Pet Planet has been operating in Calgary since 1996, growing to 43 locations in Western Canada and with plans to significantly expand the brand.
In May, the mom and daughter team that owned Pet Planet sold the company to Resilient Management Corp. After 27 years, Laura Leah English and Joan Bauer made the decision to pass the company along to the Resilient team.
New CEO Jeevan Minhas said he did a lot of research before Resilient, a company he is President and CEO of, purchased the Calgary-based Pet Planet with stores in Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia.
“Pet Planet has a unique opportunity where they’re the only premium wellness in that space. Most of the brands they present products that you can find in Walmarts and Superstores and some other big box stores, even Canadian Tire,” he said.
“But at Pet Planet most of the products that we carry are natural products, so they’re not as common, and we tried to find them in the best way possible in Canada. So what I found was 50 per cent of our food that was sold was Canadian, which was very big compared to everybody else. So that was a big differentiator.
“The other is there’s a certificate of trust which Pet Planet has been following from the start where they go through this due diligence and go through every single product that’s in the pet food. I did not find the others do the same. So the quality of products remains very, very good. At the same time, we do miss out on a lot of products because a lot of the manufacturers do not want to share their information. But at the same time, I think Pet Planet, we stick to the guns and we only carry products that will follow the national grocer certificate.”
Pet Planet is a family business.
“I think the pet industry overall, when I did research, I was always looking at the business and wanted to expand our business, the pet industry did very well during the COVID,” he said.
“My original company is called Resilient Management. And the reason we call it that is because we wanted to find resilient businesses that survived the downturn of the economy anytime. So in 2008-2009 the pet industry did very well. And then again, in COVID, it actually accelerated and did better. So that was one of the biggest pieces of us looking into the pet industry.
“And also, at the same time, I think there was a niche market that’s available today that never existed before COVID, which is the population of pets is increasing as we speak, and it continues to increase in Canada at an amazing pace. So we thought it was best to get involved in pet businesses. And then we started looking at getting involved in pet businesses, very easy. We can be a franchisee or buy something small. But then I found, I have had pets myself and had a few pets actually over the time, that it was really difficult to find the information and find actual real food for pets. So that’s how I got involved in a Pet Planet store and started shopping there. And then I thought, you know what? This is a good business. I might try and look into it. And one thing led to another.”
Minhas said the company would like to increase the store count by 20, 30 stores initially and 100 stores eventually.
“At the same time, we have to look at e-commerce because there’s a lot of shopping that happens online, and e-commerce is part of why we want to get involved in that business. So that’s going to be the next major step for us. We do already have a warehouse. We do have shipping. We have all of that. We just have to increase the online presence, and we’ll be working on that over the next year.”
Minhas said growth will be concentrated in Western Canada and once it has at least 75 stores then it can look towards the East. Most likely Ontario would be the first slated for expansion.
“I think the biggest part of our Pet Planet strategy and pet business is the quality and the service and the premium wellness brand. Overall, that space is not tapped. People today want better for their pets than ever before, and they continue to work to look for items that are natural, and there’s very few franchises or various systems that are doing that. There’s a few individual stores that do it well, but no franchise system. So I think that’s really our passion and we’re looking forward to gaining momentum on the franchisee side.
“We’re looking for candidates that are passionate about pets but also passionate about business because you have to be able to run the business, and you have to like it. If you don’t like it, it’s not fun, right? So I think that’s important. Expanding our training and expanding our support for the franchisees. I think that’s a very, very, very important factor. We are providing a lot of training today to the franchisee. We have hired three new staff and their full-time job will be training staff and training franchisees on pet and pet related food and consumers on food related natural grocery.”
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