33 minute read
Conversations With the 2020 IBBY Winners
with Clay Liebrum
The IBPSA Pet Care Business Excellence Awards, nicknamed the IBBYs, were established by the International Boarding & Pet Services Association (IBPSA) to honor those businesses raising the bar for professionalism and success in the pet care services industry. The 2020 IBBYs were presented to the winners in multiple categories during the final session at the Eighth Annual IBPSA Virtual Conference & Trade Show, this past October. I was able to get a chance to talk with our five distinguished winners. We wanted to ask them some questions about their business and operations, but we also spent some time talking about the past year and all that went along with the many situations that almost everyone has been facing. It was a pleasure hearing the success these people are finding as a result of the passion they have for the pet care industry. I definitely learned a few things from these incredible people, and our hope is that you will, too.
JILL MERJESKI
JILL’S NEXT DOOR DOG WALKING & PET SERVICES
PETATARIAN AWARD WINNER
HOW DID YOU GET STARTED? I established Jill’s Next Door Dog Walking & Pet Services in 2016. I started out doing independent contractor work with rover.com. Once I got that started, I then established Jill’s Next Door Dog Walking & Pet Services. From there, it’s just been growing. I have a team of sitters, and now I sort of overhead manage everything.
I’ve never seen so many community cats that needed help. This area of Florida is inundated with stray cats, so I started just feeding the local community cats, and it becomes addictive. I fed those first community cats and they kept coming back at the same time, every day. Then, they began bringing their friends. They are just sitting outside of your door, waiting to get fed and they are just starved. So, I became the community cat feeder and then fostered a bunch of kitties. Then, I realized that I needed some more hel. I created these alliance programs to create a bridge to the different rescues and people that can foster and adopt. People that have lost cats or were looking to foster them would come to me and I would work with the local rescues help them. It just becomes one thing after another and if your heart is in it, like mine is, then it is really difficult to say no. It is so fulfilling and it is so rewarding. With the benefits, there is going to be loss. There is going to be grieving. There are going to be sick pets that we just can’t help. There is going to be death. My team has wanted to give up because it’s just too heart wrenching. We can turn a blind eye, that’s an option, but it’s still going to happen. Do you want to be a part of it? My thing is, grieve it, get through it, and then go help the next one.
TELL US ABOUT YOUR TEAM. We have a rescue liaison, and she works our local rescues and then with the fosters and adopters and then we align them with the different kitties and cats. We have a trapper, who also has a property that we fund raised to build an
outdoor “catio”, which is a screenedin area for cats that are unadoptable. We also have a volunteer that comes in to help socialize the baby kittens, which increases their rate for adoption. We also get a ton of support from the community. A lot of people have been willing to help, so it’s been a group effort, for sure.
TELL US A LITTLE BIT ABOUT WHAT’S BEEN KEEPING YOU BUSY OVER THE PAST YEAR. Well, with rescues closing, me and my team had to jump in and figure out how to continue getting these stray cats trapped and fixed, finding ways to get treatment to the ones that are ill, fostering them, and all of that stuff. So that’s when we had to jump it into high gear and up our social media presence. I also reached out to local rescues and helped them with their websites that were really out of date and not very user friendly. I did a lot of website design for them and just tried to get them online donations, since everyone was doing everything virtually at that point. I didn’t know anything about website design, so I had to just learn it on my own. Started some online fund raisers to raise money for building shelters for unadoptable kitties, hoping that people would be willing to help me and they were, which is fantastic. Setting up a bunch of makeshift medical stations. Inviting teams of people to come help, working with a ton of rescues in the area. HOW DO PEOPLE TYPICALLY FIND OUT ABOUT YOUR SERVICES? They find us on social media. We did a morning television show through our local community. Getting this Petarian Award was huge for us. I sent out press releases and the local papers picked up the story. It’s a great honor for this recognition, but it also brings awareness to the cause and what we are trying to do.
WHAT HAS BEEN YOUR GREATEST OBSTACLE? I would say resources are our biggest obstacle and having the funds to care for ill cats. Resources are also needed to have enough room to foster. Having fosters and adopters are other resources that are always needed. People are always wanting kittens, and they grow so fast. If I don’t get it to them in that window, then they are no longer kittens. Time is a resource that seems to always be needed.
