The Story of Dec’s Pets an Irish Ecommerce Pet Supplies Retailer With Declan O’Keeffe - Digital Director at Dec’s Pets.

Speaker A: This week on the business and marketing scoop, I'm talking with Declan o', Keefe, digital director at Dex Pets. Welcome to the show, man.

Speaker B: Thanks for having me, Mark.

Speaker A: So, Declan, you're the digital director of a company called Dex Pets, um, e commerce pet platform. Um, I must say something kind of close to my heart. I have a border, uh, collie at home who I love very much. And, um, we realize how much money gets spent on the border collie every year.

Speaker B: It's crazy. It's crazy. I think sometimes people spend more on their pets than they do to kids.

Speaker A: I. I think it's worth. I think there's the Irish pet, Mark, around 240 million or something like.

Speaker B: Something like that. And, uh, it's funny, when I was in, in uni, I wrote a dissertation on how the, the pet industry is recession proof and like, I got an A in it as well. And that was years ago when I was working. I was working for Pet Mania as like a sales assistant in Wexford. But it survives and it's thriving. And I think in Ireland, people tend to spend their money more in pet stores than they do the supermarkets, say in the uk.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, I think even a place like Cork, the population isn't massive if you compare it to a UK city, but there is billions of pet shops. There's. You could be three maxi zoos, a couple of Pet Manias, a couple of pet stops. And it shows you how well the Irish pet market is doing, whether the bubble will burst, who knows? But it's good fun.

Speaker A: It's. Yeah, look, it's. It's a, it's a very interesting space. It's definitely a growing one. So I don't know, I don't know about bubbles bursting, I'd say, but it's. It. There seems to be a lot of growth in the space. So how did you end up in the business and how did, um, Dex Pets get started?

Speaker B: Yeah, so rewind. Obviously, I do have a bit of a southern English accent. Um, so we moved here in 2006 right at the end of the Celtic Tiger.

Speaker A: Um, yeah.

Speaker B: Born and bred in Hastings in East Sussex. Dad's Irish, mum's English, and, ah, he wanted to come back to Ireland for a better life. I think he saw the Celtic Tiger and he was like, I want some of that. Um, we couldn't afford Dublin, which was where my dad's originally from. But, uh, born in Cork and decided on Wexford and he stumbled into the pet industry. So he worked for Pet Mania. Um, he opened up the store there in Wexford. And then I worked there as a sales assistant through my leaving cert, uh, and uni. And then from there I did my leaving cert, did uni, I left and went off to London. I lived in London for five years, met my now wife, um, and then we moved to Australia and I worked in Sydney, Worked for a few tech companies over there, you know, e commerce tech companies, uh, payments platform on the sales and partnership side, um, but learned a lot. And then my dad got fed up with the, in, you know, the industry, working for the big boys, and just said five years ago, right, I want to open a shop in Wexford. Let's do it. Um, Mum and dad put, I think 10 grand of their own money in, got the premises that we still have to this day, and went for it. And locally it's been like a wild success. I would say we are the, uh, busiest pet shop in Wexford. Um, don't quote me on that, but, you know, I'm just. I think so. Um, but it, the whole store was built on the local community. It isn't the prettiest store in the world, but it's completely functional, always fully stocked. Staff are absolutely brilliant. We have a number of sales assistants as well as my parents that were there. Um, and it was built by the community as well. So my dad constantly, you know, donated to charities, the local animal shelters, free delivery across Wexford. You know, throughout Covid, he was delivering to people in isolation. And from there it just grew locally to where we had like, we've got like 6 or 7,000 on Facebook, which is predominantly our local base where my parents are getting pinged left, right and center with messages. Can I book my dog in for grooming? That's how the store was built. Um, and from there as well, like, recently my, my dad got voted in as the chairperson of the wsbca. So he was on the board and he got voted in as the chairperson because we've done so much for them. Uh, um, we work with the local wardens and stuff like that and the animal search and rescues, because obviously Wex was on the beach. Um, so we're, we'd like to think we're an integral part of, like, the pet community in, you know, southern county of Wexford. Southern part of Wexford. Um, and then from there I was living in Sydney, was hearing what was going on at home, you know, helping where I could with a bit of advice or whatever. I knew. And my daughter was born March 2020, so literally right at the start of the pandemic. So that was. She was born in the 10th I was working for a payments platform, uh, as a business, uh, development and partnerships manager. I couldn't take any paternity leave because it was all all hands on deck, pardon the pun. And we stuck it out for seven months in Australia. We kind of then realized, oh, we're really far away, the borders were closed. So I said look, let's move to Ireland. And my wife was in, she's English but her family were living in the uae. She was like, let's move to Wexford. Emma's been to Wexford like a couple of times. And yeah, we just, we just took a punt and then I thought instead of say working for someone in Dublin and working remote in Wexford, why don't I jump into the family pet business and see if I can get us online and grow us and sort of future proof the business whereby us kids could, could take this on from our parents. And that's how I got into it. Um, so yeah, I got us online in sort of early 2021. Our website is completely custom built. Um, I kind of believe it's not what you know, it's who you know. My best friend is a, is a developer in London.

