Earlier in March we had the opportunity to visit the Science Diet Pet Nutrician Center in Topeka Kansas. They also have their canning facility in Topeka so we were able to get a tour of that plant.
We all came back from this trip with a big Wow.
Science Diet has it roots as a food for dogs that had health problems. Way back when there were no prepared dog foods. People fed their dogs scraps either from their own tables or bought meat byproducts from their butcher to feed their dogs.
This isn’t always the best thing for your dog. In fact it can cause some problems.
The founder of Science Diet found some recipes that would keep dogs with health problems healthier. In fact they still have a very large presence in marketing their products through veterinarians for sick dogs. However a long time ago they also started using what they knew to make a dog food for healthy dogs. This is where Science Diet came from.
We had a long tour of their Pet Nutrition Center where they do research on dogs and cats to keep their foods better for your pet than any other food. We’re all dog lovers and cat owners and we all came away as impressed as we could be for the animals they are researching. We’d love it if we could board our dogs in such a facility when we were traveling.
What really impresses you is how clean it all is. Now this is a research facility but you’re still dealing with animals. You sure didn’t see much of any animal waste (although that is one of the things they study.)
They have almost 500 beagles on hand in their facility. They all live in their own little colonies where they have a play yard and their own semi-private sleeping area. (When they’re bedded down they can sleep by themself or with their buddy according to their wishes.) The researchers told us that if a procedure done to a person would require a pain killer of some kind they just plain won’t do it to one of their animals.
The cats lived in the perfect little cat worlds where they had a few friends in there with them. They could sit up on a platform or lie on the floor. They can go out to the porch anytime they want.
What really impressed was that when the animals are too old to be research subjects they aren’t put down. They’re retired for the rest of the days, living in a little cat paradise.
They also get a lot of human interaction. In fact one shift pretty much spends all of their time petting the animals.
One of the things they study is how to make the food more palatable (or tasty). The focus of this comes from their research for sick animals. If an animal is not feeling right they don’t have an appetite. If they don’t eat they get sicker. So it certainly is a benefit to have the food yummier. We have some personal experience with that as we are putting one of our dogs on the light product to reduce his weight. We are getting the other dogs eating that product rather than the regular science diet.
We got to meet with a couple of the researchers. One of them shared his research with us concerning their puppy formulations. They have done studies that prove that their puppy food actually enhances brain development over other top brands because of some key ingredients they put in. They also have increased the puppies mobility which they have proved with tests.
We met with their nutritionist which was very interesting. All of the people at Science Diet were passionate over their product but their nutritionist really stuck out. He was talking about why they use some of the ingredients that they do. What they do is to find an ideal nutrition level for animals and then come up with a formula to reach that.
This was very interesting because some of the things we thought we knew didn’t turn out to be so. They use corn in most of their products because it helps them reach the ultimate nutrition level. Some people think corn is just a filler, but when it’s milled and cooked it’s very digestible for a dog. They expect it to be over 90% digested and have the tests to show that they reach that. Another ingredient they use is “chicken by-product.” This is a legal definition that they have to use which they think is unfair. They contract with a chicken processor to get exactly what they want. This generally is the internal organs of the animals, not what should be waste. They then process the chicken and cook it.
If they don’t use chicken and used beef instead they have the problem of the calcium level of their foods being twice as high as it should be. This can cause a lot of problem for animals.
One thing that really got this guy was the term “holistic” when it comes to dog food. This expert gave a sigh and said that he just didn’t have any idea what that term meant.
We also met with Science Diet’s label expert. This is far more complicated than we expected. One thing we learned about was weight control products. The term “light” or “lite” is a legal definition related to the number of calories per a volume of the dog food. A lot of the foods didn’t meet this standard so they have relabeled their product “weight control.” This term is pretty much without meaning. We saw that some foods so labeled were more fattening than a normal dog food. Buyer beware. Science Diet is one of the few providers of a true “light” product. Since this trip we put one of our dogs on the light product.
The factory tour was very impressive. On of our party worked for an unnamed human food company. We were told by him that the Science Diet canning plant was cleaner than the plant where he previously worked.
Wow.
We also had briefings on the marketing plans for Science Diet for the rest of the year and they shared a lot of their marketing research with us. We’ve been seeing terrific growth with the brand over the last several years and this information should help us continue that growth through 2009. We also discussed their product training programs to help us educate the Home of Economy Team who deal with the customers all the time.
One thing I did find out from their national sales manager is that Home of Economy’s growth with Science Diet, percentage wise, is fantastic.
All in all this was a terrific trip that made us all the more excited to keep growing the Science Diet Brand.
We’re making a big push on TV to let the customers know that we have Wayne Pumps (on sale price) for the upcoming flood emergency. As I said earlier this week, Wayne Pumps is a great supplier of pumps due to their reliability, price and warranty.
Our thought for running these ads is that we are the first place a customer thinks of when they need a pump.
Here’s a commercial we did some time ago about what makes Home of Economy Home Furnishings different.
These are all great reasons. Of course when it comes down to it, you should be buying your furniture because of the quality you’re getting. Certainly the furniture from our Amish Gallery can’t be beat. We also have great brands like Action Lane, Flexsteel, Riverside and many others. Our competitors are going the other way focusing on no-name furniture they directly import from China.
