How I Bootstrapped A Healthy Dog Treat Business
Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?
My name is Arianne, owner, and founder of the dog food business Bell & Bone. We create purposeful, innovative products with industry experts, designed to give dogs a healthier life. We have made our mark on a saturated, low-barrier-to-entry market by creating never-seen-before products, like our range of Dental Sticks.
Our Dental Stick range is unlike any other seen in the Australian pet food market, and many others around the world. Healthy, protein first ingredients and full of superfoods, our dental sticks were developed with industry experts and contain active ingredients known to prevent and reduce plaque and tartar when given daily.
Since launching this range in March 2020, the business has doubled its revenue each year and is forecast to do the same in the next financial year as we grow our distribution network and reach more dog owners in Australia and around the world with our product range.
For example, before launching our dental range, Bell & Bone was stocked in approximately 200 pet specialty stores in Australia. As a result of such a successful launch, the product range can be found in over 450 pet specialty stores in Australia, as well as in New Zealand, South Korea, and Hong Kong. Next financial year, we expect our store count to double with plans to increase our export presence.
What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?
Bell & Bone is a personal journey for me, owning a pet comes with an enormous amount of responsibility, particularly around choosing a healthy diet for them. But have you ever walked into a pet store? Thousands of brands, thousands of ideas on what health entails, and not a whole lot of regulation… In my opinion, owners are often fooled by clever marketing in this industry.
In researching what to buy for my puppy Louie to eat, I found that nothing satisfied me. Often, the larger the company the worse the quality, and many of the smaller brands were not tried and tested, but rather passion projects without the clinical expertise.
Born out of frustration with the lack of regulation within the pet food industry, I launched Bell & Bone, dog treats with a real purpose: to help prevent some of the most common diseases found in dogs. Offering a range of specially-formulated dog treats and dental sticks, Bell & Bone uses natural, uncompromised, top-quality ingredients backed by clinical expertise, to ensure your dog only gets the best.
After much research and testing, I knew this idea was worth pursuing, as 80% of dogs by age 3 will have gum or dental disease. Either 80% of owners do not take care of their dogs’ dental health (which I found to be false)... or, they were buying products that were not giving them the results they needed for better oral health (which I found to be true).
Don’t invest everything into something until you are sure. One bad decision can often be more impactful than a handful of good ones.
The products in the market were typically cheaper and used low-quality ingredients, did not contain the right active ingredients to promote better oral health, and ultimately were not doing the job they were being marketed to do - provide better oral health.
I worked closely with industry experts on creating a dental stick that worked, and promoted better oral health, with known active and healthy ingredients that have oral benefits for dogs.
I launched the product range into roughly 400 stores in Australia as well as online, and it continued to grow from there. We used social platforms mainly, to spread the word as well as in-store sampling which was very successful. The key to bringing on industry change has been to educate the market and help them see how easy change can be and the benefit it will provide to their pets.
Take us through the process of designing, prototyping, and manufacturing your first product.
Bell & Bone’s first product range consisted of grain (or gluten) free biscuits for puppy training and rewards, full of superfoods like flaxseed and turmeric to promote joint health, carob, and ginger to promote gut health, and coconut and chia to promote skin and coat health.
Our Superfood Dog Treats were created in line with industry trends such as purposeful feeding, humanizing our pets, and premiumising pet food offerings. These pet food trends are still as relevant as they were when we launched the brand in 2018, and still form the basis of our more recent product development.
I think that it is fantastic the way the market is moving, as pets become more a part of the family, keeping them healthy and happy has become a priority. No longer does the dog sleep outside, but rather in bed with us, and this is applied to the food we feed them as well.
Although the movement towards health for our pets is great to see, it is still important that the food we choose to feed them is developed with experts to ensure they are nutritionally sound.
A lot of brands are jumping on the pet food market train as the industry continues to grow and become more popular and even proven to be COVID/recession-proof. Shoppers need to be able to spot the differences between a food that is positioned as healthy and one that is tried and tested by experts.