Speaker A: Always handy.

Speaker B: Yeah and he's a very good developer and his name's Ainsley Clark. He's got a business, ainsley.dev and he was up for it. He was starting sort of like his freelance side of things. He was working for an agency he's now at just Eat as like a senior dev. But we worked together on this and we custom built the site um, on WordPress but all rewritten in PHP. Um and the whole focus was initially on, on the back end and re branding as well because the, the brand of the stores, uh, I don't want to be a bit harsh in my parents but it, it wasn't that modern so they were going to get us online. You want to modernize the brand, make it family friendly. So we went with uh, you know, blues and pinks and uh, really, you know, that whole friendliness and warmth came through I thought with the brand. So yeah, we got online and then slowly realized that we've built in my opinion a Rolls Royce, but we're just like a mini. So we put a few quid into the back end. Ah, you know, we're focusing a lot on Google page speed and all of this. And it was going great guns. It was like, oh God, I need to now start running ads. You know, I need to really build our uh, presence on Instagram and all of this which is what we've done over the last sort of two and a half years, uh, and we've grown our footprint. I'd like to think we've taken a bit of market share in the pet trade here and we've sort of popped up out of nowhere and maybe ruffled a few feathers, um, because we, we take risks. We're not afraid to, you know, take a punt and see what happens. Some things have worked, some things haven't worked. Um, a big thing for us two years ago, obviously, with Brexit. Now, I came back right at the heart of the whole Brexit debacle. And obviously we were getting a lot of product from the UK. Like many businesses. I'd say 50 of our products were coming from the UK. So we were like, what are we going to do to, like, really survive here? Because most of the pet businesses in Ireland are bound by a certain amount of wholesalers and you're all buying the same products and a little bit of a race to the bottom. So we looked out, we took a risk. We went to trade shows in Europe. We got in new and innovative products into the Irish market. We brought new brands into Ireland. Some of them have worked, some of them haven't worked. Um, but we looked at it as like, okay, what do Irish pet consumers want or need? And what brands do you think would like to test out the Irish market? Um, so we've built relationships with distributors in, say, France and Czech Republic and the Benelux regions. So, for instance, I'm buying UK products from France. It's just mad, but it is. It's the world we live in at the moment. Um, but that really worked for us and helped us stand out a little bit as well as focusing a lot and, say, organic SEO and obviously paid, you know, Google Ads, social ads and stuff like that. Um, we actually don't run social ads anymore. We did it. We didn't think it worked. Um.

Speaker A: Oh, we need to chat.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think. I think we do. Yeah. Because I, you know, we've worked with a few agencies before. Um, at the moment, we're currently not working with. With any agencies. We're doing everything in house. Um, I do have an SEO freelancer called Emily. She is absolutely brilliant. She's been with me pretty much from day one. It's kind of been myself, uh, Emily and Ainsley.

Speaker A: Ah.

Speaker B: As well as my family that, uh. And we're all mucking in. But our organic search has gone from, say, 20 to 30% to now 70%. So it's organic and direct is 70% and paid is at 30, which is a huge achievement in my opinion. Um, we've played the long game and it's really worked. But explaining this to my family and all of this stuff, my dad just sees numbers on a bank statement and our accountant is like, what are all these, these things you're doing for Ecom? Like, he's like, I have no idea. You know, you're just creating a headache for me.

Speaker A: And SEO in particular is a very different one because it is, like you said, it's the long game. So trying to explain that to people can be, can be quite, quite difficult.

