You’re Not Alone! – The Struggles Independent Operators Face and How To Find Support

Speaker 2 (00:27):
What’s up everyone? Joe Zuccarello here and welcome to Hey Joe, a podcast brought to you by Paragon School of Pet Grooming. Check out our site at ParagonPetSchool.com for lots of really cool information on a variety of programs, products, and to connect to educational resources such as webinars, podcasts, current events, special news certifications, and lots of other helpful information to help you grow yourself, your team, and of course your business. Let’s get started with this week’s episode.

Joe Zuccarello (00:57):
Hey everyone, this is Joe Zuccarello, your host for the Hey Joe podcast. And here we are with another episode of the Hey Joe podcast, which again, the whole idea behind this podcast is to bring information to you, the podcast listener, to the subscriber that maybe you didn’t know about or maybe you didn’t know about, but you want to know more about. I’ve got a guest on today that in his organization that if you’re a pet care services provider out there, grooming, lodging, daycare, you may not have heard about this organization before, or if you did, you maybe didn’t know really if it meant anything to you. So today we’re going to introduce you to the executive director of Indie pet. This is a wonderful association, and I’m not going to steal any of his thunder about describing the organization because he knows best about what they do best, and I can’t be more excited to have Todd Ditman on the executive director of Indie Pet. Todd, thanks again for being a guest on the Hey Joe Podcast.

Todd Dittman (01:58):
Oh, thanks Joe. Thanks for having me. Yeah, I’m excited to spread the word about Indy Pet. Happy to be on the show here.

Joe Zuccarello (02:06):
Well, Todd, you and I have known each other for a handful of years now, and we’ve always talked about Indie PET and the pet services community and who Indie Pet, how maybe Indie PET was even started. I want to kind of rewind time a little bit and learn a little bit more about you, maybe even a little bit pre Indie pet, but when Indie Pet started, who was the main focus then? And it’s sort of evolved, right? It’s sort of evolved into conversations you and I have had and you’ve had with other people in the pet services community about how Indie PET can serve them as well. So tell the audience a little bit about yourself, maybe even pre Indie PET and then sort of the early stages of Indie pet.

Todd Dittman (02:48):
Sure. So my personal experience has been in retail and retail environments for the past 10, 15 years, running another association prior to Indie PET in the retail environment or retail store fixtures and design area. And as everybody knows, retail has changed over the last 20 years driven by changing demographics and technology and that’s it. So it’s become much less personal and I love retail, and retail is an experience, and the way that you make it personal is to really enhance that customer experience. So Indie PET came about because a bunch of independent retailers got together at the trade shows five, 10 years ago and said, Hey, we are battling technology. We’re battling resource, lack of resources. We are struggling to maintain our share of the industry. And we know that independent is where innovation happens. Independent is where new products are introduced. Independent is where you get the best knowledge of the products, you get the best advice from the staff, you get the best service. And because of the retail technological changes, the onslaught of the online sales with Chewy and Yahoo, or I’m sorry, Amazon and all of the above, they felt like they needed a group to support the mission of the independent brick and mortar. And that’s really extended to sales of all brick and mortar and online omnichannel and really trying to support our independent segment and supply resources and expertise to continue to thrive and support the entire pet industry with the best experience.

Joe Zuccarello (05:00):
So what’s really cool about that, I mean, how typical of that of our industry. So our industry saw a need, they might’ve been getting beat up a little bit, sort of seeing these threats. I don’t even know if I would call it competition, but it’s more threats to business. I don’t even like to say that the people that we, if we’re one pet business on Main Street and a street or First Street, there’s another pet business. I don’t even like to call them competition. It’s people that we share the market with.

Todd Dittman (05:32):
That’s right.

Joe Zuccarello (05:33):
This online presence, like you said, the big dot coms and even major retail chains with their.com presence, how appropriate and how perfect is it that a group of retailers, independent retailers said, we got to do something about this. We got to band together. I mean, it almost has a makings of, I know I’m a little bit sometimes dramatic. It almost has a makings of, I almost see it being maybe at one point, almost like a biography where one of these documentaries about how independent pet stores got together and banded together. But that’s exactly what happened. And like you said, five to 10 years ago, it was really loose. And then here comes this association with Indie pet. You’re brought into Indie PET to really organize and herd the cats, if you would. And I’ve been really impressed by what you’ve been doing there, and you and I started talking and we’re trying to say, okay, what’s the connection then from pet retail, which you have a lot of experience in, and an association that supports independent pet retail supplies and the independent pet services business.

