Canine cards turn retaier’s best friend

There may be some danger in teaching man’s best friend that mail tastes good, but edible greeting cards for dogs—flat rawhide panels imprinted with nontoxic ink—was one success story, from a company called Crunchkins, to come out of last year’s Successful Selling conference hosted by the National Association of Chain Drug Stores.

There even is a line of cards for felines, too, coupled with a catnip toy in place of the raw-hide snack.

Developed by a practicing veterinarian and his wife, the cards are innovative, unique and priced right for animal lovers, who never really had an opportunity to send a greeting to the favorite pets in their lives, only to the pet owners.

“We started Crunchkins in 2002,” said founder Stephen Hoy. “We started the company after noticing that quite a few of our clients were mailing paper postcards to their pets while they were away. They would send a card and ask us to read it to the dog and, maybe hug the pet or give them a treat. So I thought—why not make an edible card for the dog instead?”

Hoy began distribution of the Crunchkins Crunch Cards through specialty channels—gift stores, independent pet stores, mail-order catalogs and the like. “After a few years of selling through these channels, we were getting inquiries from our customers who wanted to be able to find the products at their everyday shopping channels,” Hoy said. “Therefore, we began to research other types of trade shows that would help us expand our distribution into the food, drug and mass channels.”

Hoy happened upon the inaugural NACDS Successful Selling show event, and he took advantage of the learnings out of that event to successfully launch his chew card products that summer at Marketplace, where the Crunch Cards were honored with a “Best New Seasonal Item” award at the show. “The speakers that I met at the [Successful Selling] event, as well as several of the brokers, offered tremendous insight into what the drug store buyers are looking for in a new item,” Hoy said.

Hoy advised newcomers to the Successful Selling show to take advantage of the meeting—attend all of the events, network and, when they go back to the office after the show, do their homework. “[Drug buyers] are really looking for an item that is unique…that can differentiate their store assortment,” he said, but it helps to know a little about the retailer you’re trying to sell into.

In the past year, Crunchkins has gained more than 16,000 doors of distribution through such retailers as Walgreens, Sears Holdings and Supervalu. “[And] our success continues,” Hoy said, “as we receive rave reviews both from the retailers that carry our product, and the consumers who are now able to find the product at their favorite retailer.”

And it taps into a growing trend—American homemakers are opening their doors to cats and dogs. Indeed, while sales of greeting cards may be down, pet product sales are up. More than 83.2 million households have either a dog or cat (or both), according to the 2007-2008 National Pet Owners Survey conducted annually by the American Pet Products Manufacturers Association. And buying gifts for their furry friends is on the rise—the survey found that more than half of all pet owners purchased a gift for their pets in the past 12 months, with Christmas remaining as the most popular gift-giving holiday. Pet owners also buy gifts for their pets on Easter, Halloween, Valentine’s Day and Hanukkah. Dog owners are likely to buy up to seven gifts per year, while owners of other pets purchase on average four gifts per year. On average, dog owners spend $66 per year on treats and $41 per year on toys.