Case Study Notes – Purrfect Pets, Strabane

General overview
•    The business was founded 5 years ago
•    Owner is away visiting an ill relative in Australia
•    New retailers in the town have had a negative impact on sales
•    There is a similar pet store in Lifford
•    Standard pet products, toys, food, 
•    Owner gives no thought to short, medium or long-term objectives 

Finance
•    £150k required to break even
•    Sales down in the last 2 years
•    150k turnover 2 years ago
•    Lost £20k last year – £130k turnover
•    £2k overdraft available from the bank for improvement work

Customers and products/services
•    No online customers or major buyers
•    Main customers – local families
•    Biggest margins on pets, then toys, then food – stock approx. divided 33% to each
•    Saturday the busiest day followed by Thursday afternoon and Friday

Processes
•    Issues include: running out of stock
•    Car parking on site
•    Based in an industrial estate
•    Word of mouth marketing
•    No formal marketing or promotional campaigns
•    Opens 10 – 5 during the week, to lunchtime on Saturday, closed Sunday
•    Based 5 minutes walk from the town centre

People
•    Staff morale low many lack passion for animals, poor pay and work conditions
•    Staff costs approx. 80% of turnover
•    Supervisors don’t act as managers and p/t staff mostly students
•    Students work on Saturday’s
•    2 supervisors – 1 keen the other not so
•    No staff training
•    Informal learning via buddies and doing
•    No recruitment and selection process – word of mouth recruitment
•    Numbers of staff remain around 6 - 8 people, but high staff turnover
•    Only the supervisors have been with the company more than 1 year
•    F/T staff women returners who do the job then move on quickly afterwards