Speaker B: All right, yeah, absolutely. And we, we've played the long game and we're starting to see those rewards. And you. Yeah, and like I was saying, we take a risk. Like, we were the first, we think, the first pet brand in Europe to launch a doggy vending machine. Um, we did it as a PR stunt with a partner of ours in Dublin, um, who's got four dog friendly pubs. We worked with him with like a Santa Pause event. We ran a dog market at Christmas. He just found us on Google. Um, said, you up for this? Was like, yeah, we're up for anything. And he was like, I'm opening a venue, um, called Pie in Dundrum. It's going to be completely dog friendly. What could we do? We kind of, kind of came up with the concept of a doggy vending machine. So it's literally a vending machine with dog products in, you know, a few toys and treats. And we approached a local, uh, a, uh, vending machine company in Ireland and they were like, yeah, we're up for this. It's a bit weird, but we're game. And yeah, it was a bit of a PR storm. We were, I had to do an article in the Mail on Sunday. We were in loads of, uh, Dublin publications and stuff like that, and we didn't push it or anything. And then Marina Market in Cork, funnily enough reached out and said, yeah, we love this, um, could we get one? We're like, yeah, okay. Um, so we've done crazy things like that that no one else has done, but it's helped, you know, grow us as a brand. We've kind of gone from a local independent. You know, people would only know us from Wexford to like, I would like to think a nationally known pet brand. And then off the back of that, we've started winning a few awards and, you know, the hard work and the capabilities technologically when it comes to the website Shining through now and People are seeing that, like, we won best, uh, startup website of the year at the E. Comm, uh, awards in Dublin.

Speaker A: Fantastic.

Speaker B: Yeah, it was, it was, it was wild. That was back in September. And then we were actually nominated for overall website of the year. And there was a pet stop were in that, um, Brown, Thomas and a few others. And that was a surprise one. At the end of the night they were like, we've got announcement. We're going to do a big one. You know, best overall website. And we were in there. We didn't win, but just to get nominated was just like, Jesus. Like, okay, we're doing something right. Um, but yeah, it's crazy. It is full on.

Speaker A: Fantastic, man. So there was a lot of change for you so early on. So you, the kid, you moved out of Australia, you came back, there was a brick and mortar retail store and you're like, okay, we're gonna take this brand, we're gonna move it online and grow it. Yeah. How. Just personally, how did you handle all that chains so quickly? It sounds like there was a lot going on.

Speaker B: Yeah, sometimes not very well. Like, um, I'm not, You know, a lot of people talk about mental health these days, which is absolutely brilliant, particularly, you know, around men's mental health. And I've struggled with my mental health over the years. You know, I've. I've been in jobs where it's a work hard, play hard mentality and it can really suck you in. Um, and then coming back to Ireland, it was like a bit of a fresh start for me. And yeah, there's, there's, there's been ups and downs. You know, I've got two young kids. I've got a. My daughter will be four next month and my son will be two in April. And juggling that as well, we're with, um, my wife, who has never lived in Ireland. She doesn't have her family around her. It's been tough. And then, you know, working with family as well, like, we always say we, we treat each other like family and not colleagues. Like, um, you know, some of the arguments you have with them, like, you know, I would have been sacked in any other business. You know, like, it's, it's just crazy, the effing in the blinding. But at the end of the day, you just get it over with and then you crack on like, it's. We're all, we've all got our own lanes and then we all come together to come up with these crazy ideas and these new initiatives. But I'm sure if You've ever worked with family, you know, it can be, can be really full on and tough. Especially when, you know, you're always constantly around each other. You know, it's, it's unavoidable. Like you have to sometimes switch off when, you know, for instance, now there's, there's three grandchildren. My brother's got a child as well. So if we all go out, you know, we have to, you know, not talk about work. Like my mum would be. Like, my mum runs all the social media which she learned from scratch. Yeah, this is a 52 year old woman that's, you know, got a ridiculously engaged social, uh, media audience. But she'll bring that up. Like we were, we were out the other day, um, we went to a wildlife park in Wexford and she'll bring up something and I'm like, no, no, I'm not in the mood. Jog on, leave me alone. Um, but yeah, it's a balancing act that we're still learning as a family. We've got staff members as well. We've got people that work in store, we've got sales assistants that have been with us for years. They're kind of been like the unsung heroes of the brand. They don't want to get out in front and do things like this, which is completely fair. Um, but yeah, it's a wild ride that keeps going.

Speaker A: Brilliant. So when you came back, so obviously the brick and mortar business had been going a while at the retail store. What were the first steps you took when you decided, right, we really want to push online, we really want to grow a national brand. How would you approach that?

