I’M REALLY EXCITED to introduce you to America’s Coolest Stores — not just the awesome winners of our first contest, which you can find beginning in this issue, but the very concept of Cool Stores itself.
We devised the contest and the regular feature in the back of the magazine not just to make the winning businesses feel good. We did it to get those stores to share the elements that made them successful, so that in telling those businesses’ stories, it inspires others to reach for similar heights — and in many cases gives them specific ways to achieve those aspirations.
We believe in this idea so much that we don’t simply discard the entries that missed our judging panel’s mark. Instead, we go through those entries looking for elements of cool to share elsewhere throughout the magazine. Because every business has ideas to share and that are worth adapting to your own circumstances.
Ideas we saw in our entries ranged from never letting customers carry more that 15-pound bags of food to their cars, to publishing a regular newsletter with pet-ownership advice and tips.
What do these ideas have in common? They’re just better business and just make sense.
And that brings me to another subject — the future of cool, if you will.
In May, I attended the Pet Sustainability Coalition’s conference called Impact Unleashed.
There, I saw the beginnings of a movement within the industry of manufacturers, distributors and retailers who are not just adhering to better business practices that sustain their own businesses, but practices that make the world a better place. They’re trying not to be the best businesses in the world, but rather the best businesses for the world.
That sounds pretty cool to me, and in upcoming issues, we’ll be sharing ways you can brings some of these ideas to your own business as well.
Wishing you the best in business,
Ralf Kircher
Editor-in-Chief, Pets+
ralf@petsplusmag.com