Signs of the Times
Sunday April 13th 2008, 6:51 pm
Filed under: notes
Filed under: notes
Yesterday I attended the Orange County Family Pet Expo by myself, which I consider a friendship failure on all counts, though friends were out of town for Passover and baby showers and some had taxes and some had no excuse at all. Ahem. In any case, my business partner and I are investigating starting a business to sell healthy pet gift baskets, and this is the largest consumer pet fair in the country, so it seemed important to attend.
Highlights:
- It was 93 degrees outside, and finding shade was a competitive sport. I wished I had a hat.
- While on the phone with my business partner and sitting under a tree in the rare shade, a man let his monitor lizard attempt to mount my arm. I did not scream, and this was only because I thought the lizard was fake because it was so big. It was not fake. After a long moment of staring at the lizard, I slowly stood up and backed away.
- Gibson, the world’s largest great dane, comes up past my chest. I’m 5′10”.
- I generally think I’m into my dog, but oh my there were people there wearing dog glitterati t-shirts, dog jewelry, selling dog harem beds, dog lounge chairs, and all sorts of cubic zirconia collars. Also, there were dogs with belted trousers on. That’s really enough to make me stop, stare, and wonder if I’m having a heat-induced delusion.
- There were no products marketed as “green” or “planet-healthy” or “organic” and hardly any marketed as “healthy,” which raises some interesting questions: Are people uninterested in healthy products for pets? Is this really a mostly unidentified niche? Was it too expensive for the smaller green vendors we know to attend? Do we need to focus more on eco-types of trade fairs rather than pet expos? Are healthy products simply too expensive in this economic climate? There were also no gift baskets. Hmm. We know that these products do exist, so where were they?
- There were hardly any free samples. Talk about a sign of the economy. Samples cost $.50 or more.
- No one was buying anything. There were tons and tons of people, but as I retreated to my car, I noticed that no one in the parking lot seemed to have bought anything.
Wow; that’s surprising about the lack of green, organic, healthy pet products. But I would expect to see that kind of thing more at an eco-concerned fair of some type, than at a general pet place. It’s definitely a sub-market, and there’s probably a higher percentage of eco folks who are pet owners, than pet owners who are eco.
Comment by h sofia 04.13.08 @ 9:39 pmI wonder if the lack of eco-products reflects more of Orange County than the market. Or not. It was all sort of surprising to me given the number of people we’ve found who sell eco-friendly products.
Comment by Ms. Theologian 04.14.08 @ 7:58 amI’d be willing to be it’s at least partly due to where you live. Up here in Oregon (admittedly know for it’s greenness) we have a local pet store called Nature’s Pet (www.naturespetoregon.com/about.html) that focuses on healthy, organic pet foods with no fillers. They have lots of specialty products for pets that emphasize natural, eco-friendly materials. They would probably be a great place to sell your pet baskets!
Comment by Sharon Hurlbut 04.14.08 @ 8:11 amPerhaps I need to find a green festival in Oregon.
That store looks great!
Comment by Ms. Theologian 04.14.08 @ 9:28 amI live in a suburb of Portland (not even in Oregon), and there’s a natural foods pet store within a few miles of my house. It’s hard sometimes to remember that this part of the country isn’t really normal.
Seattle just had its annual Green Festival (greenfestivals.org). There will be one in SF this November. I think Seattle’s is the largest.
What about Saturday market type venues?
Comment by h sofia 04.14.08 @ 10:27 amI think the primary way to sell the “baskets” will be on-line through an e-commerce site, but then we’re also trying to build relationships with boutique type stores.
A couple of friends have tried selling at Saturday markets, but it ends up being a lot of time for not a lot of sales (at least for them)….probably depends on the product.
Comment by Ms. Theologian 04.14.08 @ 11:27 amYeah, speaking from a transplant POV… You west coasters are on your own with the green stuff. East Coast pays lip service to it but it’s not huge.
http://www.environmentalleader.com/2007/12/04/is-the-green-consumer-trend-over/
http://www.rethinkwhatspossible.com/?p=62
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07017/754244-314.stm
Yes, all of the above quote the same guy. Let’s just pretend he has no connection to my professional life, shall we?
I think my point of all those articles was that no one really knows what’s going on with organic/green. Also, perhaps you will want to target kids?
Comment by GhostGirl 04.14.08 @ 2:33 pmYeah; that’s a common complaint about weekend markets … I’d forgotten about that. Don’t forget Etsy!
It would be nice if you could get into some kind of general catalog of pet stuff ….
Comment by h sofia 04.14.08 @ 3:01 pmThat article on the kid stuff, GhostGirl, is part of what makes us think there’s a bigger market with organic/healthy/green pet stuff. There’s a lot of people who treat their non-human animals as children (us included), but in the marketing material, we’ve been trying to stay away from saying “green” and going with “healthy”, which seems easier to relate to
Comment by Ms. Theologian 04.14.08 @ 4:04 pmLeave a comment
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