Joe Zuccarello (06:45):
Because a lot of these independent retailers, whether they already offer pet services like grooming or training or daycare for pets, or they’ve been considering it, you and I started talking about how much that these services drive foot traffic and frequency and loyalty and attachment rate or basket value. So if they’re coming in every four, six, or eight weeks for grooming, where do we think they’re going to be buying their pet food from? Where do we think they’re going to be buying their other supplies from the retailer who might be offering grooming? Now, on the flip side, Todd, right now I want to just define sort of the market and we’re going to hop in and say, okay, well, what does Indie PET do for the market? But the flip side of the retailer who has or has contemplated having services, the services provider who is contemplating or has a small amount of retail, so this organization, your association supports them as well.

Joe Zuccarello (07:48):
So this might be the beginning to really introducing Indie PET to the services space. And you and I have agreed we’re banding together. We’re going to introduce each other’s interest groups, if you would, to each other and see if we can’t have a larger, stronger, even stronger community. So as you look at the benefits of being a member, because it’s an association, so retailers, pet service providers, business owners, operators, they become a member of this association. Indie PET is a group of members. So how does Indie PET as an association, a group of members help the independent, let’s just call it pet business, the independent pet business owner or operator compete against the big dot coms, especially the Chewy’s, Amazons and Walmarts of the world,

Todd Dittman (08:43):
Right? And that’s exactly, that was the discussions that the retailers had. If we do this, if we form this group, what are going to be the advantages of being in this group? And it was funny because there was some research done, and I can’t tell you who did it at this moment, but the research was a survey of pet consumers, and it indicated that people felt they got more or better product information from a Walmart in the big box than they did from their independent neighborhood pet stores. Wow. A huge problem. That was a huge problem because everybody knows that that doesn’t even make any sense, and that’s just a result of, hey, lots of marketing dollars being spent, lots of merchandising, lots of convenience kind of shopping, things like that. So it was a no brainer that something had to unify the voice. So that was the first thing.

Todd Dittman (09:54):
We are unifying the independent’s voice to give them more of a presence out there with the consumer who’s not maybe paying that close of attention to what’s really going on in their shopping experience. The second thing is how do you compete with Chewy and Amazon and all those who have so much money, and I’m not bad mouthing, they do a great job at what they do, however, it’s not personal and it’s not a great experience. It’s not a great bonding time with your pet. So that is how we provide a differentiation in the experience. It’s all about the personal experience of the pet owner, the products they purchase and their pet. And that’s where kind the services come in. Our members are retailers, manufacturers, we started with 40 founding sponsors, who are some of the major manufacturers who absolutely understand why independent segment is so important.

Todd Dittman (11:04):
And so we started with 40 back in 2021, and we had about 50 retailer members. We’ve grown that now to about 250 retail members and about 130 manufacturing members. But also in that group, in the, I’m sorry, the retailer members, that’s about 1500 door fronts across the country. So we think that there’s probably maybe 8,000. So we still have a lot of growth to go, but as part of the associate members, the manufacturing members, we also include the services that the service suppliers who are serving the retailers. So that’s really where the differentiation is, is the Paragon School is certainly a big part of a retailer’s ability to differentiate themselves from a chewy or from an online sales vendor. So that’s really what we try to do. We try to differentiate and enhance that customer experience through the services, through brand promotions, through peer-to-peer networking.

Todd Dittman (12:22):
That’s critically important because again, there’s issues that pop up that a large chain will not have. How does a small independent single store owner deliver product and still make money at doing it? It’s a big deal. It’s a big problem. But when you get on call, what we call indie chats with a bunch of other independent retailers are in the same boat, we best practice share. We talk about what works, what doesn’t work, how does the consumer feel about a flat delivery rate? What’s the best way to do your daily deliveries? Can you do it in a certain radius? Things like that are just golden information and well worth the $50 a year that we charge to a retailer.

