The Bird Shoppe
Fairfield, Ohio
Anne Crone, owner

How’s business?

It’s slow, but steady. It’s down from last year, but we haven’t had any big surges one way or the other.

What’s new?

[There’s] nothing new right now. We will in the spring, when the babies come in.

Probably about 12 or 15 [new birds will come in]. These are the bigger birds. We’ll probably have about 30 of the smaller ones.

What is your best-selling livestock?

African grey parrots [are the best-selling livestock]…because of their ability to talk and because they’re very low maintenance. --KI

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Palm Beach Puppies
Palm Beach County, Fla.
Ryan Garson, President

How’s business?

Things are going really good. We merged with a groomer about a year ago. Her sales were a little bit down. The recession hit her hard. She wanted to cut her costs so she moved into my store. I’ve tripled her clientele because with every puppy I sell, they usually come back and become a grooming client, which is really great for all the accessories. They come in, they get their dog groomed, they buy food, treats, a collar…so the partnership has brought in a lot of traffic to the store. I think a lot of groomers should be partnering up with pet stores so everyone can be cutting costs and doing well together.

To what do you owe your stores’ success?

The key to my whole business—and I would go out of business if I didn’t have this—is my website. What separates my website from others is that I have videos of all the puppies, so people can really get that up close and personal feeling with all the puppies. That’s what I’m known for. People love my videos. I’m on Facebook and Twitter and MySpace and I post all the videos there, so I have a following of people every week, waiting to see the new videos.

What’s the most sought-after product in the high-end category?

I get that question a lot and I would say T-shirts. The funny T-shirts do well. During the winter, the sweaters do really well. I do a lot with purses.

I like Kwigy-bo. They’re one of my favorite designers. Chrome Bones is really good. I do Pinkaholic [New York]. People don’t want to spend more than $200 on a purse. They like to be in that mid $100 range. I don’t really do a lot with bowls but I do have a really good bowl company called Unleashed Life that sells such elegant bowls that people will buy these bowls on special occasions, just to do something nice for their dogs. It’s kind of a once-every-few-years kind of thing. I do sell a lot of harnesses. Cloak and Dawggie sells really well.

What’s your bestselling breed?

I do really well with the designer breeds but the Maltese and Yorkies are probably the most popular. Bulldogs are also really popular.

What’s your most popular designer breed?

Anything with the “poo.” Maltipoo. Shih Poo. Yorki Poo.  --JMB

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Animal Spirit
Cambridge, Mass.
Susan Southwick and Melissa Warren, Owners

How’s business going?

Good. I don’t know about any new trends. The last year, year and a half, it’s been fluctuating. It’s nothing we can predict. We’ve been here for 11 years. We’ll ride it out.

Business could be better. We do a lot of holistic and organic foods. Mostly we just have a really loyal core group of customers. We’ve haven’t got a lot of new customers, but I expect that will change soon.

A lot of our customers are laid off right now.

What’s new?

We picked up Taste of the Wild recently. Usually we do new stuff before Christmas. We haven’t introduced anything new since then. 

We mostly do organic foods and holistic products.

Do you sell livestock?

No pets. We do cat boarding, though.  --EM