One of our retailers contacted us, upon returning from a trip to Europe, and described her strange visit to a large super-box pet store. At first, she was overwhelmed by the selection. Then she realized that, despite all of the colors and styles of products offered – every single toy, collar, and leash – was made by the same manufacturer. The packaging didn’t even try and disguise this fact. She marveled at the length that this big box store went to in order to squeeze every nickel out of the supply chain. And her comments got us to ruminating on the future of the pet industry in our own country.

If you visit an independent pet retailer in the U.S., you’ll find a wide selection of really neat toys and products for canines. The aisles might not be endless and the shelves might not be overflowing as they often are at the Big Boxes, but, if it’s new and cool, you’ll find it at an independent long before you’ll find it in a Big Box. In fact, our own recent walk through of a major Big Box pet retailer made us wonder whether the homogenization of pet products has already begun in this country.

Ever-increasing chunks of aisle space at Big Box retailers are taken up by a smaller contingent of manufacturers all fighting to acquire precious shelf real estate. Ten years ago, hundreds of manufacturers were represented in the toy section of pet superstores whereas, today, less than fifty might be the norm. Increasingly, private label pet products – usually inexpensive, big box-owned knockoffs – are beginning to take space from traditional pet manufacturers. This “vertical integration” business model allows the big boxes to eliminate much of the overhead of dealing with manufacturers in favor of in-house control over lower-paying overseas manufacturing and labor. In ten years, U.S. Big Box Pet Retailers may well descend into the homogenous abyss, just as some of their European brethren already have. And, that’s not a good result for our four legged friends. However, we think it can be good for independent pet retailers who have weathered the financial storm and can nimbly outsell any Big Box on a per-square foot basis.

Speaking of Big Boxs, since time immemorial, the business model for small manufacturers, such as Hyperflite, has been to: 1) grow as fast as possible via sales to small retailers, 2) get noticed by the big guys, then 3) begin selling to the big guys at the expense of your relationships with the companies that helped build your brand in the first place. Basically, this time-honored approach to business requires that a small manufacturer essentially “dump on” the very folks who took a chance on the small manufacturer in the first place. Now, we’ve certainly “sinned in our hearts” by flirting with a couple of medium sized boxes, and we’ve even asked a few Big Boxes to the prom, to be sure. But, on the drive home from a big pitch to one of those Big Boxes, we caught ourselves dreading the possibility of success. What if they say yes?

As we began to consider what that really meant for us, we had an epiphany. I like to think of it as our “Jerry McGuire” moment. We realized that it’s OK not to sell your products to Mr. Big Box and that the measure of success that we have for ourselves doesn’t have to fit the traditional model. The bottom line is, we’re content to stay nimble, keep jobs in the U.S., and build relationships, like the one we have with every Hyperflite partner.

To the Big Boxes, it’s possible that you noticed that we didn’t send you any flowers this past Valentine’s Day. Well, that’s because we’re going to keep “dancing with the ones that brung us!”

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