WHY? WHY DO YOU DO THIS? It’s really really interesting. I ask myself that a lot because it is hard. It’s difficult to find fosters. It’s difficult to find adopters. It’s difficult to reunite lost cats with their owners, all of it. It’s really a lot of hard work. It’s sad and it’s scary to get phone calls saying, “Hey, I need to re-home a cat.” And I think, “Why do I do this if it is so heart wrenching?” But then, I have these little babies here that grow and thrive. I make people’s lives by giving these people this beautiful
pet that they love. It comes full circle where the good outweighs the bad. The benefits outweigh the detriments. That’s what it always comes down to. Yes, it’s tough. Yes, it’s difficult. At the end of the day, we do such good and it feels so good. When I’m looking at these helpless kitties and they are sick or abandoned, and now they are thriving. They wouldn’t have had the ability to live their lives had we not jumped in. It really starts with that one kitten in need, and then you’re hooked.
HOW HAVE YOU BENEFITTED SINCE BECOMING INVOLVED WITH IBPSA? Every day I am so grateful for this award. I tell everyone and anyone that I meet about this award because it means the world to me. All of this stuff that I have been doing has seemed to be on the side, out of my own home, so to have this international recognition blew me away. I’m still buzzing from it.
The IBPSA Conference is amazing. Their resources are amazing. I’m on their website all of the time. I’m on their social media, learning from the community. What’s not to love? It’s a great asset. It’s a great reference to have. WHAT ARE SOME OF THE CREATIVE THINGS THAT YOU HAVE HAD TO DO DIFFERENTLY DURING THESE COVID TIMES? Since some of the rescues were closed, we had to triple our fostering efforts. There were cats in every room of my house. We had to set up makeshift medical stations in my house and invite professional to come in and treat the ill cats. We had to boost our online presence and social media efforts. We started building a “catio” because we were running out of room. We were inundated with becoming more creative because of the pandemic. I often say, “Where there is a Jill, there is a way.”
ANY SPECIFIC SITUATION FROM 2020 THAT COULD HAVE GONE BAD, BUT YOU WERE ABLE TO MANAGE WELL? The best story was when I got a call about a mom that had just given birth to three kittens and I went out and picked up the mom and kittens. But then I had to evacuate my home because of a hurricane that was coming. So I put my three cats, the mom cat, and her three kittens in my car and drove to a hotel West Florida, where it was safe. So I had seven cats with me in this nice hotel room and was so thankful that hotel allowed me to bring those cats in with me. We blasted that story all over social media to highlight the generosity of the hotel. Because of that, we were actually able to reunite the mom with her
original owners and then adopted out the kittens. It was a beautiful success story of how to overcome the elements. No matter what comes, you can still do it. Just because disasters, hurricanes, and pandemics happen, it doesn’t mean we stop.
WHAT ARE SOME THINGS THAT YOU WILL CONTINUE TO DO EVEN AFTER COVID IS A THING OF THE PAST? Focusing on the online presence and cleaning up some of these rescue sites to be more user-friendly. We are even more digital now and updating the places where people go for help or to donate should be something we continue to do. We’ve all learned new skillsets because of this past year and using those new skills moving forward is important for the community.
WHAT DOES THIS AWARD MEAN TO YOU? I was so happy and grateful for the recognition. I jumped up and down! I was going to hang the award in my office but I want it near me all of the time, so I keep it in my bedroom, right on my nightstand. This is the most proud that I have been for any accomplishment in my life. By far, bar none. This is it.
I do want to say, there’s been some pushback from the community with feeding the community cats. My family often wondering why I have 10 kitties that I am fostering in the house. There’s just been some pushback there. I’m doing this for the greater good. It’s a ton of work and it’s exhausting, so for me to have this international recognition is validating for all of the work. I am so honored to be the first recipient of this award.
ANY SORT OF ADVICE YOU WOULD WANT TO SHARE WITH OUR IBPSA MEMBERS? Use the resources that IBPSA offers. That knowledge base is irreplaceable. Use those cohorts to learn from and grow with together. Foster those relationships, not only to help the IBPSA community but also to be better professionals in this industry. Get out there. See how you can help your community. Connect with the passion. Don’t let hurricanes or pandemics stop us.
www.theibbys.com
K9 RESORTS OF FAIRFIELD, NJ
ANDY LUBALIN, OWNER/MANAGER
FRANCHISEE AWARD WINNER
HOW LONG HAS YOUR LOCATION BEEN OPEN? We will have been here eight years at this location, this coming May.