Joe Zuccarello (13:14):
Oh, it might break the bank there, Todd, at $50 a year. I’ve often told you if any of my podcast audience out there, they’re probably already saying, okay, when’s he going to tell ’em he is not charging enough? Because they all know me, they know me. They’re like, dude, come on. Tell him. Tell him he’s not charging enough. Okay, get in now while it’s only 50.

Joe Zuccarello (13:35):
So one thing you brought up that I thought was really important to point out is that when you’re an independent business, whether you are, I don’t care if you’re an independent jeweler, I don’t care if you’re an independent ice cream shop, independent, whatever, it does amaze me that there always seems to be some sort of association, right? I mean, that’s one reason why people who have an entrepreneurial spirit about them contemplate joining a franchise system because the franchisor has it all figured out already, right? Signage and operating procedures, and they’ve already leveraged their vendors and all of these things, but they’re still an independent business even though they might be part of a franchise. So I want to answer, I want to make sure we point out one thing. IND pet welcomes franchise owners.

Todd Dittman (14:27):
Oh, absolutely, yes. So

Joe Zuccarello (14:28):
Don’t think that if you’re out there and you’re a franchise owner that Oh, unless I’m a one off of one, one, I can’t join IND pet. No, no, no. You can join Indie pet. So if you’re a franchise retailer, if you’re a franchise service provider, these retail doggy daycare providers or retail grooming facilities that are franchises, absolutely you can join as a member. In fact, the services membership is growing and growing, growing. I mean, that’s one of the reasons why we’re talking today. But one of the things you pointed out that was so important, and I really want to unpack just for an extra minute or two, is this peer influence. So when you are an independent business out there and you are literally one of one, there’s a lot. You’ve got this entrepreneurial spirit, you’ve got this excitement, but let’s face it, sometimes you can get beat down, sometimes you can feel like you’re on an island. And that’s really where an association kicks in because I have witnessed firsthand, I have witnessed these peer-to-peer conversations happening between indie PET members.

Joe Zuccarello (15:32):
I’ve been able to sit in luncheons and sit at round tables and be part of the Indie Pet Association meetings and board meetings and such. And I can see the relief on people’s faces when they find out somebody having the same, sometimes worse troubles than they are. It’s not group think. It’s not only group think, but it’s group therapy. I mean, you could tell it in the faces. So you’ve got these peers that are together that they don’t feel like they’re on an island anymore, and I think that’s really, really important that they don’t see themselves as competitors. Can you unpack that for just a minute about sort of the spirit and the culture that you have in Indie Pet as far as seeing each other’s peers, not competitors?

Todd Dittman (16:20):
Absolutely. One of our founding, two of our founding board members were in the same market, and they definitely joined together, three of them actually up in the northwest, and they said, look, we don’t compete with each other. We compete with Walmart and we compete with the grocery stores. That’s who our competition is. Because somebody who goes to an independent, they know that experience, they get it, they understand. So they definitely are free sharers of information, and it’s a very tight, everybody knows it’s a very tight industry anyway. People know each other. People often go work for the So-called competition all the time, and because they get it, the talent, it is a specific experience and a specific knowledge. So it definitely is not a dog eat dog, so to speak, industry. It’s really a work together. And one of our most popular services or things that we offer it are these indie checks.

Todd Dittman (17:37):
We have them like every other month. And it is a variety of topics. Like I said, the last one was how you make money on delivery. It could be how do you implement services in my store, because that’s obviously a huge trend that’s been going on for quite a while. If you don’t have some other way to draw traffic or drive traffic in your stores services is the answer. And so as you know Joe, there’s a lot of issues and hurdles with that, but somebody who’s done it right and somebody who has been there done that seen the worst and made mistakes is golden information for somebody who’s about to do it. And our members have been very free to share that information with each other. The other really important tool that we have on our website is a reference center or a referral center, whatever you want to call it, where members can go and see a certain brands or certain services that other members have recommended. So that saves them a lot of research time when you’re looking for a POS system or for a new whatever it might be. Excuse me.

