Hold your hounds 🤚!

Before scrolling, we just want to let you know that we put a lot of bark and soul into our newsletter.

We appreciate your time and eyeballs for reading this weekly.

Our only ask of you in return is to forward ↪️ this email to one other dog lover you know!

THIS WEEK'S TOPICS:

• 🚲 Vintage bicycles + your dog

• 🪥 Dental dog toy doing $30K/mo profit

• 🐕💨 The best game of chase

🚲 VINTAGE BICYCLES + YOUR DOG

Nestled in the picturesque and highly affluent coastline of Carmel-By-The-Sea, lies a dog cycling revolution on three wheels, led by Jennifer Blevins and her electric bike shop, Mad Dogs and Englishmen.

Opened in 2018, this all-electric bike store (and only bike shop in Carmel’s 100+ year history) has been finding its way into the hearts of locals and celebrities alike, including the likes of Sophia Bush and the Currys.

Carmel is considered to be one of the most dog-friendly places in California, and thanks to the shop's dog-sized sidecars, humans and pooches can zip up and down the coast as a unit.

They offer both rentals and purchases of their vintage e-bikes & sidecars.

Rentals:

• $129/day

• $69/hr for first hour + $10 for each additional hour

• Sidecar for dogs (or kids) is free

Purchase:

• $6K-$7K for the vintage e-bike

• $2,500 for the custom sidecar

The pandemic, while a ruff patch for many, proved to be a tailwind for the e-bike industry and Mad Dogs.

According to Cycling Industry News, electric bike sales in the U.S. soared by 143% from 2019 to 2020.

Mad Dogs and Englishmen, being the first of its kind in Carmel-by-the-Sea, capitalized on this trend, expanding from its original location to both Santa Barbara and Monterey.

Blevins saw an untapped market in casual cyclists, particularly women who felt unwelcome in traditional bike shops.

By focusing on this niche, she's not only helping to democratize cycling, but also creating a unique business model.

However the shop's signature custom built sidecar is the real big hit.

The business appears to be on a solid trajectory.

Considering the average price of their e-bike ranges from $4,000-$10,000 and the fact that they’re the only shop in one of the most affluent towns in the US, Mad Dogs and Englishmen seem to have a monopoly on the bike front.

On top of that, the temp typically stays between 60s-70s year-round, so there’s virtually never a bad time to take your pup out for a spin!

Killer idea that could easily be replicated in other sunny ☀️ tourist destinations.

🪥 DENTAL DOG TOY DOING $30K/MO PROFIT

Smell that?

No, not talking about your dog’s booty breath…

It’s the aroma of another Dogonomist Business Barkdown, coming in hot.

This week we are looking at an e-commerce site that sells patented and trademarked dental toys for pets.

The posting is anonymous, so we don't know the name, but with some quick sleuthing…

This business is listed for $695,000 and reportedly makes ~$30,000 profit per month on sales.

Let's dive in snout first!

The Numbers 📊

We often cover businesses for sale that are more "fixer uppers" due to low revenue or lack of growth efforts, but at first glance this seems to be a healthy business with a solid profit margin.

Let's dig in a little more first with some additional info on the posting:

• 👀 Page views average about 20k views a month.

• 📧 They have a 75k email list.

• 👥 2 employees (will stay on).

• 9️⃣ An "authority score" (which is a way of ranking a websites trust according to Google) of 9, which is very low.

Here is a 12 month financial breakdown:

Other info 🤔

There is good depth to the posting that contains a lot of info on how the business runs.

They are selling to focus on other projects (which seems to be the most common reason we see on these sites), and claim they spend about an hour a day checking in as their two employees run the show (we typically triple those claims b/c people tend to underestimate their time commitments).

The site is on Shopify, and they work with one warehouse in LA and one supplier in China for drop-shipping.

Most of their traffic and sales comes from ad campaigns and use email/SMS for follow up.

They use Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest as their main channels.

Their biggest concerns with the business are copycat products.

They say that they ignore most, but mention that they have filed DMCA claims to get copycat ads and websites removed.

For growth potential, they point toward more tests with landing pages, improving their email campaigns, and testing other advertising platforms.

The sale includes the site, the email list, the ad campaigns, supplier relationships, and most importantly the patent and trademark.

What we'd do if we ran this thing? 👔

One area we feel confident in is content creation (you are reading some of it right now!), so we'd probably look at a way to engage that list of 75k emails.