Speaker B: Yeah, so initially it was when I was still in Sydney, um, working for a payments platform. We kind of knew that we were going to leave Australia, um, so we were starting the building blocks there. Like as I said, my parents had no clue when it came to online, um, and my knowledge was limited, obviously I knew, you know, a little about a lot, as I say. Um, so I knew that the government were giving out grants to get small businesses online. So we applied for that grant and got it. We initially, with that grant, as far as I'm aware, you had to use a local developer to build the site. So my parents approached someone locally. They, they got a site built with a little bit of guidance from me, as much as I could do from, from Sydney. Um, but what was put together wasn't, you know, up to scratch in my opinion. So I came back and started ripping it apart and trying to learn on the job myself. You know, I was learning all about the back ends of, of, you know, WordPress and WooCommerce and everything like that. But then as a, you know, you know, I'm lucky enough that I've got some great people around me, friends, uh, you know, in the industry. Um, so, you know, it's not. It's not what, you know, it's who, you know sometimes. So, yeah, I reached out to my best mate, Anz, and he's a developer who is starting his own freelance, um, business. And from there we built everything from scratch. Um, we created a brand new brand, um, we built the website, which is completely custom. And then from there, we focused a lot on the technology. You know, I was looking at, uh, you know, what Irish pet brands had on site. You know, simple things like did they have live chat? Do. Are, uh, companies looking at, you know, using Kalana in Ireland? You know, do they have, uh, subscription capabilities? These are all the things that I were looking at because in my opinion, the Irish econ market is obviously a little bit high. And, um, say the uk, Australia, the US So I saw some of the things that were going on in, say, Sydney, and I was like, okay, can I use some of these tactics here? So, for instance, at the moment, right, as of right now, we offer subscriptions. So if you want to subscribe to your dog food on a weekly monthly basis, you can, if you want to use Buy now, pay later with Kalana, you can. If you want to message us via live chat, you can. And it will come directly through to my phone now. And I might have to leave this podcast to answer a customer. Um, you know, we looked at things like, okay, how are people buying dog tags online? You know, just a simple, you know, buddy and a phone number. And I noticed that someone wants to buy a dog tag online, they literally have to select the tag and in the notes in the checkout, write what they want on the tag. And I was like, that's not good. So what we built, or I should say what Ainsley built, was a 3D tag builder, which we have on site. So you go on, um, you select the tag, you input what you want on front and back. The tag will digitally turn around, the contents will come onto the tag. And it just made the experience of buying a dog tag online easier. So we done things like that that I thought the Irish pet consumer would like to see and would want, which has really worked. And then on top of that, we worked on bringing new and innovative brands into Ireland. You know, we saw Brexit as Actually a little bit of an opportunity. We're like, okay, maybe we can build some, some channels in Europe. Um, and we brought a number of brands into the Irish market. You know, one of the biggest ones is probably a brand called Cocoa Pup. You know they've got about 200,000 followers on Instagram in, in the UK. Um, you know they took a punt on us, we took a punt on them and it's been successful. And then know another brand which is a natural supplements company called Door west, big UK brand, uh, we buy their products from France. Like, yeah, it sounds crazy but this is the world we live in at the moment because of Brexit. Um, and that's what's helped sort of set us apart and helped grow us online and not being afraid to be ourselves. I think when it comes to social media sometimes it can be a bit sterile and someone like myself can see through the really, um, you know, if I see another company saying, oh, Valentine's competition, tag free friends and you could win a hand for worth €25, I, I'm just sick of it. Like we try not to do, do that. We have, we don't have the largest social media following in the world. I think we've got four and a half thousand on Instagram, six on Facebook, a couple thousand on TikTok. But we have one of the most engaged audiences in Ireland. We've got the fourth most engaged social media audience behind petmania, Pet Stop and Maxizou. And we only have four and a half thousand say on Instagram. So our focus has been solely on like our engagement, not about the number, um, but really being ourselves on social media, not afraid to call a spade a spade and having a little community online. And off the back of that in the future maybe we will build out our own community of, of you know, pet people in islands, you know, so that's something we're looking at. Um, and we also look to look at a lot of partnerships. You know, not enough, um, in my opinion is done in the econ market when it comes to partnerships and networking and, and, and things like this as well. Um, I saw in Australia like there was events every day of the week and uh, businesses, competitors working together and helping each other out. So we've tried to build as many relationships with businesses in Ireland in the industry and outside the industry as well. And that's something we're continually working on. Um, so we're just trying to break the mold a little bit, not having this sort of dog eat dog mentality like some businesses do. Um, and just there's room for everyone. That's my opinion. There is room for everyone.

