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THIS WEEK'S TOPICS:

• 🖲️ $20 smart device orders your dog food when it’s low

• 🦽 The Mercedes-Benz of doggy wheel chairs

• 🐕‍🦺 $70k in profit connecting dog owners with walkers

🖲️ $20 SMART DEVICE ORDERS YOUR DOG FOOD WHEN IT’S LOW

As a dedicated, yet busy, pawrent, you've surely faced the moment of dread when it’s dinner time and you suddenly realize you don’t have enough dog food for your pooch.

No one wants to be caught in a late-night scramble for pet food.

Enter the product you’ve probably never heard of, the Amazon Dash Smart Shelf, a product solution that stealthily launched in the midst of COVID.

This device has the potential to change the way you manage your dog food supply, ensuring that your pup never has to skip a meal.

Imagine a gadget that uses weight to determine when you're running low on dog food.

When your supply lightens past a certain threshold (that you set), the Dash Smart Shelf places an order for more. It's a convenient system that learns from your reordering habits over time, even beginning to anticipate your dog’s needs.

The smart shelf is a sleek, black plastic scale available in three sizes, and is priced at $20 across the board. It's an affordable investment for those that feed their dogs kibble or canned food, and love automation!

According to Reddit, one dog owner has used the shelf as a “hack” to know when their dog’s water bowl is running low during the summer heat. So they’re not exactly “ordering” more water in this case, but it will send them a message notifying them that it’s low.

Kinda neat, we suppose?

Still, the Dash Smart Shelf isn't perfect.

For example, there's only a 24-hour window to cancel or change an order once placed. Despite this, the device is continually improving, with Amazon actively working on enhancing the user experience.

Yes, the concept of a shelf that invisibly reorders products might seem a bit futuristic or superfluous. But it's also a practical solution for busy dog owners who want a seamless way to manage their canine’s meals.

After all, having a consistent supply of dog food is one less thing to worry about in your hectic schedule.

This product would probably be much more impactful on a platform like Chewy!

🦽 THE MERCEDES-BENZ OF DOGGY WHEELCHAIRS

Mercedes-Benz literally made a custom wheelchair for a special pup in need!

A dog rescuer had a light bulb moment and decided to approach Mercedes-Benz with a unique proposition.

They asked for a custom-designed wheelchair for a resilient rescue dog named Bunny.

And voila!

The delightful pup received her own set of wheels, specially crafted by the car giant, helping her roll around town with newfound joy.

This heartwarming tale started rolling on Instagram, where a man named Henry Friedman posted a touching video of Bunny, a dog abandoned by her owners after a tragic accident robbed her of her hind legs.

The video captured hearts worldwide, and one comment stood out: “This dog deserves the Mercedes-Benz of wheelchairs”.

Inspired, Friedman took a chance and reached out to Mercedes-Benz with Bunny’s story, and they fell in love with the idea, promptly gifting Bunny with a brand new, custom-made wheelchair.

But the tale doesn't end there. Bunny's first ride in her shiny new wheelchair was captured in a follow-up video.

"BUNNY’S BENZ!!" Friedman wrote, "And it’s SO much more than just a badass wheelchair. These wheels will open Bunny’s world significantly and make her much more adoptable!"

The video shows Bunny, tail wagging, arriving to a warm welcome at the Mercedes-Benz store. She was fitted with her new device and can be seen happily cruising around.

What an incredible story and act of kindness by Mercedes❣️

🐕‍🦺 $70K IN PROFIT CONNECTING DOG OWNERS WITH WALKERS

You guessed it, it's time for another Business Barkdown!

This week, we came across a services marketplace for sale online.

The business is called Digypet, and it's listed for only $50k with $70k in profit over the last 12 months.

Digypet positions itself as "A community for pet lovers of all shapes, sizes, stripes, and spots". Basically what they do is connect pet owners with service providers (walkers, groomers, sitters, etc) and charge the service providers a monthly or yearly subscription to use their tools and get business.

The have a website and mobile app (though as of now, the mobile app doesn't appear in the app store).

The Numbers

• Last 12 month margins: 64%

• Last month's margin: 67%

• Earnings multiple: (how much more the asking price is than the earnings / profit) = 1.4x

• Subscription price: $20/mo

• Customers: they list between 100-1,000

• Reviews: 4.7 ⭐️ Facebook reviews

• Top acquisition channel: Direct traffic and organic search makes up roughly 95% of traffic

• Standout Attribute: High margins, and currently appears to be little to no paid marketing for owner traffic

• Business model: Software subscription. Charges service providers a monthly fee to use their tools and get access to new customers

• Team size: 4 people

• Reason for selling: It's not clear

What we'd want to consider

First off, what happened in July 2022 that caused traffic and customers to go off a cliff?

They mention that they scaled back on marketing upon "realizing the importance of providing added value to our subscribers through an app". 

To us that means they were experiencing high churn, or customers who were cancelling. So what has been done to fix that?

Second, they have a team of 4. What is each person's role?

If we are buying a company we want to know what roles we'd either need to do ourselves, hire for, or try to retain (and the cost of those salaries).

Their profile doesn't show any paid marketing acquisition, so how did they initially drive traffic? Was there a content marketing strategy in place that worked well?

While paid marketing is great, if you can drive new customers just from content, that is a gift that keeps on giving.

What we'd do if we ran this thing

A common model for a marketplace like this is you either charge the service providers per owner you connect them with, OR take a cut of any services booked through the site.

We'd want to see if one of those models would provide better revenue than selling a subscription to the service providers.

We'd also want to explore some of our standard thoughts, such as looking at paid marketing channels (potentially Tik Tok or Instagram), how they try to convert interested owners or providers, and any complementary products that we could offer.

Do we think this is a good idea?

Not for us. ⛔

Not to say it isn't a good business, but one thing that stands out is that they are competing against some pretty big players like Wag and Rover who spend a TON of money on SEO to show up in Google Search.

Those companies have deep pockets and have already established a big foothold in the market. We prefer to go into spaces that we see as underserved.

Additionally their subscription fees are low ($20/mo).

This means you wouldn't be able to support a sales team to help with growth, and you would rely on acquiring new customers through marketing (when we say "customers" we mean the providers, and you'd still need to acquire owners as well).

In general, marketplaces are HARD.

You need enough of each side (owner and provider) so that everyone can find what they are looking for. This means you need a lot of people on the marketplace (think eBay or Doordash).

KIBBLE BITS:

Every week we love to shoutout a pooch that has made another trip around the sun.

Happy 3rd birthday 🎂 to Winnifred! Nothing really can compare to dogs and ice cream🍦

That's all there is to bark about this week.

If you want more, be sure to follow our Twitter (@dogonomist).