Getting this product range off the ground was a more lengthy process than other ranges we have developed. Being grain/gluten-free and not wanting to compromise on quality by using cheap and nutritionless alternate flours, getting them to bind was a challenge.
Testing took months as I was faced with a product that crumbled and many manufacturers put this product in the ‘too hard’ basket. I was not going to give up, so I worked closely with a food scientist on this formula until we finally got the product to stick. This has now become one of our biggest points of difference with this range.
Describe the process of launching the business.
Launching a product into a saturated market was tough. The product was differentiated and special, but getting people to listen initially was the challenge. I knocked on a lot of doors, begging people to give me a shot. It was laborious and hard. However, I quickly found that the brand’s biggest point of difference wasn’t in fact in the product, it was that it had me as its founder - a face, a name, and a person in the target demographic that shoppers could relate to.
So I decided to market the brand differently to the large, faceless corporations and get in front of dog owners. I went to stores and spoke to shoppers about the brand. I held events where dogs could try the product and take home freebies in exchange for Instagram pictures and online reviews. I quickly built an engaged and loyal community which led to viral word of mouth, attracting the larger retailers and better manufacturers to the brand.
My initial website was horrible I redid it about 2 weeks after I launched. It’s that old saying - if you’re not embarrassed by your first product launch, you launched too late.
Funding the launch was hard, I used all my savings and worked full time initially, which eventually became part-time before I quit. It did mean things moved slower than I wanted and they still do as I have bootstrapped for 3.5 years now.
The biggest lesson when you’re starting a business yourself is to know your numbers. My strengths are in sales and marketing but there was no way I could have bootstrapped a business for this long without being completely on top of finances. Costly mistakes, cash flow, and poor forecasting can send you broke.
Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?
We have managed to stand out and grow by more than double year on year since launch and I put it down to a few things. Knowing who we are and what makes us different, knowing what we stand for and why people should choose us. I never wear off it and it has worked.
You are not the market - just because you think something is good, it doesn't mean that everyone else does. Test, test, and test.
We engage in all the usual things - social and google ads, SEO, PR and events, influencers, and so on.
We have particular challenges online as we sell B2B through wholesale and B2C through our online store. A lot of our retailers have significantly larger budgets than us and can bid on the ‘usual’ search terms with a far more aggressive cost strategy.
Our strategy from the beginning has been that no matter where the shopper chooses to buy a product for their dog, they should be choosing Bell & Bone. Because of this, we have chosen specifically not to get into an Adword or SEO battle that we do not have the budget to win.
Another challenge we face, as pet food becomes more humanized and we sell products such as collagen for dogs, is that we begin to creep into other multi-billion dollar industries such as the health and beauty market. Bidding on words like collagen, turmeric, gut health, skin health, etc is just not going to work.
As a result of a highly competitive market, we have been forced to get creative and bid on problems and solutions that are less common but are extremely targeted to shoppers’ needs which is working well as we build Bell & Bone as an authority in the market.
What sets us apart is that shoppers want to go on the journey with us - they genuinely believe in what we’re trying to achieve.
For example, giving back to the community is a really important core value. I have always been involved in charity work including volunteering at unprivileged schools overseas, working in soup kitchens, and donating clothes and other goods to local charities.
I am so lucky to have created a business-like Bell & Bone so that I can use my work to do good in this world. Bell & Bone donates 10c for every bag sold to an animal shelter in Australia, that focuses on fighting against animal cruelty. This resonates with a lot of shoppers who come back and support us over and over again because of our goodwill.
From a tactical perspective, I have found that sampling works in the pet food industry. We have invested a lot into this and often find it cheaper to convert than the typical Facebook ad. Educating on and talking about the benefits combined with trial has seemed to be a winning combination for us. Our customer repeat rate is high as well. We’re lucky to sell a ‘must have’ product - like brushing your teeth, dog dental health is a daily task.
Education has been a really big part of our work too. We have signed an Australian celebrity vet as our brand ambassador which has had great results from a credibility and revenue perspective. Our product is on the higher end, so having a vet endorse and recommend what we’re putting out into the market has been critical.
How are you doing today and what does the future look like?
