Fish4Dogs

Graham Smith, CEO: “We attribute our success to several things: a great brand, a great product and an innovative culture driven by an experienced and strong management team.”

A powerful brand

The pet industry is not short of brands and every year sees more new brands launched. The sad fact is that many of these will fail, often because of the weakness of the brand and its proposition. A strong brand has a clear point of competitive difference that is believable and easily communicated and which addresses real consumer needs. Fish4Dogs has all of these. It only uses fish – fish is good, dogs love the taste and it’s rich in marine omega 3, really helping with coat, skin and joints. There are other brands that have products made from fish, but few specialising in it and Fish4Dogs has retained its reputation as the market leading specialist. The proposition is clear and simple to communicate and very believable.

A strong brand is important to attract customers, but if they are to come back a second time then the product must also perform. Customer recommendations were (and still are) key behind the brand’s success. A study carried out by Fish4Dogs identified ‘recommendation by friends or breeders’ as the single biggest reason for trying the brand. “The comment that we most often hear is that the dogs coat looks superb,” said Graham Smith. “The customers are actually able to see that the food is healthy through visible improvements in the dog’s condition.”

In 2015, Fish4Dogs ‘Sea Jerky’ treats were, for the third consecutive year, voted best treat by the readers of Your Dog magazine. Graham Smith: “To be voted best treat once was great news but to be voted best treat three years running by such a knowledgeable and discerning audience is testament to the quality of our products.”

Embracing the digital world

From very early days Fish4Dogs has embraced the digital world for both brand communication and sales. Unusually, for a small business, Fish4Dogs has employed a specialist digital team, led by Jason Megretton. This allowed them to develop a number of e-commerce tools including a b-to-b website supporting the pet trade as well as consumer sites.

In the early stages of a business a key problem is finding a route to the consumer. Retailers have limited shelf space and so will, naturally, prioritise established brands with big marketing budgets. This creates a dilemma for start-ups without major financial backing – One can’t get shelf space until the brand is established and can’t establish the brand if consumers can’t buy it. By employing direct to consumer web sales, Fish4Dogs overcame that start up impasse, allowing them to build a consumer franchise.

However it is not enough to simply build a website and hope that consumers will find it – brands need to be built and consumers recruited. Fish4Dogs run an integrated online and offline customer recruitment campaign including face to face consumer interaction at dog shows, a puppy training school programme; a breeder club and puppy club, all integrated with a social media programme providing a platform for the existing customer base to interact and share their experiences and a means for those, considering Fish4Dogs, to research the brand by asking existing users.

Export

From the very early days export has been central to Fish4Dogs and today they export to over 30 countries in Europe and Asia. Fish4Dogs operate through a network of Stavanger Norway – production site of Fish4Dogs Fish4Dogs operations board of directors distributors with each one having exclusivity in their territory, creating long term business relationships.

The next ten years

CEO, Graham Smith: “We have come a long way but we believe we can continue to grow for many years to come. We currently work with over thirty distributors and we are always looking to expand our network of high quality export distributors. We are also investigating ways in which we can apply our UK direct to consumer e-commerce model overseas and we are looking for partners with the right skill set for that. We are also engaged in a new product development programme and we have five new product launches planned for 2015 alone!”

“Additionally, we launched our range of Fish4Cats in 2014 and are looking for significant growth from that as well as driving continued growth in our current areas of business.”