WHAT ARE THE MAIN DEMOGRAPHICS IN YOUR CUSTOMER BASE? (FAMILIES, RETIRED, SINGLES…) It’s a big mix. When we first opened, we were generally more expensive than other places. As time went on, the demographics began to even out. We have retirees that travel the country. We have recent graduates that are on their way to getting married, and that pet is their child. We also have families with parents that work and they go on vacations. I would say it’s an even split.
DO YOU HAVE SOME SORT OF DAYCARE MEMBERSHIP OR PUNCH CARD? That’s all taken care of in our computer system. We sell daycare and boarding packages. The second we check you in, the system itself deducts the proper amount from the package, which they have already purchased. No appointment needed.
WHAT IS THE SPECIAL SAUCE THAT SETS YOU APART FROM THE COMPETITION? Customer Service. Period. The end. At the end of the day, it’s ALL about the relationships. You go out of your way to accommodate, within reason, whatever the customers are wanting to do. Sharing information for the wellbeing of their dog is important.
People come back because of the relationships. Love the clients. Love the dogs. Then, everything else will take care of itself.
WHAT HAS BEEN YOUR MOST SUCCESSFUL FORM OF ADVERTISING? It’s mostly the internet. It’s mostly getting the most out of the search engine optimization. We come up pretty high on the search page, no matter what you are searching for online,
whether we are paying for advertising or not. I pay enough for the SEO side so I haven’t gotten into the targeting part of online advertising. We do some coupon mailers and some direct mailers, as well.
IF YOU WERE STARTING OVER FROM SCRATCH, WHAT IS SOMETHING YOU WOULD WANT TO DO DIFFERENTLY? I might have started a little smaller. I might have spent a little less money on bells and whistles. That kind of stuff might get people in the door sometimes, but I’m already talking to them when they come through the door. Did I really need crown molding? I thought we would start out a little bit faster and grow a little bit slower, and it turned out we started a little bit slower and grew really fast. I also think we could have paid better attention to our organic presence on the internet prior to opening, to have that built up ahead of time. If people can’t find you, then people can’t find you.
HOW HAVE YOU BENEFITTED FROM BEING INVOLVED WITH IBPSA? Exposure, for one. The ability to attend the annual IBPSA Conferences, for another. The sharing of knowledge and ideas has been helpful, hearing other ideas and testing them out. No matter how good you are in any one area, you can always get better. If you’re not getting better, then you are getting worse because somebody else is getting better. You can always improve on everything. It also definitely doesn’t hurt to have the IBPSA label on all of our advertising.
WHAT ARE SOME OF THE CREATIVE THINGS THAT YOU HAVE HAD TO DO DIFFERENTLY DURING THESE COVID TIMES? At first, each and every one of use were coming up with little mini promotions, and it was somewhat disjointed. There are 15-20 locations open right now and we were all doing our own thing and then realized we were doing it. Now, we have a unified system with a whole calendar of standard promotions so each of us doesn’t have to reinvent the wheel. Not as many of our clients “need” us as they did when they were fully commuting into work or going on vacations. But I do feel that a lot of people kind of forgot that we were here and how much their dogs benefitted by coming in. So getting them back in the door with these mini promotions kind of primed the pump a bit to where daycare sort of got us back on track.
HOW COULD YOU HAVE BEEN BETTER PREPARED FOR ALL OF THIS? I was lucky enough to somewhat weather the storm. I don’t take money out of the business. My wife wants to know where all of this income is going? I was saving it for a disaster. We put ourselves in a position to kind of weather a storm. So,
between that and the PPP loans, we’ve done alright. We did have to close for a few months, due to the unknown. I was uncomfortable with the staff being here together without getting a feel for what was at stake. We were considered an essential business, but I wasn’t comfortable right off the bat. We now know, for the next time this happens, what kind of precautions we can take. Financially we were pretty prepared. All of my employees that I had to temporarily furlough, I made sure they all knew that they were going to be taken care of, no matter what happened. I’m not sure there was much more that we could have done to be better prepared. We rolled with the punches and we kind of planned for it. Again, not this situation specifically, but we had planned for a disaster.
