Pets at Home Group PLC

And we're spending accordingly from just under $3 billion a year in the late 90s to almost $12 billion a year today in the UK alone.

My next guest is a vet turned veterinary director at Vets for Pets and Pets at Home, the UK's biggest pet care business, Dr. Samantha Butler-Davies.

Welcome to the studio, Sam.

Hi, thanks for having me.

Pets at Home spans food and grooming and veterinary care.

Tell me a little bit more about what you do there.

My role has really varied, actually.

I move between both sides of our business, so the vet practices and the retail side pets at home.

Like, my mum always said, "No, no, no. We're never getting guinea pigs." Like, "You've- we've got enough pets." Like, we've literally got a pond outside with, like, nine goldfish in, and she's like, "We, we've got enough pets." And then now I have six guinea pigs.

I convinced her into getting two, and we went back to the pet shop, to Pets at Home near where we live, and there were four more, like, just came in on the Monday, and I'm pretty sure...

Oh yeah, we went on the Monday as well.

They just came in Monday morning, and we came in Monday afternoon, and the people were like, "Oh yeah, there's all four.

Where would they-

Pets at Home.

Pets at Home.

[laughs]

[laughs] Sorry, hold on.

Has Pets at Home even still a thing?

He started growling like a dog during sex.

What is...

Mm.

Um, and she was actually saying if, if people don't take them in advance on the Pets at Home site, she was just gonna have them, like, gotten rid of.

And I was like, "No, no-

Gotten rid of

And I think the myth I'd like to bust out is that ShareSaver is only for big companies.

We always hear about the big companies with ShareSaver because they're the ones that BBC will cover, Tesco, Sagebreeze, Pets at Home, like I mentioned, and Rolls-Royce.

But, you know, whether you've got a company of 100 people or under 1,000 people, the plan is the same and the benefits for the company and the employees is exactly the same too.

So if a company's never offered an all-employee plan before, how big a leap is Save As You Earn really?

But I also found it really interesting with the bags.

I had a fascinating half an hour in, um, Pets at Home once where I was going through all the breed specific food.

So a couple of the big, the big names will do, you know, the, the French bulldog mix and the Vizsla mix, and I was looking at the backs of them going, "The, I, I can't see any consistent difference here, and, and what would be the specific split that I would need for a French bulldog versus a Vizsla that would be different enough to have to package them completely differently?" So I think when you're an average human just going, "Oh my God, there's just complete overwhelm.

I don't know where to begin.

I could do it all day.

And I was watching a group from like Pets at Home talking to curries about issues they're facing.

And then you look, you've got curries talking to people in the utilities industry about what they're doing.

And it's chalk and cheese in terms of the industry.

But of course, you're going to do that by giving more money back to the retailer that you're working with.

so you know i think with with selling price and more margin actually if you're at the very beginning or you're building out the sort of credibility of your business i always recommend that you start with a list price and this is the price if you want to buy my product anybody wants to buy my product this is what i charge use those ratios that you're talking about and then hey if you want a better price well then there needs to be something in it for me so it's like you Can I get a logistics efficiency? Can I deliver in a pallet as opposed to a box? Can I deliver on a truck at a certain time rather than any time? Can I, you know, if you give me more stores, let's take pets at home.

Yeah, we'll give you a hundred stores because you're a new product.

Well, actually, if you give me 200, I'll give you a better price.

yes

in my opinion no and so for me i'm always telling people to build out their ecosystem don't go single channel go as many channels as you can get into as many different be like water try and slip into everywhere because the more people see you in different locations the more they will build up a natural trust towards your brand because if you went into an independent and saw a brand and then you went into jolly's and saw a brand and then you went on amazon you saw the brand you would see that as being a real brand.

Whereas if you just see, because again, look, people are aware you go into Pets at Home and you see their Wainwrights product that's not available anywhere else.

You kind of know it's like an own label product then and it doesn't carry the same weight with you mentally as a product like James Well Beloved, which you can see in multiple locations.