Home of Economy Super Strong With Forney Welding Supplies
Yesterday our factory representative from Forney Industries was in the Grand Forks store. They are our supplier for a good deal of our welding supplies.
To make a long story short, Forney has almost 15,000 stores that they are in. Home of Economy had two stores in the top 100. Grand Forks was actually the 28th biggest store in the US and Canada going by product shipped into the store. Minot was number 75.
Grand Forks has done a good job with the line for quite a while. Minot has been able to bring themselves up to that level in under two years.
When you consider that our populations are fairly small in North Dakota I think this is an awesome achievement. Of course we didn’t do it alone. Forney is a great product line. We get great support from Monty and the rest of them at the company.
That’s our dog, Felina. She’s a Teddy Bear which is a popular cross between a bichon frise and a shih tzu. She was only about 9 weeks old at the time. She’s a wonderful puppy that does in fact eat Science Diet large breed food. We’ve got a couple large dogs as well and she’s often in their dish rather than eating the Science Diet Puppy food we give her and her little brother, another Teddy Bear.
We wouldn’t consider feeding our dogs anything else besides Science Diet. It really is the best food out there for your family member pets.
Wow it seems that with the flood forecasts for this spring pumps are going out as fast as they are coming in. We just got a larger order in last week and they already look picked over. Not to worry we’ve got two orders over at the warehouse that will be over here as soon as possible. Our pump sales have tripled so far this year due to people’s concerns.
Our buyer has done a great job keeping us in stock. It seems that ever day he’s down here talking about what he’s doing to keep us the place to go to get your flood needs.
Home of Economy plans to keep our pumps at sales price throughout the entire emergency. We’re also doing our best to hold the line on prices for other flood needs. We’ve gone through several orders of discharge hose. Now all we can get is a domestically made lay flat that costs about 50% more than the product we’ve offered in the past. Rather than raise the price Home of Economy is going to absorb that increased price.
One question we get is why we have a three day return policy on pumps and other flood items. The reason we do that is that people would buy up more than they need and return it if it wasn’t used. That could amount to tens of thousands of dollars of product that would put us in a bad inventory position. Most of the other businesses have the same sort of policy.
We feel that if we keep pumps on hand at all times that nobody needs to purchase a bunch of pumps “just in case.” And with Wayne Pumps we’re able to do that. They are a fantastic company to deal with when we’ve got a flood emergency. If we call them today and tell them we need more pumps they’ll have it on a truck this afternoon coming direct to our store.
Home of Economy has been there for quite a few flood emergencies whether it comes from spring flooding OR from summer rains. In fact Home of Economy was the only store that was open every single day during the Grand Forks flood of 1997.
Hopefully in the next week or so we’re going to be getting this billboard up on the interstate leading to town. from the South. Last year Carhartt accounted for about 20% of our growth. We want to keep that going and this is part of our strategy.
The other thing we’re trying to do hear is to remind people driving up from the South where we are. That’s why we put the “9 minutes” on the billboard. And yes we checked the time more than once and no we didn’t speed or run any lights.
We are convinced that we can more than save a person time even if they have to drive by the stores on the south end to do it. It doesn’t seem like our competition is very concerned about getting people in and out of their store.
We’d like it for customers to stay a while, but we don’t insist upon it. If you’re in an hurry we want to get you set up as quickly as possible so that you can get on to more important things. (Just remember where to come back when you can stay a bit longer.)
Our goal at Home of Economy is to double our sales of work clothing in the next 3-5 years. That sounds pretty aggressive, but we’ve averaged 30% growth in the last two years.
In order to do that we’re going to have to devote more floor space to the work clothing. Our latest effort for that was to expand the clothing department in our Minot store.
Here are some pictures of the final product. We’re working with an older store here so I think they did a great job in upgrading our clothing department.
This is the heart of our Carhartt shop in Minot. Carhartt is a great line for us.
Here a shot of our Carhartt Jeans running back into the rest of the department. If you saw the department before you’d know that this is an huge improvement in shop-ability. Before the changeover the department was very jammed in.
Here’s some of the new area. This is product that we’ve carried for some time now. We just opened up this area to be able to do justice to the product. In the background you see our workboots. Our business in workboots has been terrific the last few years.
We need to look at some options of fixing up the floor in this area. Still we had to go to this step before we could worry about the floor.
Grand Forks
Home of Economy Headquarters
Gateway Dr. & North Washington St.
PH: (701) 772-6611
Fax: (701) 772-6521
Amish Furniture Gallery:
(701) 795-3600
Grafton
868 West 12th Street
PH: (701) 352-1232
Fax: (701) 352-3054
Devils Lake
1205 Hwy 2 East
PH: (701) 662-5046
Fax: (701) 662-5544
Minot
Hwy. 83 South at the 2 & 52 Bypass
PH: (701) 852-2537
Fax: (701) 838-3326
Williston
Million Dollar Way
PH: (701) 572-7626
Fax: (701) 774-3524
Jamestown
830 18th St SW
PH: (701) 252-3007
Fax: (701) 252-9338
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