Awards for Rolf Boffa and Mars Petcare Germany

The PET Personality of the Year award, which has been given by the international trade magazine PET worldwide since 2006, is given to persons in the pet sector who stand out on account of their work and their novel, unconventional business ideas. Previous winners of the award are Ard Malenstein (IJsvogel Group), Torsten Toeller (Fressnapf), Roland Böhme (JBL) and Steven Charman (Pets Corner).
This year the prestigious award went to Rolf Boffa, the founder, proprietor and managing director of the Swiss pet store chain Qualipet AG. The family firm and undisputed number one in the Swiss pet supplies trade has been in existence for over 30 years. Rolf Boffa started out in 1979 with a publishing house that specialised in pet-related publications. A mail order business for pet products was established on the back of this. Now the Qualipet group of companies operates nearly 90 pet stores throughout Switzerland and has an annual turnover of CHF165 mio. Together with the media enterprise Ringier, the group has established an e-commerce company, which operates an online shop among other things. Qualipet AG also has an office in Hong Kong.

"An example of operational excellence""
In spite of growing competition in the Swiss pet supplies market and increasing price erosion, Rolf Boffa has succeeded in not only maintaining his company's leading market position, but in steadily consolidating it," stated Ralf Majer-Abele, managing editor of the trade magazines pet and PET worldwide, at the International Pet Conference. He believes that Qualipet's high level of flexibility and adaptability to the demands of the market are one reason for the company's success.
When he opened a pet store with a retail area of more than 2 000 m2 in Dietlikon back in the 1990s, the entrepreneur created a stir not just in Switzerland, but in Europe as a whole, where pet stores on this scale were still virtually unknown. Right from the outset the company attached great importance to keeping pets in the most species-appropriate conditions possible in the stores. Qualipet doesn't just sell pets; it also has its own company for breeding reptiles. To set itself apart from the competition in quality terms, the company invests heavily in creating themed shop fittings that include large, visually striking pet…