On Tuesday, we sent the PETS+ Brain Squad a survey on how COVID-19 has affected their businesses. So far, 67 owners and managers have responded, and 55 percent say they’ve seen a spike in revenues.
Those reporting a significant increase in sales are pet supply stores at their core, and they point to online ordering, curbside pickup and/or delivery — whether they have increased promotion of, expanded or offered for the first time these services — as major contributors.
“We can’t keep up with online orders,” Nancy Guinn of Dog Krazy in Virginia says, adding: “We extended our delivery area to 30 miles of every store.”
Some businesses have limited the number of customers allowed inside at a time, while others have closed to in-store shopping altogether. They are still seeing spikes.
“The last four days have had record sales totals,” reports Jodi Etienne of Razzle Dazzle Doggie Bow-tique in Bradley, IL. She currently only offers curbside pickup and delivery. “Monday alone was four times the normal sales tally.”
Unfortunately, day cares, boarding facilities and pet sitters are not faring as well. They responded to the question “What has been the impact of the coronavirus outbreak on your revenues so far?” with “They’ve dropped noticeably” and “They’ve cratered.”
Myra Tsung responded with the latter and said: “As a boarding facility, we would normally be starting to ramp up to summer levels of business at this time, between college and public school spring breaks. As of today, our business is down at least 60 percent over this time last year.
“Right now, most of our spring break crowd has not canceled, but we feel that much of that will likely be canceled in the next two to three weeks.
“We have only had one new call for boarding in the past week, and it is merely an overnight due to maintenance at the owner’s house. We are normally at about 80 to 90 percent capacity, even 100 percent on weekends at this time, and are at about 20 to 25 percent right now, with those numbers continuing to fall as pets check out who were here before the real crisis started.”
Stay tuned for more results from the survey. Join the PETS+ Brain Squad to take part in surveys. To hear more from your independent pet business peers, join our Facebook Community.