is a California-based company that specializes in
providing a huge selection of dog products. Kingwholesale’s main advantage,
especially for a dog daycare that does not have a lot of retail, is that
they have a very low minimum purchase requirement of $25.00. They also pay
for the shipping on most items. If you purchase less than $100 in
merchandise there is a $5.00 handling fee which is not a big deal. You will
also find an excellent selection of grooming related items as well as a very
good selection of instructional material in the form of books and videos.
They do not provide you with a suggested retail price for any products they
sell but this information can easily be obtained by doing a little Google
research. International orders must exceed $150.00 U.S. They will promptly-
usually within 24 hours- send you a shipping quote for those items they
don’t pay the shipping for and that require your approval prior to shipping.
www.kingwholesale.com
WHOLESALEPET.COM
This company is based out of Virginia, has assembled hundreds of
manufacturers, and they continue to add more every month. You may search by
product, by vendor, or by category and you can cut and paste ready to use
product descriptions with graphics if you want to retail off of your dog
daycare website. The main disadvantage to this site is that although you can
order from literally hundreds of different vendors on one website you are
required to fill out a number of different order forms when you go to check
out and make your purchase. Minimum orders are different with each
manufacturer but can be as low as $50 or as high as $200.
www.wholesalepet.com
PETWHOLESALER.COM
This site offers a good variety of dog related products at a reasonable
price. They do require a state resale certificate number to register and
purchase from them. The web site is easy to use and informative, providing
suggested retail prices and accurate product descriptions.
www.petwholesaler.com
ROYAL PET SUPPLY
Royal Pet Supply is probably the largest and oldest pet supply resource
around. They basically supply the eastern half of the United States and have
two locations with more than 450 employees. They specialize in supplying pet
stores all over the nation. Taking a brief tour of the Royal Pet Supply
website will reveal thousands, if not tens of thousands, of pet products in
every possible category imaginable. They have everything you could
possibly imagine or want for a Dog Daycare and they can order anything you may
believe that you need and that they don’t have. The web site
although functional is not very user friendly and appears like a huge
generic list of products that is difficult to sort through. Customer service
is average and you may not use the site until you complete an application
form and fax it back with proof of a State Resale Certificate. Then you have
to wait between 4 and 5 days for a sales representative to be assigned to
your account and call you to provide the log in information.
www.royalpetsupplies.com
GREAT EASTERN PET SUPPLY
This company is based out of New Jersey and the prices are reasonable, especially for grooming
related disposable items like shampoos and conditioners etc. However when we
placed an order we found that the service leaves a lot to be desired, many
items listed on the website as available are not actually available or were
out of stock. The end result is we received an invoice via email that showed
we had been charged and the order shipped but many of the items were
missing.
Calling customer
service provided no relief as it was always the same individual that
answered the phone. This individual was unable to answer simple questions
such as; what is available, when will out of stock items will be available,
or provide product descriptions and information about products via phone
when the website was down. Generally large online merchants will provide a
courtesy call or email inquiring if you would like to change, cancel or
continue your order in instances where a product ordered is either no longer
available or out of stock.
One of the
positives about Eastern is that they can drop ship items for you. Thus, you
don’t have to maintain any inventory if you decide to sell items from your
web site. The website is simple and fairly easy to navigate; however, there are no
suggested retail prices. Again, a little Google research solves this
problem.
www.gepets.com
RETAILPETS.COM
This Company is based out of Pennsylvania and they provide actual retailers
with access to the latest pet products. The web site is easy to understand
and provides accurate product descriptions and pictures, as well as
recommendations and suggested retail prices for each item they sell. This
stores main focus is on dog and cat products with a heavy emphasis on
selling toys. However they do maintain a decent inventory of treats and food
items as well. They are directly affiliated with www.dogtoys.com and
www.cattoys.com and encourage purchasers to use their site product images on
their own sites. The minimum order is $75.
www.retailpets.com
PetEdge
If you own a Dog Daycare then PetEdge is a company that you need to know
about. It has one of the largest selections of grooming equipment available
and also provides a variety of discounted toys and other pet accessories.
They are a company that can really help your retail end. Another great thing
about Pet Edge is that they offer the ability for Dog Daycare and other pet
related business to generate additional revenue by allowing them to offer
private label products to their own clients. Their customer service is top
notch and you receive a new catalog- both the retailers and consumers copy-
about once every two months. The only problem that I would say I have with
PetEdge is that their customer service representatives call a little too
often for comfort to inform you of new products and try to get you to place
an order. Not a problem as long as you have caller ID and just choose not to
answer. The website is very well put together with great product
descriptions and images; however, they offer no suggested retail prices.
They do not have a minimum order policy but orders under $60.00 are charged
a $6.99 processing fee. Applying for a retail certificate is a fairly
straight forward process and generally takes only 24 hours and they offer a
good discount when you apply for a retailers account and supply a state
resale certificate
www.petedge.com
CENTRAL GARDEN & PET
Another huge pet supply company that offers its services only to actual
retail pet businesses. Again, this company is large and the website is not
really designed to accommodate casual shopping, but they do have everything
that you could possibly want if you are planning to offer retail at your
facility. The application process is overly complicated and difficult to
complete. The application form is extremely detailed and time intensive to
complete: they request a copy of your driver’s license as well as proof of a
business license and commercial location, and last but not least, you need
to supply a state resale certificate before being allowed to purchase items.
Then, once you have completed all this, you just sit back and wait 2-5 days
for an account representative to call you to review your application and
provide you with your account information.
www.centralpet.com
DOLLAR DAYS
Dollar Days is actually a blanket wholesale site offering wholesale products
for a number of industries but they do provide a section for pets. The
advantage that they offer is that they are completely designed as a web
based company which allows you to browse and purchase any number of pet
related items at below retail pricing to include dog toys, dog food, and
other pet related accessories. There is no minimum order but you will be
charged a flat shipping rate of $19.95 on an order under $100.00
www.dollardays.com
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