YOU’VE DETERMINED that you’re eligible, made note of your login email address and password (and put them in a place they won’t get lost), appointed someone to take the lead on your contest entry, and scheduled time to work on it. At this point, you’re ready to start.
Those Checkboxes Up Top
When you start. your entry, there are three checkboxes at the top of the page that we need you to … well, check … before continuing with your entry.
The first checkbox is to confirm that you meet eligibility requirements.
The second checkbox is to confirm that you understand that all winners of the contest are required to give an interview to PETS+ writers for a feature story in the magazine.
The third checkbox is to confirm that you will judge the New Product Showcase at SUPERZOO 2024. All judging takes place online in August.
The fourth checkbox asks if you’d like to have editors review your entry before judging begins and provide advice on ways in which you can improve it. We offer this option to increase the overall quality of entries and to help businesses differentiate themselves. To take advantage, you must submit your entry by our early-bird April 1 deadline. Finish your entry, click “Submit,” and our editors will get back to you with ideas on how you might improve your entry. For some businesses, this might be better or different photography, or more examples of marketing, or a different approach to your text entry. For some businesses, we might not have any advice at all. Please remember that if you submit your entry after April 1, you won’t be able to take advantage of this option.
Applicant Information
This information required in this section is pretty straightforward. One potentially tricky bit: It’s possible that your contact email will be different from your login email.
For example, maybe you, the owner, signed in initially using your email address as the login. But now you’ve handed the job off to an employee who has their own email.
The contact email is exactly what it sounds like: the email address we’ll use to get in touch with the designated contact for your entry. So the contact email should be that of whomever is handling the entry. If it’s the same as the login email, that’s fine. If it’s different, just remember that so you’re not confused later about which address to use to log in. (That would be the log-in email.)
You can skip the “Online Presence” section for the moment; we’ll cover it later. (You can save and move forward in the entry without completing required fields. You just can’t submit without completing required fields.) For now, let’s talk about “Business Stats.”
Again, pretty straightforward. Questions include your number of full and part-time employees, your total square footage (if applicable), top brands and/or services, and buildout cost (if you don’t have the exact numbers for any of these, just give us the closest estimate you can provide).
Finally, we ask for to the people who helped you build your dream business — the architect and design firms (if applicable).
Next up: “You Gotta Stand Out From the Crowd,” which covers how to do exactly that.