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Adding
Services Beyond Grooming
Expanding a pet grooming
business may mean adding new pet services beyond pet grooming. In
fact, a growing number of grooming business are doing just that
today.
Today the most
popular add-on services are "doggie daycare," pet
sitting, pet walking, pet photography, and to a lesser extent pet
training and pet massage. Perhaps you are familiar with each of
these pet services, and if not, use Internet search engines to
learn. In fact, you should never add new services until you are
adept at those services, or possibly hire an employee to perform
the services. Owners are far more confident about adding net pet
services when they are adept at delivering them, at least in a
backup situation should the owner lose the employee that had been
providing the new services.
In teaching pet
grooming business management to students enrolled in grooming
schools we learned that many of them were already employed or
self-employed in the pet care industry, Quite a few were dog
walkers, pet sitters, pet photographers and doggie daycare
providers. What was the common thread that brought them to pet
grooming school? Pet grooming.
Pet sitters,
dog walkers and doggie daycare providers serve pet owners
frequently, even on a daily basis year round. We learned from
those in our class that pet owners were regularly asking them,
"Since you are already here taking care of my pets, can't you
also groom them?" Well, you keep hearing something again and
again and you know it's time to expand with grooming services.
It can also work the
other way around. Smart pet grooming business that are good
business persons will listen to their clients, or interview them,
to find out what other services they would enjoy. Often the
replies are doggie daycare, pet sitting, and dog walking. So these
may be viable pet services to add to an existing pet grooming
business.
The key to adding new
services to an existing grooming business is to never lose focus
that the foundation of your business is pet grooming, and your
expansion should not stymie or deplete the quantity and quality of
your existing grooming services volume. Since grooming businesses
unfortunately rarely hire managers, it can be very difficult to
expand them without additional management help. However, where
there are managers you see remarkable results. No doubt about it,
look around the U.S. and you a growing trend toward "one stop
convenience" and many pet owners would indeed enjoy the
convenience of well-managed pet services businesses providing a
menu of professional grooming, sitting/daycare. dog walking, pet
massage and pet training services.
The first step in
planning such an expansion is to do a market study of new pet
service you plan to offer. In fact, you should essentially prepare
a mini-business plan for each
pet service you are considering as an add-on. In this way you will
determine the new staff required to provide each service, and
their cost and work schedule. Further, creating the business plan
requires you to estimate overall costs for each new service, and
what you would have to charge for the new services, and then
determine if these prices are competitive with others already
providing such services in your area, and how much it is going to
cost to market and advertise your new services to your market
area.
Today more and more
kennels and retailers are adding grooming services, as well as
some of the other pet services mentioned above. We believe that
pet grooming business owners should always focus on expanding
their core service, grooming, and even consider adding a second
location, but for the aggressive business owner with a keen sense
of management, adding new pet services could produce a major
"pet care center" for them.
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