A little secret here. 

We work in the dog ‘food’ industry and know that in theory customer service is important, just as is fostering relationships.  That said, when you go exotic, when you provide exceptional single ingredient dog treats, things can drastically change.

The customer service maxim is only relevant (fiscally speaking) when you don’t have monopolies.  When supply is held by only a few individual companies, you will find that the dog treat wholesale industry becomes similar to any industry that is controlled by a monopoly or duopoly. That is, when choice is removed, prices increase, and customer service plummets.

This is a sad inditement on human nature. That when you don’t have to work hard to gain business, owners base personalities come out. The service becomes minimal and wholesalers can become hostile to their direct customers (retailers).  They adopt the ‘take it or leave’ it motto and literally don’t care about a small players business.

I can tell you this because we have first hand experience of the niche of the niche industries.  For instance, single ingredient fish dog treats, within the single ingredient wholesale dog treat industry.  You will have NO transparency, you will often have no pleasantries, and asking questions at all about quality are often considered a personal attack by the owners. 

WHEN excellent customer service matters in the dog treat wholesale industry

I would like to say, because you should treat people how you would like to be treated, but it seems that isn’t often enough motivation these days in rocky economic conditions.  With the whims of big internet browser companies deciding the fate of millions of small business owners.

It seems that excellent customer service is now the province of the small wholesalers, who are fighting the good fight in tight competition areas.

The pragmatic reason being, that if you can’t compete on price as the major incentive to buy, which you should never do, as it’s a race to the bottom. THEN you have to value add something.  You have to make the retailers life easier.  You have to form relationships so that the wholesaler and retailer like doing business with each other.

We will focus on:

1  customer loyalty 

2  reputation management 

But first, lets define what the industry is: The wholesale dog treats industry includes the production, distribution and sale of various dog treats to retailers, veterinarians, and other businesses.

The growth of the meat-based dog treats wholesale industry has occurred because of:

  • General increased dog ownership – up to 70% of households own a pet (APPA, 2022)., with around 50% in high ownership states having a dog.
  • America is in love with health and longevity for themselves and their dogs. seeking healthy, natural, and high-quality treats for their dogs. This has lead to the rise in single ingredient meat based FUNCTIONAL dog treats.

Building Customer Loyalty

Obviously, price of treats is important.  Can a retailer make a decent mark up, with what they buy the treats from the wholesaler for, and still get plenty of sales.  But assuming that price isn’t the only issue, it often comes down to trust and relationship building between wholesaler and retailer.

When a retailer is valued and understood, they are more likely to be loyal to a particular wholesaler. They know that if they have a tight deadline or there is an issue with the treats, that the wholesaler will help solve the issue, not be a roadblock or another problem.

Along these lines a ‘Customer Experience Report’ found that “businesses with strong customer loyalty see a 5% to 10% increase in revenue” (Zendesk, 2021). This might not seem like a huge boost.  But considering that many of a wholesaler costs are fixed costs (warehousing, and machinery) – any boost in sales can be a big driver of profit.

Repeat Business

It seems obvious that a satisfied customer is more likely to buy from a wholesaler again, to become a ‘repeat purchaser’. 

Since when a retailer gets a source that has a good product at a right price, they too are loathe to have to start auditioning other wholesalers once they have found someone suitable. 

And the whole method of growth for any company is based on a stable income stream (from repeat customers) and NEW customers that can be added to that stream. If you are losing long term customers as fast as you are gaining new customers, you will have a high overhead of customer acquisition and not actually grow.

One of the hardest parts of the wholesale dog treat business is to understand retailer (customer) motivations to stay with them, and be able to perform these adequately without committing too many resources to the process, so you still have time and money to acquire new customers.

Well, that is what the smaller dog treat wholesalers concentrate on.

Notice in this article we have rarely mentioned the actual product, which in this case is healthy, natural dog treats. This is because each retailer will have made its mind up about what segment of dog treats they want to be in. Do they choose healthy natural single ingredient, or preservative filled mostly grain based treats? This article is all about what happens after you have chosen your market segment.

One maxim for customer retention in the retail sector (including ecommerce) is that acquisition costs eight times as much as to retain a customer.  This has been updated in a study that says “ it costs five times more to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one (Loyalty Research Center, 2022).  

Reputation Management

Word of Mouth and Online Reviews

It seems that positive user reviews are still king. 

But it cuts both ways. Positive customer experiences and review can lead to extra sales. Negative experiences and reviews can damage a company’s reputation and sales. There is big business in handling the process of acquiring real customer reviews, as well as unscrupulous companies using fake customers to improve their Google reviews. 

Recent Research says 87% of consumers read online reviews for local businesses, with 79% trusting online reviews as much as personal recommendations (BrightLocal, 2022).

CONCLUSION

If you think dog treat wholesaling is all about price and buying from the biggest company there is, then you will soon find out that your needs and opinions don’t matter that much to them.

If sales were all about price, then that is the only company that everyone would deal with.

The bigger the company, the more moving parts, and customer satisfaction is the first thing to break.

You will also find that MOQ will be massive, and you will be buying the same brand that everyone else buys, so your margins will plummet.

There are almost infinite reasons NOT to choose the biggest, and the main reason, is that they are usually far from the best dog treat wholesaler you will find.