It started with bad breath, wince-causing, conversation-pausing, head-turning, stomach-churning bad breath from the one you love – your dog.
That all-too-familiar odor got Deb Dempsey and Tanya Payne talking on a flight to Las Vegas. At the time, Dempsey, who is married and the mother of two boys, four dogs, a potbellied pig and various fowl, worked in the gourmet-food industry. Payne, who jokes she has “rentals” rather than a husband, owned a commercial cleaning business and a vending company.
Best friends since their days at Wheat Ridge High School in the mid-1980s, Dempsey and Payne always wanted to work together and had thought about options for a while, but the doggie breath- mint idea smelled like a winner.
“Nothing stuck,” says Payne, “until we had the idea for dog mints, and we both just went wild.”
They ended that fateful flight with packaging ideas drawn on a cocktail napkin and a business plan jotted on a barf bag.
They even did an impromptu focus group, polling fellow passengers. After failed attempts in the kitchen, the twosome turned to professional chemists in the human-breath-mint industry.
“Dogs are not mint lovers,” Dempsey explains. “They sent us 20 to 30 samples over a five- month period that we taste-tested with several hundred dogs before we came up with a pork liver mint that dogs love.”
Those first mints hit the market along with hundreds of new pet products introduced each year. A flood of products combined with our ever-increasing love of pets drives the constant increase in pet-related spending – expected to top $35.9 billion this year. That’s nearly double of what was spent in 1994.
“It’s such a fast-growing industry,” says Marian Thielsen, associate director of marketing for the American Pet Product Manufacturers Association, based in Greenwich, Conn.
“We’re amazed, every time we go to a trade show, with the new products out there. In our exhibit hall, we have a new- product showcase. Most new products launch at our annual show. In March 2005, there were about 600 new products. In 2004, there were over 500. Next year, we anticipate having over 700 new products introduced.”
Dempsey and Payne jumped into this barking-hot market. Using personal credit and assets, they ordered $35,000 in custom tins and 1,000 pounds of mints for their first production run.
Garages became warehouses. Friends and family members became assembly-line workers. The small business got its footing by courting gourmet food stores and smaller pet product stores, rather than big-box stores.
An upscale, national retailer called nine months later, asking for a full catalog of Mouthfuls products. “We didn’t know we were not going to get rich on just one product,” Payne says.
They brainstormed and came up with more. Mouthfuls now manufactures and sells some 20 products. It has two local warehouses and a new company-run retail outlet in Northwest Denver’s Berkeley Neighborhood. The store opened in March and carries other dog products, including some made by other Colorado-based companies. It even features a fresh-baked pastry case.
Despite a disastrous experience with QVC in 2003, they attribute their success not only to a longstanding friendship but also to having Type A personalities, the support of family and the blessings of differing strengths. Payne deals with the manufacturing operations, and Dempsey handles all the paperwork. “There are very few things that we both hate to do,” Dempsey explains.
“We look at each other,” Payne adds,” and ask, “Are we really making money doing this?’ We just laugh all the time.”
Mouthfuls is located at 4224 Tennyson St. For more information, call: 720-855-7505.
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Total
Pet Industry
Spending
in the U.S.
Year Billion
2005 $35.9
2004 $34.4
2003 $32.4
2002 $29.5
2001 $28.5
1998 $23
1996 $21
1994 $17
Source: American Pet Products Manufacturers Association
