How A Severe Accident Led Me To Start A Pet Store And Blog Business
Hi everyone. I am Trevor Jensen, CEO of Bullibone. Bullibone Pet Products created a line of dog chew toys that address 2 of the biggest problems plaguing dog owners.
I knew I wanted to run a business that involved my love for dogs and to create a successful business we needed to find some major problems to solve for our customers.
Many new entrepreneurs make the mistake of coming up with an idea that seems like a good idea to them but doesn’t address a valid pain point for consumers. So we did some research to find problems dog owners were facing.
Our customers are dog owners who want a high-quality USA-made product that addresses 2 major pain points.
- Dental disease, which according to a study done by Cornell University affects 80% of dogs over the age of three.
- Destructive chewing, which is the third most common behavioral issue after barking and jumping.
Our flagship product is a line of flavored dog toys that are engineered to clean teeth and address these problems using unique and innovative designs that are safe for your dog to chew on. Bullibone chew toys are made with a proprietary nylon and natural flavoring blend using Chew Scrub Technology(TM) that creates a tough, long-lasting chew toy that can withstand even the most aggressive chewers.
We also observed a growing trend in the pet industry that consumers were moving towards dog toys made in the USA. We decided to make everything locally and this gave us a competitive advantage in an already crowded market.
We do everything ourselves in our facilities in the Midwest so we can maintain strict quality controls on all of our products.
We launched our company in 2016 and we have grown our distribution to over 25,000 retail locations nationwide including Walmart, Albertsons, Dollar General, and Woodmans. We have also seen triple-digit growth on Amazon and Chewy for the last 4 years.
What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?
The ah-ha moment came as I was laying in the hospital bed after the accident. I was not sure if I was going to live or die because I had a bunch of injuries including some internal bleeding that the doctors were freaking out about.
I knew I wanted to find a way to play with dogs all day and I realized that if it was my last day on earth I would have been happy knowing I spent it playing with dogs and making their lives happier and healthier.
I teamed up with a big name in the pet space and we launched a consulting business together. Bullibone was a concept company that I discovered while doing consulting work in the pet industry.
Leebob Willingham brought the concept to me and had already designed the first set of molds for the original Bullibone. He was a manufacturing expert. Since I didn’t know much about manufacturing it was a good fit.
I used all of my savings to launch the business and put myself online. I had to believe in myself and ignore all the people telling me how risky this was.
Next, I had to add another person to the team to make this dream a reality. The right team is important to make the business a success. We built out the team from there and added some great people like our operations manager Mathew Shepardson.
Take us through the process of building the first version of your product.
If you have ever watched a dog try to chew on a bone or a toy you will notice that they have a difficult time gripping whatever they are chewing on. We observed this and designed the Pad Pad Handles so that a dog’s paws will naturally fall into place and prop the toy up.
People are always amazed when their dog understands how to use the Paw Pad Handles within 30 seconds of engaging with the toy. This is a theme throughout most of our products that integrate this unique and innovative feature and made us a top-selling dog toy in Walmart for the past 7 years.
So we had the design and concept dialed in. We had the manufacturing expertise lined up. Next, we needed to build our logistics and inventory processes to be able to fill orders to big retailers like Walmart and Albertsons. This is a daunting task. These retailers do not have patience for brands who are late on shipments or miss them completely.
It was important for us to make sure we had control of our inventory process. We always had to have enough inventory to fill orders but we didn’t want to have too much cash tied up in inventory. We need that cash for other growth opportunities and inventory can eat away at your cash and be stuck on your balance sheet.
We learned early on that shipping rates can vary widely from different shipping companies. We now use a service that gets shipping companies to bid on our shipments and forces them to give us the best terms possible. We always had to make sure our shipments were arriving on time, but high shipping costs eat away at your gross margin quickly.
A business needs to have a mix of short-term, medium-term, and long-term strategies running at the same time.
Describe the process of launching the business.
Launching the business was both exciting and nerve-racking. We had indications that we were going to get a big purchase order from a major retailer, but retailers are never a guarantee until you are holding the purchase order in your hand. By the time you get your purchase order, you don’t have enough time to make all the products because you generally have to ship them within a week or two.
I think it’s important to have fun with your company and let your customers see what your brand stands for.
So we had to buy about $500,000 worth of inventory to be ready for a purchase order that was never guaranteed. At that point, we had a total of about $50,000 in revenue. So this was very stressful and a huge gamble. Luckily the order came through and the company was off to the races.
We also hadn’t built a website or any online presence at that time. We scrambled to create profiles online and put up a website to be visible to retail customers who wanted to research our company. To say this was an intense time is an understatement.
Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?
I think it’s important to have fun with your company and let your customers see what your brand stands for. One way we have done this that has worked well for us is to make fun videos that showcase the product but are also fun to watch.
We have also capitalized on our USA-made brand. There was a growing trend of media outlets looking for stories about small companies making products in the USA and we reached out to all of the media outlets covering this topic.
We were able to get on ABC World News and many other mainstream outlets by using that approach. We even had Snoop Dogg give us a shout-out on social media for being a small USA company.
How are you doing today and what does the future look like?
We are profitable and growing fast. We started in a few hundred retail locations and now we are in over 25,000. We have mainly grown through our retail penetration but over the last 2-3 years we have been growing our direct-to-consumer model through Amazon, Chewy, and our website.
Our short-term goals are to grow our website and start having a way to interact directly with our customers. When you are in retail you don’t get to collect emails or have direct communication with your customers. This will be a big focus of ours over the next 12-18 months.
We still make all of our products in the same facilities we have always used but we are much more efficient now than we were in the early days. Fast growth causes entrepreneurs to adapt quickly and learn on the run.
Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?
I’ve learned that a business needs to have a mix of short-term, medium-term, and long-term strategies running at the same time. It can seem like we need to focus on the things that have an immediate impact on our business right now, and that’s true, but we also need to mix in some medium and long-term strategies that will pay off down the road.
We were not working on SEO or long-term strategies and we were featured on ABC World News. We saw a big immediate spike in traffic and sales, but it only lasted a few days. If we had built a better SEO base we would have had a bigger net to catch all of that interest and stretch the impact out over a longer period.
People were searching for us and they didn’t have many places to find us. We didn’t know we were going to be featured and by the time it happened, we were not able to react because SEO and long-term strategies can take months or even years to build.
What platform/tools do you use for your business?
We run our blog on WordPress and run our e-commerce business on Shopify. We use Google Studio for our inventory management and building out a pretty good dashboard to keep track of everything. We look to Upwork and Fiverr for freelance marketing jobs.
What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?
I like Rockefeller Habits by Verne Harnish. That book teaches you how to run concise meetings and keep everything moving forward according to your set goals.
Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?
Find something you love. Many entrepreneurs go after a business that will make them a lot of money and then try to convince themself that they love the business. There will be some really hard times when you launch a business. If you are not truly passionate about what you do, it will be harder to make it through the tough times.
Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?
We are not currently hiring for any positions but we always love to work with dog lovers who want to be ambassadors for Bullibone.
Where can we go to learn more?
If you have any questions or comments, drop a comment below!
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