WHAT ARE SOME THINGS THAT YOU WILL CONTINUE TO DO, EVEN AFTER COVID IS BEHIND US? We didn’t focus too much on social media. You know, it wasn’t like I was ignoring the value of social media. It just wasn’t a priority. Operations and customer service was my main focus. But I think moving forward, with all of the mini promotions we did along the way and all of the little things we put on social media to generate some interest or at least keep people engaged will continue on. All of the things that we started doing to keep up the occupancy through COVID, that’s what we are going to keep doing. Anything you can do to share information and connect with people, that’s the important thing. If social media is where that is happening, then we’ll continue doing that.
WOOFINGTON LUXURY PETITE DOG RESORT & SPA
LISA LARSON, FOUNDER
SINGLE FACILITY AWARD WINNER
TELL US A LITTLE ABOUT WOOFINGTON? The Woofington is a dog resort and spa that caters to petite dogs with very posh accommodations. We do grooming, daycare, and boarding.
WHERE ARE YOU LOCATED? We are about 20 minutes West of Minneapolis, Minnesota, in a very affluent lake community.
HOW LONG HAS WOOFINGTON BEEN AROUND? HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN THERE, OR IS THAT THE SAME ANSWER? It is the same answer. We opened on June 27, 2016, so we are into the 5th year, here.
WHAT ARE THE MAIN DEMOGRAPHICS IN YOUR CUSTOMER BASE? (FAMILIES, RETIRED, SINGLES…) We have an interesting group. We have families, but it seems that we cater more to Millennials and Boomers. We’ve noticed a trend over the past couple of years that retired people are getting puppies, in droves. And also, some of these people have never had a dog before now and they are in their 70’s. We are also noticing a lot of Millennials getting married and while they are waiting to have children, they first get a dog or two.
DO YOU HAVE SOME SORT OF DAYCARE MEMBERSHIP OR PUNCH CARD? Absolutely, and we don’t restrict times. They can drop off thier pet anytime during lobby hours, 7am-6pm, Monday through Friday. We sell daycare packages that can go up to 40 days, and they get a discount the more days they buy.
WHAT IS THAT “SPECIAL SAUCE” THAT SETS YOU APART FROM YOUR COMPETITORS? Our tagline is, “The appearance of opulence over ordinary.” I think it is quite simple, really. We create a “WOW” client’s experience anytime we can. I don’t care if you are at the front desk. I don’t care if you are working the evening shift in the boarding area. While dogs can’t talk, we firmly believe that they can communicate just fine. If we take that time to truly do everything that we can to blow that client away and take care of that dog to a level that nobody else will, you can tell in that dog’s demeanor when they come and pick them up. Our staff has complete license to make that client thrilled. We traveled across the United States and looked at many facilities before opening The Woofington, and we found a lot of inflexibility. I think that is what really sets us apart.
HOW IS YOUR EMPLOYEE RETENTION, IN A NORMAL NON-COVID TIME? It’s very strong. Most our people have been here since the beginning. We are a family. I always say, “If you can’t be happy working this job, working at The Woofington, then you’re never going to be happy.”
IF YOU WERE STARTING OVER FROM SCRATCH, WHAT IS SOMETHING THAT YOU WOULD DO DIFFERENTLY? With regards to the facility itself, I would have more storage. No question about that. With regards to the business in general, and this is probably controversial to say, but I would have started with people who do not have dog experience. I have found that the most passionate employees that we have had are those who don’t come in with bad habits, where we can train them because we know that we do things differently. We would have people that came in with a lot of experience, and it’s an expensive and time consuming endeavor to hire people. So, we would get them all trained in and then they would want to do things the way they would do it at their previous facility, and we just do things differently here.
WHAT IS YOUR MOST SUCCESSFUL FORM OF ADVERTISING? We use a local company to do radio advertising. People find us on search engines because we have invested in SEO. We do a lot of Instagram and Facebook. People like to see pictures of their dogs. One thing we do differently is we don’t just blast every single photo that someone took with the phone onto social media every day, because people don’t really care about that. They want to see their dog. We’ll do targeted photo shoots. If it is their birthday, we’ll wrap them up in a boa with a birthday hat and put them up in our Presidential Suite, with all of the blingy pillows.