We have more than doubled our revenue each year since launch, which I predict we will do again in FY22. We have been profitable the whole time with strong margins from the beginning. We have marketed ourselves as a premium purchase (with good reason) and as a result, have been able to charge a higher price for our products. People are buying the value and benefit we’re providing which has meant we haven't needed to compete on price.
The majority of our customers return monthly and continue to use our products for years. Our business is majority wholesale through bricks and mortar, however, our online store is growing quickly to even the split. As we don’t sell a complete diet (i.e. food), many of our customers like to shop with retailers where they can get our product with their food purchases. We have embraced this and have thrived through our wholesale pet specialty network.
We are constantly looking into new products and regions to sell, we’ve only just touched the surface. Our export business is growing quickly, but there is a long way to go.
In the short-mid term, I would like to expand into a full solution for owners - food and treats primarily. I would like to build brand distribution into every major retailer in the country as well as grow our Asian export business and launch into the US. Currently, we contract manufacture, in the long term, owning our facilities excites me.
Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?
The two most important things I have learned go hand in hand - firstly, to surround yourself with incredible people and ask them for help. Secondly, to share ideas and listen to peoples’ thoughts and reactions. Never assume you know it all or how people will perceive what you’re doing - test and try.
I value and appreciate my network so highly and it has come with many rewards over the years.
For example, when I had the idea to launch the business and pitch the idea to manufacturers all around the country, everyone knocked me back. No one wants to take a risk on a one-woman startup. But finally, I approached one last manufacturer and when I went for a meeting, the man on the other side of the table was a man I used to work with within my previous job.
We loved working together then and he gave me a chance because of it. It was at that moment that Bell & Bone went from being a dream to becoming a reality.
I believe you create your luck, however as many people faced a lot of bad luck during COVID, I was fortunate enough to find myself in a recession and COVID-proof industry. People were spending more time with their dogs and noticing the health issues that they previously had not, including dental health issues. I launched our dental range about a week before Australia’s first lockdown and the business skyrocketed as people treated their pets.
I learned through the pandemic to control the things you can - messaging, packaging, marketing, etc - and go with the flow for the rest.
What platform/tools do you use for your business?
We run a Shopify store with some apps we couldn’t live without - Klaviyo for email, Recurring Billing for our subscription service, and GoAff Pro for our ambassador program.
Klaviyo - our email marketing has to date been the most profitable marketing channel. We have an engaged database and ensure that we are speaking to them between 1-and 3 times a week.
Our subscription service has been a total game-changer as our product lends well to it - there are 7 units per pack and we encourage owners to give their dogs 1 stick per day - so 1 bag a week essentially. Surprisingly, our subscription service has been really popular amongst our older demographic of shoppers. Where they often forgot to order or couldn't work out how to use the website, they have now set and forgotten and are satisfied.
Our affiliate marketing and ambassador program have been game-changing for us. We have encouraged loyal shoppers to sign up and promote our products in exchange for ‘Bell & Bone points’ which they can redeem online. Shoppers promote our brand better than we could - on their Instagram bios, at the dog park, and anywhere else. We’re lucky to have such a committed community of animal lovers supporting our brand.
What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?
I find that I am most interested in marketing podcasts as it is an ever-changing landscape that you always need to be on top of. I find myself scrolling through the daily financial papers, business news, and LinkedIn - I like to keep up with the market and business in general. I am inspired by other entrepreneurs around me so I often put my hand up for events and other networking opportunities.
Here is a podcast I love and was featured on in 2020 - take a listen.
Other podcasts I enjoy:
Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?
Two important lessons I was taught when starting the business that I live by:
- You are not the market - just because you think something is good, it doesn't mean that everyone else does. Test, test, and test.
- Don’t ask people IF they would buy, ask people TO buy - you may think you’d do something, but when you get put to the test the result can often be very different. If someone is willing to part ways with their money for your product more than once, you may be onto something. If they’re hesitating, it's time to ask yourself why.
Don’t invest everything into something until you are sure. One bad decision can often be more impactful than a handful of good ones.
Where can we go to learn more?
If you have any questions or comments, drop a comment below!
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Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
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