Joe Zuccarello (19:05):
One of the things, Todd being part of this, when you have peer to peer conversations and this group think group therapy type sessions that I’ve witnessed, that one really cool part is let’s talk about the vendors. Let’s talk about the manufacturers. Let’s talk about the people that these independent pet businesses buy from, whether they buy their shampoo, if they have grooming, whether they buy their dog food, their treats, their leashes, their collars, to your point of POS system, point of sale system, maybe an online storefront. Listen, if you’re Betty’s pet grooming out there, you can have an online storefront if you never thought you could do something online or that it felt so big and heavy to do something like that, well, guess what? Indie PET has vendors, supporters that can help you. These people, that’s what they do. They’re subject matter experts and they are also contributing to the conversation.

Joe Zuccarello (20:10):
Like Paragon. What we try to do at Paragon for anybody who struggles, struggles with grooming staff to help them overcome their grooming, staffing challenges, we promote growing their own. Well, if you just say that to somebody sort of in passing, that seems really heavy and really intimidating to do. But as a vendor, our goal is to make that easy, easier. Our goal is to say, we got you. We got you, right? We can’t do it for you, but we can do it with you, right? But we got you. We’re going to make this a whole lot easier for you. You have manufacturers, you said you have 130 business partners essentially that pour into this association. And I will tell you, I’ve witnessed these people are on a first name basis with some of the Indie Pet Association members, these indie chats. If the listener audience, if the Hey Joe listener audience does nothing from this yet, and you just want a taste, what’s 50 bucks?

Joe Zuccarello (21:14):
What do you have to lose $50 up into one of these indie chats, even if you don’t think that the topic applies to you? It’s amazing how sometimes we go down these little tangents and little side roads a little bit in these indie chats and something might be in there that resonates with you. So I really like that. So speak to how did you get the business partners on board with supporting this community? Because it’s not a large community yet. I mean, it’s still a baby community and it’s growing every month, but how did you get them interested this early?

Todd Dittman (21:51):
Yeah, well, that was really easy. The founding sponsors were a part of the conversations too. They like the manufacturers. They have a couple of really strong associations like WPA and a PPA and PIDA. That’s for the distributors. There’s some really strong representation for those folks. But there was a whole right there, just a gap in who’s supporting the end retailer. So they really saw the value in, again, protecting this segment because that’s where new products are introduced. The way we got ’em really involved is that the first thing that we did is we surveyed our members and said, what are the biggest needs for the retailers? And they came back with a handful of this is what we need. So we addressed that in our first five year strategic plan, which we kind of coined game on. We formed six committees that are cross-functional or cross member type committees that focus on the game on areas which are the G is growing people helping with the HR end of things, the training, the recruiting, things like that. The A is advocating for higher standards. Another part of that differentiation VM is marketing and awareness. Again, giving that a joint voice, a combined voice in a way to draw traffic. The E is extending the in-store experience or e-comm, really, we all know that the experience does not end when the customer leaves the store. So it’s building that relationship. And the O is operational efficiencies.

Todd Dittman (23:59):
So we know that a single store retailer works the day that during the day from the minute the store opens to the minute the store closes. So we want to give them a little bit of time back and make them a little bit more efficient and give ’em a little more operating tools. And then again, the end is networking, which is probably the biggest reason that people belong to groups like this is we do events at the trade shows. We do breakfast sponsored by, or trend insights sponsored breakfast, sorry, we do reports and insights on our website. We supply that. So there’s a lot of things that we’re trying to do to help in these areas. But going back to the committees, the committees are brands and retailers working together. So we have the whole chain of product flow to the consumer working together in these specific areas.

Todd Dittman (25:09):
You’re a part of one of the committees as a service provider to the retailers. So we try to look at all angles on these specific issues and roll out appropriate tools to address them. For example, we just rolled out a product open catalog, which is basically a saw supply platform, but it’s a member only tool that all of our brands upload their product details, images, videos, pricing, everything. Everything you need to sell that product either in your store or online. And it’s accessible to all of our retailers and all of our user members, distributors, service suppliers, everybody to go ahead and download all those for free. And so that’s a service that a lot of people just can’t even think about. It’s very expensive. So I think that’s very relevant for us to provide that. So our members can compete if they want to sell online or whatever the situation might be.

