An ambitious target: 60 stores by 2005

The first Pet’s Family outlet to be launched, the store in Ede opened by Luc Vlaardingerbroek and his wife, is just under 90 m² in size. It had a six-month “test run” before the next store opened in Utrecht. A further four stores followed in the same year. Omaha b.v. had been established two years previously by Olaf Siemens and Hans Versnel, who put a lot of work into the Pet’s Family concept. Nothing was left to chance: “We have committed a lot of effort and private finance to the concept,” said Hans Versnel. New Pet’s Family outlets are now opening in quick succession, almost monthly, and with growth of almost nine per cent, the business is well ahead of the general trend in the Dutch retail trade, where growth is running at just under four per cent. “Every one of our stores is doing well,” says Hans Versnel. “There are no poor performers.”
The 750 m² garden centre in Ochten is a pilot project. In addition to a large pet department (up), tools, machinery, fertilizers and care products for the garden are offered on two floors. The different ranges are identified by colours: green for the garden and blue for pet requisites.
Everything comes together at the head office in Tiel, where a 600 m² warehouse is also located: all the stores are linked to one another constantly by an Internet line. Orders, invoicing and the entire goods management system are organized on a purely digital basis, with individual outlets being supplied directly by the respective manufacturer. Only a small portion of the stock passes through the warehouse in Tiel, mainly “Acana” food, which the company imports itself from Canada. The Pet’s Family concept provides for a standard basic range that currently comprises around 2 500 products. Each franchisee can put together the combination that suits him best from this range, depending on his specialist knowledge and of course on local customer demand. Weekly newspaper advertising is a matter of course for Pet’s Family, which has now printed a small catalogue for the first time, with a run of 80 000 copies.
The 87 m² store in Ede was the first Pet’s Family outlet and is still run by Luc Vlaardingerbroek and his wife.
The fifteen current Pet’s Family outlets have an average retail area of 100 to 150 m². The store in Geldermalsen (no. 4) is the smallest at 85 m² and the Wervershoof outlet (no. 11) the largest at 320 m². Cats and rodents are the fastest growing segments in all stores, while the dog segment is static and the bird segment is in…