HOW HAVE YOU BENEFITTED FROM BEING INVOLVED WITH IBPSA? I tell you what, we have LOVED the conferences, first of all. This last IBPSA Conference that was virtual, I was very skeptical because I don’t have that expertise of Zoom calls. But, it was phenomenal! All of the different speakers and sessions that we took part in were great. Even in 2019, we were in Palm Springs and we just took so much away from that conference. The people that attend the conferences are fantastic. You know, we made such good friends out of it and the quality of the speakers and content has been invaluable…. and Carmen, too. She’s such a great person and she is always available. She picks up the phone anytime that I have needed anything from her.
WHAT ARE SOME OF THE CREATIVE THINGS THAT YOU HAVE HAD TO DO DIFFERENTLY DURING THESE COVID TIMES? We’ve really stepped up our sanitizing, as far as clients coming in and out the door. So our process is a client comes to our vestibule, and one at a time our clients come inside. We sanitize the door handles, and obviously we are all wearing masks. We installed some
foam sanitizing units right at the door for clients to feel more comfortable coming in and out. Some of our clients will simply call us, and we will run their dog out to the car…which is something that we had never done before COVID.
HOW DO YOU THINK THAT YOU WERE PREPARED FOR THIS UNKNOWN? I tell you, we haven’t changed much when it comes to sanitizing. We sanitize out entire facility, top to bottom, every single day. We always have.
WHAT IS A WAY THAT YOU COULD HAVE BEEN BETTER PREPARED? Gosh, some of this stuff was completely out of our control. You know, 75% of our revenue is from boarding, so that has been a hit to us because nobody is traveling. I guess we have tried to focus on thinking outside the box, and maybe that is something that we should have been doing prior. We wanted to get people thinking about different reasons to use our daycare, instead of just going to work and dropping off your dog. Such as, dropping off your dog when you go Christmas shopping, or when you are out golfing or boating. Ever since COVID really hit, that’s when we really started promoting those types of things, and maybe we should have been doing that already because our daycare numbers are right where they are usually at, or better. ARE THERE ANY SPECIFIC SITUATIONS THAT COULD HAVE GONE BAD BUT MAYBE YOU WERE ABLE TO NAVIGATE WELL? It could have gone worse if we did not try to get creative and getting people to think differently. We would encourage people, when traveling locally, to drop off their dog at The Woofington to give them a vacation, too. That could have gone bad had we just ignored that. We tried to help our clients think a little differently.
WHAT ARE SOME THINGS THAT YOU WILL CONTINUE TO DO, EVEN AFTER COVID IS BEHIND US? We’ve added some things in our daycare area to make it more fun. We have more structured activities that I think is more attractive to clients. We actually have a significant amount of things for the dogs to do. We have structured bubble time, where we fire up the bubble machine with bacon scented bubbles, and the dogs run around popping bubbles. We have ball pits. We have pools outside in the summer. We have agility equipment and command reinforcement. So the dogs are going home not only physically tired but also mentally exhausted. Clients have really been responding to that, so we are going to continue those structured activities.
Keep doing things in an excellent way and I think you will be rewarded for that. Figure out who you want to market to and don’t deviate from that plan.
OLDE TOWNE PET RESORTS
ROBYN LEENAERTS, VP MARKETING
MULTIPLE FACILITY AWARD WINNER
WHERE ARE YOU LOCATED? We have three locations - Springfield, VA, Sterling, VA, & North Bethesda, MD.
WHAT ARE THE MAIN DEMOGRAPHICS IN YOUR CUSTOMER BASE? (FAMILIES, RETIRED, SINGLES…) I would say that it really runs the gammit. First and foremost, they are pet parents. Demographics are a little different between the resorts because of the area they are located. We have everything from Millennials to retired folks who travel quite a bit, and really it’s a good mix of singles and families, as well. Heavily, the majority are families which lends itself to having multiple pets.
WHAT TYPE OF BUSINESS DO YOU HAVE MORE REGULARLY, DAY DROP-OFFS OR OVERNIGHT BOARDING? The bulk of our primary business, and certainly revenue, is in overnight dog boarding. However, we do have a rather robust day camp, where dogs come daily. We have 10-day and 20day punch passes that gives you a little bit of a discount for those day camps, but it’s basically just drop-in for the day. Between our three locations, we can have 400-500 dogs between boarders and day camp drop-ins. All of our resorts have multiple day camp rooms, and we divide our dogs not just by age, but also by their temperament and speed of play. So, you can have small dogs with big hearts that want to run with the big boys. We take care to make sure that the dogs are well suited for each other. We also make sure to have a high staff to dog ratio there, as well.
