Pet Accessories
It doesn't seem to matter where you are in the world, people love their pets. We may not agree on which pet, or even breed of pet is the best every country I have been to so far has had a pet culture. This gives rise to accessories, as simple as dog leads and as luxurious as pet hotels.
People who buy pets tend to absorb them into family life. Recent fashions have included fancy dress costumes for dogs, scratching posts for cats and balls that allow mice or hamsters to roam the house without disappearing behind the skirting board (and safe from the cat). All these accessories are made, and sold at a profit, some of them a substantial profit.
I recently spoke with someone who was having trouble with a pet accessory business, the idea being to sell a large line of goods over the internet, but without the capital to build a stock inventory they have been fighting an uphill battle.
It might be a better approach to find a number of suppliers for one or two accessories and then market them to death before adding new lines and building up an inventory. This will allow you to negotiate bulk discounts and possibly just in time ordering as you develop good relationships with your suppliers.
The products that you may choose to carry can be incredibly diverse, from
dog bowls in sports team colours to multi-tiered mice cages. Have a look at
some of these sites for ideas: -
www.dog.com
www.cat.com
www.rhinestonedogcollars.net
www.petsmart.com
Clearly there is a vast array of accessories that you could get involved with.
Once you have decided then you will need to source your stock, and find ways
to market your products, our ideas are below: -
Ebay
Website
Pet Shops/Breeders
Animal training classes
Schools
Pet shows/Owners clubs
Setting up a Shop
Ebay is competitive to put it mildly, with 70,000+ hits on a search for <pet supplies> and more than 6,000 for <dog collar>. The key as ever with EBay will be to carry a number of ads and to brand your products. If you go on and set up a web page then ensure all your ads carry the URL to further strengthen your brand. Offer guarantees so that customers feel more secure and get your rating as high as possible as quickly as possible by asking your customers to provide feedback about you.
There are 32 million hits on Google for <pet supplies > which tells you how competitive the market will be. You will need to get yourself a snappy sounding web address and be prepared to learn lots about internet marketing. Getting yourself higher up the search rankings by choosing your name and keywords carefully for example <iguana supplies Bradford> only yields 15,000 hits which still sounds like a lot but can be more easily managed then 32 million. Be prepared to market your website offline as well, include the address in all your advertising, business cards, in fact anywhere that your business is visible to customers. If you can stock products that also carry the web address it all helps drive traffic.
Off line customers may well be easier to find, as pet toys, and luxury pet accessories tend to be an emotional purchase. In fact the best time to sell them is when the animal is first handed over. If you can persuade a pet shop, or breeder to carry some of your items on a sale or return basis you have a good chance of selling a number of units regularly. Naturally you will provide a commission on any items sold. You may also want to invest in a display stand for your products so that they are visible at the time when the animal will be handed over or the paperwork filled in.
Animal training classes are a great place for new owners to meet with their pets and allow the pets to socialise as well. You may be able to create a spin off opportunity here by offering to take other people's pets for training and use the opportunity to hand out cards and tell the new owners about your product(s). Another alternative might be to get involved in a training school so that you get to meet the new owners consistently, or simply ask the school to carry and promote your stock.
Schools are a great place to find pet owners, and as we keep being told the "tweens" have more disposable income than ever. You could offer to speak at school assemblies about some aspect of pet ownership or care that will be educational but also allows you to disseminate your sales materials.
Pet shows and owners' club meetings are also a great place to meet people who may well be fanatical about their animals. They should take very little persuasion to buy quality, or cute items as gifts for their loved one.
Setting up a shop may be similar to building a website in as much as it will be important to build traffic to the shop. You can do this either by taking a prime location with a lot of foot traffic and keeping the size of the unit small to minimise rent, or by taking on a lower cost location and marketing like crazy. Note that if you choose to go this route you are probably looking at a sizeable investment in stock, as well as fitting out the shop, advance rental payments etc. If you are not sure whether you have enough money you probably don't. If you can afford to go this route you automatically boost the power of all the other marketing strategies listed above as you gain the credibility of having real world premises, which infers stability, credibility and trustworthiness.
Remember from above that Google has 32 million hits on the words <pet suppliers> we do not advise going this route to find your stock, unless you have a lot of time.
www.alibaba.com carries 153 pet suppliers,3 of which provide dog bowls, and 31 of which provide dog leads. It should be fairly easy to sort through these and find what you are looking for. You could also try www.manufacturers.com
You should be able to find suppliers overseas who an give you much better prices than in your own country including import duties and taxes.
A reliable manufacturer ought to be able to provide you with samples of the goods you are interested in. Feel free to use these as start up stock, or use them to show to others who may be willing to carry them for you.