Pet Food Retailer Nurtures Natural Niche
Date: 06-Apr-04
Country: USA
Author: Samuel Fromartz
Well, Mud Bay Inc. of Olympia, Washington, has found it be a thriving one - perhaps less for selling pet food than for its much sought-after, broad-based knowledge of pet nutrition.
Think of Mud Bay - with about $10 million in sales and 10 stores, ranking as the largest independent pet food retailer in the Pacific Northwest - in a similar place to where the organic food market was a decade ago.
That was back when neighborhood food co-ops ruled, and there were only faint signs that the grass-roots organic movement would become a thriving national retail business.
But it did, and there is a chain, Whole Foods Markets Inc. - which started with a single store in Austin, Texas - with 156 stores in the United States and now Britain, and ranking No. 1 in the sale of organic foods.
It's not to say that Mud Bay will one day be the Whole Foods of pet food retailers, but it is already taking the natural pet food concept regional, which is also what first happened to natural food supermarkets.
FOOD FOR EVERY PET
If you look on the shelves at Mud Bay, you probably would not recognize many of the products. Few of the one-brand-fits-all pet foods sold in conventional stores are sold there.
Rather, Mud Bay offers 450 specialized formulas of pet food: meals for indoor cats and outdoor cats, for certain breeds of dogs, for obese animals or those with a medical condition, for pets who are young or old, frisky or lazy.
There is canned food, moist food, dry food, and the fastest-growing item - raw frozen organic pet food, which is said to be closest to the "natural" diet of an animal.
Knowledgeable store clerks make recommendations based on breed, age, behavior and the way pets respond to other foods. If staff are ever at a loss for answers, they call Mud Bay's vice president of pet nutrition.
"Essentially, we've put together the most accurate and complete information for the customer," said 42-year-old CEO Lars Wulff. "We found we could add value, and contribute to the health of dogs and cats."
Before Mud Bay accepts any pet food as stock, Wulff said it researches the manufacturer to make sure their products live up to their claims and descriptions.
While they do not do a laboratory analysis, Mud Bay meets with companies, visits plants, and discusses their methods and nutritional rationales.
Then, Mud Bay employees feed the food to their own pets for several weeks, before stocking it in the store.
"Trying to sell them something is an exhaustive process," said Randy Reber of Animal Supply Co., a pet food distributor.
Whether the quality of Mud Bay products is actually better is for the customer to decide.
The bigger point is that they are filling a need by trying to answer a question that bedevils many pet owners: What is the best thing to feed my pet?
That's a daunting enough question for humans themselves, what with their own choices of Atkins, the Zone, Sugar Busters, South Beach, Weight Watchers, low-fat, low-carb and even raw food diets.
But it stands to reason that the same people who care about their own health would be concerned about their pets as well.
"There is a very narrow niche of people who are extremely conscious of what they feed their pets," Reber said.
ACCIDENTAL MARKET
Mud Bay came on this market by accident, since the original store - a money-losing granary, pet food and general store in Olympia - was bought by Wulff's mother in 1988 and almost left her penniless.
Coming to her aid, Lars Wulff, then an aspiring novelist, put down his pen to help save the company. He ended up running it full time, narrowing the product mix to natural pet food, and eventually, his sister, an MBA, came on board too.
"The idea was to grow it and sell it, but the more I worked at it, the more potential I saw," Wulff said.
The store improved, eventually generating sales of $1,000 per square foot, against the industry average of about $180, according to Wu