Starting, Expanding or Moving Your Pet Care Business
Are you thinking about starting, moving or expanding your pet care business? Are you moving to a brick and mortar? Did you outgrow your current facility? Do you want to know WHEN you should make that kind of move? Is this even a good time to open or expand a pet care business?
These questions require serious consideration in the best of economic times and especially now. Some key aspects to decide include:
- Size of building that will meet your needs – consider your service mix physical footprint and then confirm profitability in the new space
- How are you using existing space – know your occupancy by service and consider reallocating space from lower occupancy services to higher ones
- Know your Unique Selling Proposition – how are your services different from the competition
- Get very specific about your Avatars – know who you do & don’t want as a client and are they located near the site
For existing businesses knowing when to move or expand can be very challenging. Especially when clients are pushing you to add capacity or additional site. In these situations it’s very important to:
- Know your goal for the expansion or move – it’s still your business to manage and second locations are not necessarily easier to operate
- Know your numbers – consider your profitability now versus in a new or second location
- Wait lists or too many dogs – don’t automatically mean you need to expand or move. Consider a revamp of your programs and services. This is a great time to raise rates and add a membership program.
We really enjoyed discussing these options with members in our video session. Be sure to watch it as we also shared adding retail revenue without the inventory, our design/construction vendor recommendations and even on whether now is a good time to open a pet business.