HOW IS YOUR EMPLOYEE RETENTION, IN A NORMAL NON-COVID TIME? It’s great. We have a personality profile software that we use when hiring to make sure it is a good match for our employees and for us. We have great benefits, so even seasonal and parttime employees have access to great health benefits, so we have pretty good retention there.
WHAT IS THE SPECIAL SAUCE THAT SETS YOU APART FROM THE COMPETITION? We have something called the Pet Protect Promise where we approach everything to provide the safest and most loving environment where you can entrust your pet. It’s a service behind the scenes that runs throughout our pet staff. They do everything with the pet safety and love in mind. We understand that the pets in our care are a part of someone’s family and we treat them like they are a part of our family. That’s part of our hiring profile.
WHAT IS YOUR MOST SUCCESSFUL FORM OF ADVERTISING? Pre-COVID, we actually sponsored the Washington Capitals. They have a program called The Caps Canines, but they haven’t been playing a lot of hockey. We do a lot of outdoor advertising on the underground Metro. We are also in the regional print magazines.
HOW HAVE YOU BENEFITTED FROM BEING INVOLVED WITH IBPSA? I would say for myself, some of the surveys and market research have been invaluable WHAT ARE SOME OF THE CREATIVE THINGS THAT YOU HAVE HAD TO DO DIFFERENTLY DURING THESE COVID TIMES? It started with closing our lobbies and creating curb-side pickup and drop-off, which we have done our own internal survey and will probably continue to offer an element of that even post-COVID. A good amount of our customers were really pleased with it and loved that process of not having to get out of their cars and come inside.
We have created a Curbside Currier that goes out to the car with every dog at the first of the month. People don’t open a lot of email blasts, but they loved getting that piece of paper that kept them in-touch with everything that was going on.
A lot of it was in the backend of the house, making sure our employees walking in one way directions, wearing masks, hand sanitizers readily available for employees and customers, and we’ve always done a great job of cleaning and disinfecting the facilities.
HOW COULD YOU HAVE BEEN BETTER PREPARED FOR ALL OF THIS? I’ll be honest with you, we have everything from fire plans to hurricane/ tornado plans, so we have had so many emergency plans in place. I think the thing that we will always be better
planned for comes down to personnel and running more efficiently, by cutting back on services and rotations of personnel. We couldn’t have a bunch of humans in a room, safely. It was that contingency for scaling back while retaining as many of our employees as possible. To keep our volume up, we cut our boarding prices by 50% to help the first responders and health care workers, and we have continued that with our other customers, once they started needing our services again.
ARE THERE ANY SPECIFIC SITUATIONS THAT YOU WERE ABLE TO HANDLE WELL THAT COULD HAVE NOT ENDED0 NOT GREAT? I’d give a hats-off to our reservation team. They’ve been incredibly nimble throughout all of this. You can imagine, we’ve had people making reservations and then cancelling reservations. We adapted our cancelation protocols to give people more flexibility. It’s just been flexibility at every turn and understnading guest relations when you are handling human beings, where everyone is completely stressed out. To put that extra smile on their face or understanding of why they are in a particular mood is such a team effort. WHAT ARE SOME THINGS THAT YOU WILL CONTINUE TO DO, EVEN AFTER COVID IS BEHIND US? From surveying our own customers throughout this time, we have a better understanding of what kind of customer service they are wanting. Like, curbside drop-off for convenience and things like that.
VIROX ANIMAL HEALTH
TODD HEPBURN, SENIOR DIRECTOR
VENDOR AWARD WINNER
TELL US A LITTLE ABOUT VIROX. Virox has only been a part of the pet industry for about five years. We are historically a human health company and we manufacture surface disinfectants. The surface disinfectant industry is
typically extremely boring. The same basic chemicals have been used for 7080 years. The company was formed in 1998 and brought to market a product that could be more stable, safer, more effective, and have a longer shelf life than the standard at the time.
WHERE ARE YOU LOCATED AND WHERE DO YOU SHIP YOUR PRODUCTS? We ship to 70 countries around the world, and to outer space. Our product is the only disinfectant used on the International Space Station.