Speaker A: That's just a big advantage for you as well as an up and coming brand. A lot of the bigger brands would be more afraid to take risks.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: Whereas red type. Yeah, 100%. Whereas the position you're coming from, you know, you can experiment more and you talk about some of the stuff you did already. So in terms of your marketing, um, sounds like you're doing some interesting stuff. The vending machines and stuff. How have you approached the marketing strategy for Dexpets when you came in? Because as the digital director I'd know. Do you have other marketing people in the business with you or are you kind of, um, like um, all the people you're outsourcing to?

Speaker B: Basically, yeah. So yeah, I mean, digital director, I kind of made that title up. I thought, I thought it sounded nice. I'm open to suggestions or another title. Um, I mean look like every business you want to get as many people in the top of funnel as possible. So we run Google Ads, which has been pretty successful for us, um, getting them in the door. And then we ran social ads as well for a little while. Um, big focus for us the turn of last year was retention. We spent so much money on ads like many businesses do. We built a subscriber base of about 10,000 now in our mailing list that we were like, okay, let's flip the switch a little bit and focus on loyalty and retention. So we have a loyalty platform on site where people earn, we call them pause points per, uh, um, and they can redeem them, um, as they go, um, which has worked really well for us. We then launched our subscription service as well where we have, you know, a few hundred subscribers now to our food and treats and other bits and pieces supplements. And then we worked a lot on our email marketing. Now what I noticed, um, a lot with, particularly in our industry, in the pet industry is that there was a lot of spraying and praying. So for instance, we're a general pet store. You know, we sell everything from dog products to horse products. You know, we get, people could come into the store, they go straight out to the warehouse, they grab some horse feed and straight up to the till. Um, so I was like, if I'm a, a chicken customer, I'm buying chicken feed. So I really want to receive uh, emails with cat products on. No, I don't. So I noticed that a lot in our industry. So we've worked a lot on our email segmentation and our marketing through there. And now our email channels is probably our biggest, you know, revenue stream when it comes to marketing. Um, we've worked a lot on the welcome flows, you know, new customer, uh, all of that stuff. Um, we've done predominantly all of that in house, had a little bit of outside help. Um, there's a great guy in Dublin called, uh, Kalyn. Him and his brother have an agency called Optima. They've helped us with their, uh, welcome flows and our communication. Simple things like when someone purchases, you know, a couple of days later, giving them some information about Dex pets, like, thank you for your, you know, your first time purchase. This is who we are. Like we're a family business. This is Deck senior, or big deck as he, as he's called, even though smaller than me. Um, and this is who we are. Like, thank you so much. And we worked a lot, we've worked a lot on our loyalty and retention, um, and even rewinding it back to the start. One thing that we did from day one, uh, which I'm taking credit for, I came up with it. No one else in the family did, is to this day we write a handwritten note and give a bag of free treats in every single online order. Um, and probably giving away too much here because others might start doing it now. But that is reflected through like our trust pilot reviews. Like, we've got a five star, um, rating at the moment and so many of them say thank you for the free treats. Like, I just thought there wasn't enough personalization in the econ market in Ireland. Like just that personal touch, just that simple thing saying, thanks so much, Debbie. Have this on us. And we do that to this day. And it's probably been our biggest, our most, our best marketing tactic that we've done, um, over the last three years online. Like, it's, it's just those simple things that have worked for us. But in the last 12 months, email has been huge for us. It's, it's something that we've put a lot of focus in. And my brother, he left, his insurance job was like, we need more help. And he's come in and learn, um, email marketing as well as other bits and pieces, like completely from scratch. And he runs all of that. But we've also, we've worked a lot on road mapping, stuff like that. It was always, you know, we were just chasing our tail all of the time. Like we just come up with idea and go, yeah, post that on socials. But we've worked a lot with like our SEO freelancer Emily. We've got, we've done all of our keyword strategies, we've got content plans for this year. Like, I. We know what people are searching for in Ireland, so we've got, uh, plans around content for that, whether that would be a blog or that would be a reel or that would be just a post on Instagram. So we've. We're now working a lot smarter. Um, which is. Which is great. It's. It. It takes a load off as well. We're not always chasing our tail. We're not always panicking. We've got a bit of a, you know, a roadmap of, say, four weeks in front of us, um, whereas we're not behind. It's not Valentine's. We're like, oh, shit. What, do we create a post? Get on Canva now, Joe, like my brother, get on Canva and make something. So, yeah, we, we're now working a lot smarter.