Todd Dittman (26:21):
Another one is our consumer outreach campaign. It’s Neighborhood Pet Store Day. It was a huge win for us last year. We had about 30 sponsors and over 750 stores, and it was just an online or social networking outreach to neighborhood consumers just a day to celebrate the experience you get by going to a independent retailer and people loved it. So those are the kinds of things that we’re trying to do, cross member type and get everybody involved, trying to keep everybody involved. Really, the value of an association is those who participate and engage in it

Joe Zuccarello (27:08):
Well, and to your point, the real power in association is sort of half what you put into it, you’ll get out of it. So you’ve, you’ve got to be an active part of the association. Maybe not so much just a taker, but also a giver, because I really think that that’s the fully rewarding engagement of being part of an association. But a lot of associations out there, Todd, do a really great job of the networking and then some do a really great job of the networking and then conferences do a good job of assembling speakers for education, bringing education to the members. And that’s sort of what we all are maybe familiar with in business. If you’ve been in business long enough, there’s all types of associations, and that’s typically what those conferences feel like. But what impresses me about Indie PET is yes, I’m on the G team, I’m on the Growing People team, but these committees that you’ve put together, the inspiration or what really resulted in the committees is a very specific intentional purpose.

Joe Zuccarello (28:13):
Pett, even at its younger stages right now as an association has a course mapped out that says, we can scale with this course. We can scale with the game on initiative because we’re preparing a foundation that will welcome hundreds or thousands of members. It’s not just networking, although that’s a really important piece. That’s the end team, right in and on, game on. And it’s not just the education, but it’s all those other things that you mentioned, like the indie chats, which I think are brilliant. The whole taking a playbook right out of what Shop Small Day, which is usually the Saturday after Black Friday. So Indie Pet says, Hey, that works for other parts of our economic system, our shopping system or commerce system, if you would, why wouldn’t it work for independent pet businesses? So we have that. We celebrate that. And that’s not the Saturday after Black Friday, so don’t get me wrong, it’s

Todd Dittman (29:24):
The last Saturday of every September.

Joe Zuccarello (29:27):
There you go. I knew it was in September. It’s the last Saturday of every September. So one of the things that you talked about and I want to talk about was one of the things you mentioned is, Hey, Todd, Joe, this all sounds great, kumbaya. Everything’s great. I don’t have time, right? Have you seen I’m working bell to belt. I turn the lights on in the morning myself as an owner operator. I turn the lights off in the evening. I’m having a hard time finding staff. I mean, I’ve got all of these challenges. Now again, we’ve already established as much as I’d like to say that you’re unique and you’re special. You’re kind of really, not everybody’s struggling with those. But Todd, how do you answer the question? I just don’t have time to be in a network. Sure, you’ve got to hear that.

Todd Dittman (30:16):
Yeah, absolutely. Hear it all the time. And we understand our indie chats. We don’t want to record them because that kind of squashes people’s feeling that they can share freely and things like that. So what we do is capture the ideas and we blog. So we have a pretty healthy blog page that we share with everybody. We feature kind of member to member promotions in our newsletter that people can get any time. We understand that some of the stuff is not going to be during your business hours. So we try to supply everything in a tool that you can go and consume at any time. But it is also about the ideas that come out of this give you time back. So if you don’t have time, you might find some tools like a benchmarking report that WPA does. We offer that for our members. We have other forums, mentor programs that create ideas and new ways to give you time back in your day. And to be honest, that was one of the survey answers that we got back is, Hey, how do you help me with my time management so I can talk to these new vendors or talk to these new ideas and bring in services into my store where I need the help? And we try to supply that tool to be consumed at any time.

Joe Zuccarello (32:08):
And you connect the dots. I mean, one thing I know about an association and IND Pet is certainly a leader in this category, is if it’s not obvious on your site or somebody joins as a member and they’re like, okay, who is this and who is that? Or what is that brand? What you just reach out to the team at indep and they’re like, they’re going to connect the dots for you. What’s really cool, I mean the job of the association is to connect the dots because really together, we’re stronger, not separate, we’re stronger. So this whole, here’s what I’d like to encourage as we start to wrap up the podcast episode is this is I’d like to encourage all of the retailers that are out there who are considering services to think about adding services to your business. It’s not scary. It’s not as scary if you’ve got service partners and business partners like Paragon and others in the service space that can help you with that.

