ideas from other pet store owners (help)

[Muddy4paws]

advertise like crazy! Everywhere you go give out leaflets have a big open day! We have opened up a groomers/petshop recently and advertising is the best way to go leaflet drop anyone you see with animal fur on their coats or walking dogs at parks leave leaflets everywhere!

If you havent done so yet arrange a grand opening with sweets and balloons for kids and maybe make a dog cake for the dogs?

make people aware that the pet shop allows animals, People LOVE the chance to parade off their animals so you are will defiantly have a few people turn up!

Dont forget coupons too, they were a big winner for my shop, we dont a 10% discount for the first month and every dogs gets some free chews when they get groomed. Look out for joblots on Ebay too because some can be very good! Have a look for some cheap wholesalers too and stock plenty of natural treats and look online for reviews on everything, peoples opinions are everything! Companys will sell you products that are useless and unfortunatly people do buy stupid stuff so learn from other peoples mistakes!

[finsnfriends]

Thank you so much for the information, I would love to get together and talk and possibly get more ideas... I am shooting for July to be opened up, still waiting on licenses and getting more suppliers. I would love to hear about your store and maybe share some of my ideas with you to see if possibly they may even work for you or if you think they are unreasonable ideas. I do plan on starting small...

some of my ideas................
as far as advertising my parents are friends with a lady that only writes "front page" news and she is willing to do a front page article of my opening. WOOHOO for me! We also have a "city" chat room... its like a major gossip column so we do plan on "hinting" in there since its not for "advertising" that we hear its opening... sneaky I know but whatever I have to do I plan on doing it. That chat room knows whats going on in town before it happens it seems like so I probably won't have to even mention a thing before it will be in there.

As far as customer ideas I want to take their names, numbers, email addresses for monthly prizes and also be able to use their email addresses to send them information on specials or our latest arrivals. We also plan on trying to take note of what they buy so that way we can specialize their email or letter at a later date.

I do plan on just small animals, gerbils, guinea pigs, ferrets, bunnies..etc but we are really wanting to focus more on fish. fresh and salt water fish. I already have a good stock in guppies, mollys, sword tails, and gouramis from my personal tank and my mother in laws tanks. Between the 2 of us we have 13 tanks and right now we are at a stopping point until we can get the store ready for moving in so we can start breeding them again.

It will be a place that they can bring in their pictures and we plan on having a bulletin board just of our pet shoppers (pics of the pets). We did talk about bringing in a groomer but it will be on down the road. I have 2 digital cameras and plan on keeping one in store just for the pictures. I think they will like that. what do you think??

I would love to be open in late June or by July 1st, because I am in a tourist town and the 4th is a BIG deal downtown. They have frog jumping contest so I do actually plan on trying to get some froggies in before the event if I can be open by then.

I also plan on having a corner in the store called "critter corner" just where the kids can bring the guinea pig or ferret over to play with and get to know and also if its not really to busy in there they would be able to get some play time in. I plan on keeping a gerbil ball in house just to have so they can get out and run around the ball. I want it to be a friendly and fun place but also clean

I do have yahoo messanger, msn messanger so if you can please get with me theres so much I know I can learn from you. [email protected] or [email protected]

I do have a few suppliers but still looking for more fish suppliers, mainly for the food and supplies is what I am looking for. Trying to shop for the best deals especially opening up.

Thanks for all your advice and hope to hear more from you
Kim