About the Customer

Firehouse Pet Shop is an award-winning pet supply and grooming shop located in the heart of downtown Wenatchee, Washington. After successfully operating businesses for others almost for nearly three decades, Jennifer and Allen Larsen followed their passion and launched Firehouse Pet Shop in 2014. Firehouse sells pet food, toys, and all the supplies any pet owner could possibly need. They also have a bakery for special home-baked treats and services like local delivery, in-store pickup, self-service pet wash and spa, full-service pet grooming, and pet nutrition counseling. Jennifer and Allen have even partnered with the Wenatchee Valley Humane Society to coordinate pet adoptions from their store. These efforts led to Firehouse Pet Shop being featured in Pets Plus magazine and receiving numerous community business awards in Wenatchee.

Business Challenges

Despite a robust in-store business performance, their online sales were not where they wanted them to be. Initially, they set up their website through a third-party drop-shipper. The distributor received the order at their warehouse and would then pick, pack, and ship out the order to the customer.

At first blush, this appeared like a sensible, hassle-free solution to executing online orders. However, it soon became apparent that there were serious limitations contained within this approach that were having a direct impact on the business. The third-party distribution deal meant Firehouse had no control over whether products were in stock or if the distributor was slow in packing and shipping products. There were instances where customers would see something on the website and falsely assume it was also in the store leading to disappointed customers.

The combination of these factors led Jennifer and Allen to the conclusion that they needed a new approach to their online business.

Solution

After consulting with New Media Retailer (NMR), Firehouse Pet Shop shifted from a drop-shipping strategy to one that better leveraged their best asset, their store. This meant focusing on a local approach to their online side of the business. The idea was to further develop store pickup and local delivery as well as launch a local subscription delivery service on pet food.

To achieve these bold new objectives, New Media Retailer worked hands-on with Jennifer to reconstruct their website. This involved completely resetting their product catalog and updating the checkout with curbside pickup, local delivery, and subscribe & save fulfillment options. The idea was to make the online shopping process easy and convenient for their targeted customers.

The new website had to completely support their new marketing efforts. These included email marketing, staff sales training, mailers, updated in-store signage, and handouts. Firehouse Pet Shop even started offering themed mystery gift boxes that come packed with samples, treats, toys, and goodies galore on a monthly subscription or for a one-time purchase.

Their specific goals for the website and marketing overhaul were to:

• Offer convenient online ordering options
• Focus on serving their local market by offering delivery
• Increase average sale per customer
• Attract more local customers that were shopping at larger big box stores or e-retail competitors
• Highlight their competitive pricing
• Build internal infrastructure to control the inventory and delivery process
• Increase guerilla marketing efforts

Outcome

The transition process from the drop-ship program to focusing more on their local customers took place over three to four months. Towards the end of this period, they began to notice a discernable uptick in online sales. As they began adding more and more marketing tactics, this boost in online sales grew almost exponentially.

To see how dramatically this new approach impacted the business, one need only look at the online sales figures before, during, and after they partnered with New Media Retailer.

• Before joining NMR 2018, annual online sales revenue was $2,500
• After joining NMR in mid to late 2019, annual online sales revenue grew to $10,500
• In 2020 under a full year of NMR, annual online sales revenue skyrocketed to $310,700

“It’s almost hard to believe what a difference this has made for our business,” Jennifer Allen said. “It’s so clear to us that going from the drop-shipping approach to our own online presence has unlocked so many new customers and business opportunities for us.”

When Firehouse Pet Shop underwent this incredible transformation in the middle of 2019, they could not have foreseen the global pandemic that was right around the corner. By undergoing this process when they did, they unwittingly solidified their business for what was to come in 2020.

“The pandemic certainly accelerated the results for online ordering as we discovered that a lot of our customers prefer to order online and do in-store pick up,” Jennifer said. “I honestly don’t know how we would have gotten through the past year without our new online capabilities.”

Conclusion

Firehouse Pet Shop was a business in desperate need of an overhaul in how they processed their online orders. The Wenatchee, Washington-based business initially set up their website through a drop-shipping arrangement with a third party where a customer orders a product online, and then the order was routed to a third-party warehouse distribution operation. This setup, however, meant Firehouse had no control over whether products were in stock or if the distributor was slow in packing and shipping products. Firehouse Pet Shop partnered with New Media retailer to transition to a local approach to their online side of the business by focusing on aspects such as store pickup and local delivery and launching a local subscription delivery service on pet food. The result was growth from $2,500 in online sales in 2018 to $310,700 in 2020. In the process, Firehouse Pet Shop laid the foundation that enabled them to thrive in the face of the 2020 global pandemic.