Likely a newsletter we could look to grow around dog health.

And then use that as a way to advertise the business so we wouldn’t have to rely solely on ads.

Do we think this is a good idea? 🤨

The overall numbers look good, and the profit margin is healthy for e-commerce, plus having a patent is huge.

But there are a couple things that concern us:

1. Advertising seems to be the only channel used to generate revenue. You can see months of $1k or $4k revenue, and months of $100k revenue. It's not a huge problem, but we're wary of being tied only to ads, because if ads start losing efficiency you don't have a backstop.

2. The fact they mention having to send copyright requests to get copycats ads taken down makes us worry that you'd have to fight this constantly.

The upsides are the fact that it seems they can sell a lot of product when they turn on the ad spend, and that they have patent and trademark protection.

Also, it sounds like the employees would stay onboard to minimize, which would be nice.

So, if we had a decent chunk of change to buy this business and also invest into ads, we might take a crack at this!

🐕💨 THE BEST GAME OF CHASE

It's time again for Purina's annual Pet Care Innovation Prizes (going on 8 years).

And like last year, we will be profiling the winners each week and sharing what makes them cool enough to get $25k from Purina.

First up, we have SwiftPaws, or as they say, the best game of chase your dog will have.

SwiftPaws main product is a "lure course", which allows you to set up a small course made of lines, pulleys, and flags in your house or yard that gives your pup something fast to chase.

You control the small flags that you can send up to 30mph down the lines so that your dog can run after them. In fact, instead of trying to explain it to you, why don't you see it in action!

The Beginning

The company was started in 2012 by Meghan Wolfgram, and at first she only sold to businesses, such as dog trainers, dog daycares, and law enforcement agencies.

She even sold the courses to the San Diego Zoo to use with their cheetahs!

At this time the product cost $2k, but she wanted to create a more affordable at home version for the average owner.

So in 2018 she launched a kickstarter which pulled in $73k to create the first consumer version and also was able to get on Shark Tank.

There she secured a nice $240k for 6% of her business as well as some great marketing attention.

The Products

Swiftpaws offer a few different courses that come with different sizes and speeds.

They range from $300 - $700+, so not a casual purchase, but boy do the dogs looks like they are having fun.

They manufacture all of their courses in the US, and according to Meghan has been steadily ramping up production.

Thoughts?

Sure you can toss the ball around in the backyard for your dog, but what we really like about this is the speed and time you can go for to really give them a good workout.

Great for anyone who has a busier schedule, a dog/breed with a high prey drive, or physically isn't able to give their dog the exercise they need.

This is a cool product, and we can see why Purina handed them one of their top prizes.

DOGGYDEX™

Winner 🏆: S&P 500

Proudly introducing the DoggyDex™, an index comprised of 10 publicly traded companies whose primary focus is the dog/pet industry.

List of tickers used can be found at the very bottom of the newsletter.

The yellow line-plot in the chart represents these companies above (DoggyDex™) and their combined performance against both the S&P 500 and Bitcoin on a weekly basis.

Pawformance is measured by % gains & losses.

• 😭 Dogs just know: An owner shares a story of her dog that passed away in 2018 and that she buried her ashes in her garden bed — eventually got another dog and the new pup will only lay in that exact spot her former dog was buried.

• 🏎️ New Zealand is teaching dogs to drive: An organization in New Zealand came up with the clever idea of teaching overlooked shelter dogs how to drive to show off their canine smarts in hopes of getting them adopted!

• 🏅 Dog accidentally runs half marathon: A bloodhound in Alabama escaped from its’ property and joined a group of racers in a half marathon, placing 7th and earning a medal.

DOGGY B-DAY

• $CHWY - Chewy: E-commerce platform for pet supplies

• $IDXX - Idexx Labs: Vet point of care instruments and vet software

• $FRPT - Fresh Pet: Pet food company

• $PETQ - PetIQ: Pet health products and medicines

• $PETS - PetMeds: Online pet pharmacy

• $ZTS - Zoetis: World's largest producer of meds and vaccines for pets and livestock

• $TRUP - Trupanion: Pet insurance company

• $WOOF - Petco Health & Wellness co.: Pet health & wellness company

• $BARK - BarkBox: Subscription service providing dog products, services, and experiences

• $PET - Wag! Group Co.: Tech platform that allows pet owners to connect with industry professionals for services such as, walking, training, etc.