Speaker A: Brilliant. So let's look a little further out in four weeks. We're looking maybe four years down the line. What are your goals for. For Dex Pets?

Speaker B: In all honesty, people have said this to, to me before, and the. The whole thing is, is just to still, uh, be in business and still be growing. Like I said, we're a family business. There's my mum, my dad. My dad's in his 60. Uh, my mum's in her 50s as well. There's myself as the eldest, and then there's my brother and my sister that runs a grooming studio. Uh, in store. I think the idea is that my parents can sail off into retirement and we can take on the business. Where that goes, who knows? Like, I'm passionate about online, I'm passionate about E Com, but if anyone ever tells you that bricks and mortar is dead, in my opinion, they're an idiot because most of our revenue comes from our store. You know, it's about 70% of our revenue is in store. And I think if you have, um, you know, the right product and right location, you can really do well with stores. So maybe we will open a couple more stores. We have looked into that. Um, we were very close to purchasing one last year, but we pulled out in the end. It just wasn't right. Um, will we look into going into different markets? Potentially, we sell into the uk at the moment, we, we have a number of customers that, because of Brexit, can't get certain products in the uk, but they buy from us and we ship that via ups. Um, you know, we take a bit of a sting on the shipping charges and stuff like that. Um, maybe we'll do more of that. I think a lot of businesses are maybe too focused on the Irish market and not always looking out in the E commerce econ world here. They probably look at the UK and think, well, maybe not. It's, it's, it's a bit saturated, but I, uh, think there might be opportunities there. Um, and yeah, the whole plan is to just have a sustainable business that, you know, the kids, I, myself and brother and sister can keep running and keep growing. You know, we've all got pensions out of the business. I've got a lovely pink and blue van that's parked up outside. So, you know, we're, my dad's got a nice pension from the business now. Like it's, it's running smoothly but obviously when you have a small business it can be very fragile. Like, you know, we don't own our premises, we still rent. So I, uh, was looking at that like, okay, building the online. If everything fell through in store and we've got all this stock, we still have a website, we still have a brand that's growing nationally in Ireland, you know, we have customers that are on the Aran Islands. Like, we would still have a business because you never know what might happen when you don't own your own premises, you know. So I'd uh, like to think we really have future proof the business, we've made it more sustainable. Um, and in four years time we'll still be roughing a few feathers and causing the stir and hopefully I'll be doing more things like this.

Speaker A: Fantastic. Brilliant man. You touched on one thing there as well. Really important is, is building the brand and building the community.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And that's something that can, you know, you know, like your premises, okay, potentially could, could be taken away or whatever it is, but building a really strong brand and a really strong community, that's what's going to allow you to, to potentially open up in new markets or in new cities, new counties and have a lot more success more easily. Because if you have that brand and that community built and established already from online, you know, those people are going to flock then towards, towards the, the brick and mortar sword end as well. Yeah.

Speaker B: And I think as well in Ireland, uh, like it's, there's always been such a focus on Dublin, like, and so many great brands come out of Dublin. But you know, I know my accent is very English, but we are a proud Wexford regional Irish business. Um, you know, moved here when I was 15, so I do class Myself as Irish, but we are. We like to think we fly the. We want to fly the flag for regional, you know, businesses like, you know, cities like Cork now are absolutely thriving. There's so many cool businesses coming out of Cork. Like, it's. It's not all about Dublin now. And I think with the Irish population, what I've noticed, and that could be totally wrong, but I think they love to shop more local than say they would in the uk. They do support independent brands. They do support the small businesses out in the sticks, um, you know, in Wexford at the moment. You know, Wexford has one long main street, and I don't think there's an empty unit there. But, you know, I'm in the UK a lot with family over there, and you see some of the high streets in the UK and they're. Some of them are just. They're desolate, they're dead. So I think Irish consumers, they really do support local. And I think that's really helped us as well. Um, I think the fact that people pick up the phone to us and they're like, oh, I thought you were bigger than you are. You're just, uh, a family business in Wexford. Yeah, we're just a small business in Wexford. And we get such a good reaction from people. And even when you make mistakes, like, you know, we. Something might m. Have been out of stock and someone's ordered it, that happens, you know, um, you pick up the phone, you just, you say, sorry, complete mistake on our part. You know, we're small business. We make mistakes. Predominantly. Everyone's so warm and lovely. They're like, fine. We're like, look, we'll send you some free stuff, like, and everyone's lovely. I think there's a big thing in the Irish, um, population at the moment with supporting local and with looking after local communities, that has helped business, businesses like us, you know, thrive and grow. And there's so many other good independent pet brands in Ireland that are not online. You know, there's, there's pet shops dotted around in all the small towns in Ireland, and some of them are probably doing more money than us. Like, they, they're just part of the local community, um, which you don't see in many places, um, around the world. You know, I compare it a lot to the uk and, um, I think with the pet industry, people tend to maybe get their products more at supermarkets in the uk, whereas us, I think they like coming into store, having a chat, moaning about the weather and buying a bit of chicken feed and a

