Lola & Rocky Dog Boutique
New York City
Jaclyn Dietl, owner

How’s business?

It’s really picked up in the past three months. Things were pretty slow in the past few months, but I’d say in about mid-August it picked up.

Are you doing anything new?

Right now, we’re an online boutique. We launched LolaAndRocky.com in November of 2007 and have mostly always sold smaller items, but that seems to be changing now. For most of this year, it has been very, very, very slow. But now we’re starting to sell more expensive items.

We’re selling more carriers and beds, whereas we use to just sell mostly T-shirts and stuff like that. We carry some expensive beds that are like for people but are made for dogs, and I’ve actually just sold two. I’d had them since I started the company.

I’m assuming the economy’s just doing better all-around right now than it had been. But I also did a search engine optimization, and I think it’s paying off. We’re coming up in searches a bit more than we used to. When I first bought our inventory, I planned on opening a physical boutique. But then when the economy wasn’t doing well, I decided to first start as an online store. But I eventually do want to open a physical store.

Once I open the physical store, I plan on doing a lot more advertising. Right now, advertising only helps for certain seasons, I’ve noticed. Like Halloween is good for advertising the dog costumes. But Christmas advertising is not so good. I think it has to be very targeted.  --LH

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Land of Paws
Overland Park, Kan.
Kristen Lewis, manager

How’s business?

It’s good. We’re having to watch our inventory a little bit. Instead of ordering a lot of holiday items, we’re ordering more everyday items.
We had a great October. Sales were great. We did a Halloween Pet Parade. We pumped up events to keep people coming in .We also do holiday pet pictures. We do that this month and next month. I think that helps keep the traffic coming in. We’re anticipating, hopefully, a good November as well.

What’s new?

This year we’re really focusing on our displays a lot and merchandising techniques. We felt that if we really amped up on that, it would bring people in. Just really make the store look it’s best for the holiday season.  --KI

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Diamonds in the Ruff Pet Salon
Irvine, Calif.
Michele Curtis, Head Groomer

How’s business?

Business has slowed down a little bit but we’re still pretty busy. A lot of people have lost their jobs so they don’t come in as much, and a lot are trying to groom their dogs themselves. Still, we get a lot of referrals from the veterinarian [same ownership] next door and we give them a lot of referrals too.

Do you sell pet products?

We have some clothes that have been here for years but mostly we just offer the grooming service now. We used to sell charms but the client who made them moved away and then just stopped making them altogether. They sold really well at one time. We might eventually start selling products again. We have a new owner now and he’s trying to figure everything out.

How do you get the word out?

Mostly by word of mouth. But our new owner set up a website so a lot of people find us on the Internet now. We haven’t gotten into Twitter or Facebook yet.  --JMB