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.
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.
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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