Joe Zuccarello (33:03):
And if you are a pet services business who is thinking about or does have maybe even listen, even if you just have a small assortment of retail, that’s okay too. You don’t have to have a large store of retail to be a member of Indie pet. What you need is retail that actually makes a difference. So even if it’s a small sort of boutique type of approach, you just need retail that’s going to make a difference to your bottom line and not become, I’ve got a friend in the industry and says this, if the retail sits too long, you’re just a museum. You’re just constantly dusting off, or the dogs lift their leg on it and sign the guest book on your bag of treats or whatever on the lowest shelf and all of those things. But listen, those are some of the real challenges.

Joe Zuccarello (33:50):
Those are kind of the comical side of the challenges we face. But let’s blend these two worlds together. And really it’s going to take each of you. So it’s going to take all of you that are out there that are supplies, businesses who are thinking about services and the people that are in services thinking about retail. It’s going to take you. So your challenge as a listener is considered joining really. I mean, it’s not like you’re spending thousands of dollars a year to join. You definitely get what you give. You definitely get what you put into it. But Indie Pet every day is continuing to make that consumption of information easier. Even if, to your point about making it easier in the day for that business owner operator, this education pieces in the catalog, in the product catalog platform to just be able to download educational materials and put it in front of your staff

Joe Zuccarello (34:45):
And let them consume that. How long would that have taken you, the business owner to teach them that? Shocker, you might not even know all of the information yet. So how can you do a good job of teaching them? But I will tell you, and if you say, well, isn’t that the brand’s responsibility anyway? It is. But they don’t know you. They don’t know your front desk staff. They don’t know if you’ve got somebody new. If you plug in though, you get immediate service. It’s like plugging a cord into plugging a lamp into a wall. You get light. You just got to plug in, right? That’s

Todd Dittman (35:22):
Exactly right.

Joe Zuccarello (35:22):
Technologies. But

Todd Dittman (35:24):
That’s exactly right. A services organization can be a part of Neighborhood Pet Store Day. If you’re a part of that experience, you should be a part of that communication and definitely take advantage of that. And even if you are primarily a services organization with a few products, you’re obviously selling those products online too. The platform is golden for you to have access to. So it makes a lot of sense. And everybody needs, I think, in my humble opinion, everybody needs a strong association to lean on, especially when the economy is going downward. I’m not saying that’s what the situation is right now, but that’s when you lean on an association the most is when the economy turns. So keep that in mind. Yeah, I mean, I’m happy to take anybody’s questions or I can supply my contact information to Let’s do

Joe Zuccarello (36:29):
That. So how do people find Indie Pet, right? And for all of the, Hey, Joel listener audience out there, you know that if you go to paragon pet school.com, all of the references and resources that, and this podcast recording everything that Todd is about to mention about how to get in touch with them. So if you’re in your car, listen, please don’t pull out a notepad and try to write this down. Just rewind it or back it up, whatever it’s called these days and listen to this last part. But all of this is going to be on the [email protected]. But Todd, what’s the first step for people to get engaged with Indie Pet?

Todd Dittman (37:09):
Well, you can just reach out to us or take a look at our website. You can see who our members are, and that’s not behind the member wall, who the members are and what are the services that we supply right on our website. And it’s nd pet.org I-N-D-I-E pt.org. And you can email me too. My email address is Todd, TODD, dot diman, D-I-T-T-M-A-N, at indie pet.org. And I’m happy to answer any questions and really tell you more about the association.

Joe Zuccarello (37:48):
Well and okay, I’m one to be sort of picky, maybe even point out something obvious. Listen folks, whoever’s out there listening to this, you just got the executive director of an association to give you his personal email address. So that’s how close Indy Pet wants to be with you. And I think that’s a really great example of that. Now, Todd might pass you off to a subject matter expert, but you can start with Todd. So he’s welcoming that. So indie pet.org. Again, if you can’t remember that, go to paragon pet school.com and to the resources page and you’ll see all of Todd’s information there. Todd, keep up the good fight, man. You’re doing a really great job there. I’m very happy to be part of Indie Pet as not only a committee member, but also an association member. And Paragon is certainly a strong partner and sees it as clearly as you do. So thanks again for being a guest on a Hey Joe Pet Pro podcast, and I see another episode at some point coming up with a follow up couple of topics

Todd Dittman (38:46):
Anytime. Thanks, Joe, I really appreciate it.