Speaker A: dog chew and it's that, that bigger selection, the different brands, they're not going to find in the supermarket as well. And yeah, there's a lot, yeah, there's a lot, a lot more to it. I think the. Even just speaking from my own thing, you might pick up the odd dog treat in the, in the supermarket, but when you want, if you're doing the bigger shop, you look on the website or go in, in store. Yeah. Um, and that's interesting. In the uk, you find that most of the. There's a big chunk of the purchasing system in the supermarket.

Speaker B: I did a comparison. My wife, uh, Weston up in Lancashire, which is a, It's a city like, I don't think the population would be far off the size of Cork. And I was looking at it and there is a pets at home and then there's a couple of independents. Um, but when you compare it to say, Cork, Cork's got, you know, a couple of maxi zoos, it's got a couple of pet manias, it's got a couple of pet stops, it's got pets, plus it's got numb.

Speaker A: And then lots of smaller independent ones as well.

Speaker B: Crazy amount. And they're, they all seem to be doing well. And I think that kind of shows you that Irish, you know, dog owners, cat owners, bird owners, they tend more to go to a pet store to, to get that advice.

Speaker A: Ah.

Speaker B: And to get their products there, um, and long may that continue. Like the supermarkets, um, they are getting more and more brands in. We see a lot of the wholesalers here in Ireland focusing a lot more on the supermarkets and getting pet brands in there. You can't compete with supermarkets. Maybe some of the big pet brands can. But, you know, we've had it where a brand that we're selling may pop up in Duns and it's, it's a euro cheaper and customers will say, oh, I can get it in Duns for a euro cheaper. It's like. But they're buying in such volume. They're getting such, they're getting huge discounts. We can't compete, like. But it is what it is that

Speaker A: comes back to brand and community.

Speaker B: That's it. That's it. And there's always that worry. There's, there's always that worry that, you know, we, we have a pet mania, uh, in Wexford and we, we there on the other side of the town and we go up against them. You know, there's always that worry about one of the other big boys may come in. But I, uh, feel like we have that brand locally. We have that community feel. We do a lot for the charities that I think we would retain a lot of customers locally. And now the fact that we've got this love a revenue stream with the online that's is going great guns at the moment. Um, we, we don't have to panic too much if another competitor came in, in the bricks and mortar space in Wexford. Um, but like I say, who knows where the road will take us? Like we're, we're just looking to, to continue to grow. That's it.

Speaker A: Brilliant man. If somebody's listening, they, they want to do a little bit of shopping for their, their pet. Where?

Speaker B: Uh, well, there's. If you're, if you're in Wexford, um, we are just outside Wexford town in our cavern, um, not far from curricula, so you can have a stroll down curriculum, um, beach, um, and then we're on Dexpets ie, where we have over 2,000 products, everything ranging from, from dog products to fish products to bird products. Um, and you can, you can reach us anywhere. Like I say, if you jump on the live chat, it will, it will ping me right here and I will respond as quickly as I can. Um, yeah. So feel free to jump online and see what we have.

Speaker A: Brilliant. Dr. Gary, thanks so much, man.

Speaker B: No worries. Thanks for having me.

Speaker A: Thanks for listening to this week's episode of the Business and Marketing Scoop. I really, really hope you enjoyed it. If you did, please make sure to click that subscribe button in Spotify, in Apple Podcasts and wherever you listen to your podcasts each week we have great, great people on talking about business, talking about marketing, giving amazing value and amazing insights. So please make sure you are.