Managing our lineup of products is an important job, and one I take most seriously . Recently, I have had to face some tough decisions. I had a few comments related to these choices, so I wanted to take a chance to answer these excellent questions.
Two products in particular fell under scrutiny last month; Timberwolf and Canidae.
It is well known that Timberwolf issued a recall in June. We began getting reports from our customers near the end of April about the trouble some pets were experiencing. We contacted Timberwolf about our concerns, but action on their part was slow, and my apprehension was building. By mid May, well before the official recall, I had already pulled the two flavors listed in the recall. When the official recall notice did go out on June 3rd, it didn’t jibe with what I was seeing, so I decided to pull the rest of the line from our shelves.
This was not an easy decision, but to us it is more important to remain your trusted advisor in pet wellness and safety. Timberwolf was one of our best selling products, but we saw the issue developing and decided in the best interest of the pets. I could not, in good conscience, continue to offer these products. Pulling Timberwolf left a big hole in our inventory which eventually led to runs on our other inventory.
In the broader sense, this is a good illustration of value in our holistic approach. 
We watch and listen all the time, taking the time to confer with those that visit us and continue to research every manufacturer. When strange things pop up, we dig and dig until we get to the absolute bottom of the issue. We do not blindly accept the marketing jibber-jabber of even our favorite producers. These values are what enabled us to be out ahead of the rest of the industry in this particular case, and I am proud that we were.
Before I opened the store, I spent a long time considering just what products would be worthy of your consideration. I eliminated quite a few products that, while very popular in the marketplace, didn’t stand up to our scrutiny. These standards are constantly upheld, and when a manufacturer chooses to change their formula, we will always reopen the book on those products and judge the new formulation without any other prejudice. Spiffs, perks and profit margins are of secondary importance to me. Some products will fall by the wayside because of this, but our integrity will remain.
Canidae recently underwent just such a reformulation. We were expecting minor changes and substitutions. What was revealed was a rather radical change to their formulation across the entire product line. The changes are not acceptable to me, and the reasoning they offered for the changes were not in line with my priorities when it comes to pet nutrition. I understand that there are certain dogs that are sensitive to changes in their diet and switching brands is not always easy. But it must be remembered that this change in formula is no less an abrupt change than switching to a different brand. While we hoped to be able to secure some of the old formulations to ease the transition, it simply wasn’t available.
Our new website, with these articles will help to let you know about what is new and where we are headed. Our new mailing list is up and running, and will enable me to keep you up to date on important changes to our offerings, and plan accordingly. Maintaining enough inventory is our top priority. The month over month sales are routinely exceeding our projections because of the all of the new customers we are seeing. I suppose selling out is a good problem to have if you had to pick one, but to address this, we now have a climate controlled warehouse so we can maintain deeper stocks of our rapidly moving items.
Change to our catalog like the ones we went through in June are the exception rather than the rule.
Thank you for your kind comments!
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