Small business goes to the dogs

Posted August 4th, 2006 at 2:24 pm by Jenny Cu, Yahoo! Merchant Solutions

 10 Comments / Filed in: Our Users

All you lazy cats out there — take heed! Today is Work Like a Dog Day, a national tribute to small-businesses owners for the grueling hours they put in being their own boss. In honor of this occasion, I thought we should go talk to a few of our Yahoo! Store merchants who decided to stop working for the man in order to pamper man’s best friend. That’s right — they sell everything from dog collars and muzzles to bone-shaped toy boxes, dog house area rugs, puppy announcements, even canine boots! I asked them just what it takes to put food in their bowls.

Jill Gizzio, owner of Dogtoys.com in West Chester, Pennsylvania, was one of Yahoo! Store’s earliest customers when the service launched in 1998. Now, semi-retired with eight employees, Jill was inspired to start her business after getting a dog for her 40th birthday. “Brownie was the craziest thing on four feet. As a puppy, everything in her sight was a toy, including — I hate to admit this — a toilet brush she ran through the whole house with.” A friend advised her to keep a full supply of toys on hand at all times, which quickly got expensive. One night, watching Brownie annihilate yet another teddy bear, Jill went online, registered the domain, and the rest is history. Dogtoys.com celebrates its 10th anniversary in November.

• Company alpha dog: Brownie, 9, a Jack Russell Terrier who’s a crazy swimmer with a great vocabulary. Jill has to spell out the words “swimming pool” whenever Brownie’s in earshot. “If she hears me, she’s out the door and into the kiddie pool.” While Brownie doesn’t have the upper paw (“She gets time-outs when she’s not behaving.”), she has to have the last say (“She always barks one last time.”).
• Hours worked a day: “In the first eight years, I worked 16 years’ worth. Eighty-hour weeks. You could be up at 11:30 on a Thursday night answering customer email, building new product into your site, etc.”
• Scariest thing about being her own boss: “The heartbreak of failure. Losing a company is like losing a lover. You give your life for it and you’re just as surprised when things don’t work out. You think, ‘But we were really happy!’”
• Best selling products: Pet blinkers, Greenies (treats), and Talking Chimp dolls.
• Most extravagant product: Walk ‘N Roll Pet Stroller

Jeannie Morris runs Morrco.com from Mansfield, Louisiana (“the boonies,” as she describes it), with her husband and daughter-in-law. Jeannie’s been a Yahoo! Store merchant since 1999 when she came across a Yahoo! ad to “build your own web site” and took the leap. She’s had about 15 dogs in her 49 years, so going the dog-supplies route was only natural. Her online-only business hit nary a speed bump during the dot.com bust. In fact, her husband had to build a warehouse behind their house to accommodate their inventory of about 8,000 products.

• Company alpha dog: Patches, 3, a “hyper” Australian Shepherd whose quirks include chasing lightning around the yard, thinking she can catch it.
• Hours worked a day: 10 now, but more like 15-18 in the early days.
• Hours she’d work to avoid working for someone else: 80 hours a week or more!
• Best selling product: Rhinestone dog collars, for small dogs. She says owners of diminutive dogs want them to look good all the time.
• Most extravagant thing she sells: Pink spiked harnesses for big dogs. Apparently a Rottweiler’s gotta look sassy when it growls.

Casey Whitcher and his wife Cynthia run GlamourDog.com from Frisco, Texas, with just two other employees. Their business targets people who spoil their pups with haute couture and accessories. Casey took the entrepreneurial plunge in 2003 after an amusing incident. You see, Casey proposed to Cynthia by giving her a toy Maltese puppy named Chanel with “Will you marry me?” engraved on her tag. But he thought Cynthia was nuts when she insisted on buying a $400 Italian leather carrier for her precious cargo. When Casey realized other dog owners actually indulged in such things, he saw a business opportunity and quit his day job as a web designer. You could say Cynthia got her way. As Casey explains, “We get the product in and everyone oohs and aahs over it. I gave up my manhood years ago.”

• Company alpha dog: Chanel, 5, a “spunky princess” who has her owners trained with commands like “Feed me,” “Let me out,” and “Play with me.” Her quirks include jumping into the closest open gym bag when she hears car keys.
• Scariest thing about being his own boss: Not having a set income and knowing that he has to live with the consequences of wrong decisions.
• Most fulfilling thing about being his own boss: Not having anyone tell him what to do.
• What would he have done differently: “We kind of winged it in the beginning. I wish I’d taken more time to learn the back end of running a business. You’re every function of a big company — CEO, accounting, HR, marketing, CFO, tech support, design, janitor — and it was hard to get up to speed on all that.”

Photo courtesy of Stewart Butterfield

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10 Comments Add your own

Guillaumeb | August 4th, 2006 at 4:37 pm

I think Yahoo! should add a way to become affiliate easily with a Yahoo! Store. This is something I would be likely to do.
Let me give you one or two keywords, search your stores and give me the store that accept affiliations. Then let me choose the store i’d like to be affiliated with, send them a notification and place yourself as the interlocutor between the two sides.
This could be valuable service for your the merchants using Yahoo! Store as it would open their business and this would also help me!
Going a little further the merchants could as well choose certain affiliate criteria to filter the notifications you send them.
You could as well create a special affiliate service at Yahoo! Stores.

Kyle Korleski | August 5th, 2006 at 11:13 am

I think that Yahoo! should open up it’s Wallet to business owners. An API would be really nice for the Wallet programme.

Nicki | August 5th, 2006 at 12:28 pm

Thanks for the idea, Guillaume. We love to get feedback like this and will pass this on to the Small Business product team.

Joe Hunkins | August 7th, 2006 at 9:14 am

Dos Pesos looks scary…Caterina’s got to have a better shot of him than that!

GlassBirds | August 7th, 2006 at 1:21 pm

Great article. We certainly can appreciate all the hard work that goes into running a small business. Our Yahoo! Store is a little different though – it’s for the ‘birds’. :)

Helen Price | August 20th, 2006 at 11:31 pm

I love all those cuty things for pets. I myself have a cat and two dogs at home and do my best to tog them up to the latest fashion.

Todd Lloyd | February 11th, 2007 at 1:34 pm

I am wondering if Yahoo has decided to open an api. The initial comment was made well into last summer, August 06.

Please give it some consideration.

Kindly,
Todd

Lea Go | April 4th, 2007 at 10:36 am

Greetings,

As what i read on this posted article, i found out the informativeness of this
kind of topic. For that reason i opened up an idea and some knowledge in this
field. well, you made just did a great job..more power!

sincerely,
Lea Go
Pet Strollers

pet strollers | May 7th, 2008 at 7:01 pm

Nice article! I will be saving this page to my favorites for sure. I just visited a site with tips and products on pet strollersl! If nothing else it’s a great read. Check it out if you have time. Thanks.

Laurie Ann | March 2nd, 2010 at 7:22 am

Happy Birthday Yahoo, you don’t look a day over 10!!!
Does time fly or what…..
I own a small business and have been struggling for the last year, it is amazing to me to see the articles on federal assistance and yet when I’ve tried to get it, I can’t because I have a retirement account….hmmm, what is wrong with this system, I guess I should let social security take care of me when I retire? Oh yea….it won’t be there….
Laurie