WHAT PART OF THE PET INDUSTRY MAKES UP THE MAJORITY OF YOUR CUSTOMERS? We divide the pet industry into three separate subsections. The first one is veterinary, which is where we started our focus. The veterinary business has the most costumers for us, but they buy in relatively smaller quantities. The second is the shelter sector. The shelters base doesn’t have as many customers but they buy large quantities of our product. The third is the pet service section. There is a significant need for our product in the pet services base. When you get into the daycare and boarding areas, those really have a high risk for disease transmission, with varying acceptance of vaccines and other prevention strategies. Our goal here has been to help assist and do it in a way that is completely credible so that IBPSA can promote the content and be really confident that they are doing it in a way that was not influenced by industry.
HOW HAVE YOU BENEFITTED SINCE BECOMING INVOLVED WITH IBPSA? We need to focus on awareness and partner with the most credible organizations in the industry, while demonstrating that we have value to provide, outside of selling a product. Selling the product is the outcome. We need to demonstrate that we are more than just a product. We are knowledge, expertise, confidence, and that’s really what our solution is about. A disinfectant is just a disinfectant. If you don’t use it right, it does nothing. If you don’t know what you are doing, then just spraying something down can do more harm than good. So, we have to pair that with information, knowledge, and expertise. We need to do that with an organization that is credible and that we feel a real valuable partnership with. It was obvious to us, as we started researching the industry, that IBPSA is the organization that we wanted to work with.
HOW WERE YOU OR HOW COULD YOU HAVE BEEN BETTER PREPARED FOR THE UNKNOWN LIKE A PANDEMIC? We have actually been ready for this. During the SARS epidemic in 2004, we were mandated as a product by the government. That exposed us to what a potential outbreak could be like, and we have always operated strategically in a capacity that would allow us to be able to respond to the events that are happening now. Still, every drop of disinfectant is presold for the next 18 months. We have been able to really drive to respond to the needs of the market as best we can. Part of my role here is Strategic Planning, and this is one of the areas we focus on. I make 75% of my year about working with the entire team of over 100 people here, so that we have 22 fully developed strategic plans that all connect to each other and ensure that we are prepared for these eventualities. We have been talking about the next pandemic for 16 years and being prepared. It’s a big part of our culture to think strategically and try to be prepared for every eventuality and be able to respond to those things quickly. And hopefully we are bringing those same values to our partners, like IBPSA. COMING FROM SOMEONE WHO LOOKS TO BE PREPARED FOR THESE SOMEWHAT UNFORESEEN TIMES, WHAT KIND OF ADVICE COULD YOU SHARE WITH OUR IBPSA MEMBERS? I will say, and it is easy to say this and executing it is much harder, but planning and documenting has been the key to the success at Virox. Develop an understanding of the possibilities that could be and the potential challenges that could be faced and then planning for ways to work around those. I know it’s boring, but it’s true. I can see the comparison between how we operate here at Virox in terms of our planning and how most organizations operate. Virtually everybody is winging it, and I understand that is a reality for most organizations. The more effort you can put into planning the more benefit can be found when these types of events happen.
When we engage in a program or sponsorship, we will write a document that states our current situation, our objectives, how we are going to measure success, and then we go back and measure against that. That also includes the IBPSA standards. Our goals around the IBPSA standards were to generate awareness. We’re in infection prevention, not for Virox. We want to teach the industry about infection prevention. We know our products are the best products. We don’t have
to worry about how they are going to stack up against our competitors. So, we want to educate the pet services market on the importance of infection prevention, and that was our goal here. We wanted to help gain more of a presence in the pet industry. And these are all things that we document. When it comes to planning, whether that’s an individual project or your entire year, documenting these plans is important. Just saying that we have those plans typically means we don’t have that, or we don’t know how to respond.
There’s one thing we didn’t talk about that I do want to communicate is just how extremely grateful we are to the IBPSA leadership, the IBPSA membership, and the animal health community for all of their support and the warm welcome we have received. We’ve only been doing pet services for a couple of years and it was relatively harder to get into the shelter and veterinarian communities than it was the pet services community. This is literally the least we could do, to lend some of our expertise and knowledge to the industry and to help them respond to something like this.
OLDE TOWNE PET RESORTS www.oldetownepetresort.com
VIROX ANIMAL HEALTH www.viroxanimalhealth.com
