pet connection

Things are definitely looking good for people who love pets — and the people who want to sell them stuff, too. From Gina Spadafori in this week’s Pet Connection newspaper feature:

Last month in Orlando at Global Pet Expo, Bob Vetere, president of the American Pet Products Association, revealed the trade group’s annual snapshot of the pet care industry, as well as the executive summary of the association’s special two-year in-depth overview of who has pets, what kind, what they spend on them and why.

How many of us are there? Pet ownership is at an all-time high of 72.9 million households — up 2.1 percent since the last survey two years ago — and in those households, the number and variety of pets has also increased. Not surprising, that means the amount of money spent on these companion animals has barely hiccupped during the Great Recession, and is predicted to top $50 billion this year. For perspective, the amount of money spent on pets tops that spent on jewelry, candy and hardware, combined, and overall is the eighth-largest retail sector.

“I’m constantly amazed at the resilience of this industry,” said Vetere in releasing the APPA figures. “Not only did we weather the recession very well, but we’re poised to take advantage of the recovery.” (Read more…)

And “The Buzz” from Dr. Marty Becker and Mikkel Becker is that people believe training, not breed, matters most when it comes to dangerous dogs:

A poll by The Associated Press and Petside.com supports the idea that dangerous dog legislation should target all problem dogs, not just breeds believed by some to be a problem. About three-quarters of respondents believed all dog breeds are safe if properly trained, and 60 percent said all breeds should be allowed in residential communities. Only 38 percent believed breed-specific bans were appropriate. As for pit bull terriers, the No. 1 dog target by breed-specific legislation, age plays a large part in how the dogs are viewed: 76 percent of those under 30 believe pit bulls are safe, while only 37 percent of seniors believed the same.

You can read all this and more in this week’s Pet Connection!

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The invitations start a couple weeks before Global Pet Expo, just a trickle of e-mails that grows steadily as the countdown to the massive trade show’s opening nears. By the time you hop on a plane for Orlando, you swear you’ve heard from every one of the hundreds of vendors, sometimes multiple times, each begging you to visit their booth and find out about their products. I’m not an easy sell when it comes to pitches, and I prefer to mosey through the aisles on my own. So I mostly ignore the entreaties, and it wasn’t any different last week at GPE until a text message came through on smartphone Friday morning:

Would you like to meet Nina Ottosson? She’ll be in our booth today at 3 p.m.

Now you’re talking! I’m on my way!

I’m not one to be wowed by “celebrity”; in fact, I asked our Ericka Basile to look in on the whole Cesar Millan shebang because I couldn’t be bothered. Victoria Stillwell was being honored at the media reception I skipped. The year before … Rachel Ray. Whatever. Got nothing against any of them, just couldn’t care less. Same with actors, sports starts, politicians. Not even actors/sports/politicians, and as proof I offer Arnold Schwarzenegger, who I almost literally bumped into outside a Sacramento eatery a couple years ago and all I said was, ” ‘Scuse me, governor” and kept walking. (He didn’t say anything, but one of the bodyguards grunted.)

But Nina Ottosson? I had to know: Why? When? How?

When I told our David Greene I was going to interview Nina Ottosson, he observed it was the first time he’d ever seen me at all star-struck. Well, sure. I mean seriously, does someone just wake up one morning and decide to start inventing the coolest line of dog toys ever? How does that happen, exactly? So off I went, in search of answers. And yes, to meet Nina Ottossson.  David tagged along to shoot a video interview, and Ericka to get some pictures.

Nina  was to be at the booth of  The Company of Animals, a U.K. based business founded by Dr. Roger Mugford, himself more than a little bit famous in dog training and behavior circles, and also as charming and friendly a person as you’d care to meet. He showed me a picture of his prized Devon bull and we talked a few minutes about sustainable small-holding farming while we waited for someone to find where Nina had gone. She turned up shortly, and happily started talking about how she came to design interactive dog toys, stopping now and then to find the word she was looking for in English (she’s Swedish).

First surprise? She isn’t — or at least wasn’t — a dog trainer or designer when she started, some 20 years ago.

“I was a normal dog owner, a nurse by training,” she said. “I had two children very quickly, and I didn’t think my dogs were getting what they needed. I was always aware that dogs have four legs and one brain, and they all need exercising. So I began.”

She labored in obscurity for many years, she said, and the initial reaction to her work was not encouraging. “I was working as a nurse by day and working on this at night,” she said, waving her arm at a display of her toy collection. “People said I was crazy. But I believed so hard this was good for dogs, and I kept at it for 10 years without much success.”

Finally, a behaviorist saw one of her products and contacted her … then a couple of veterinarians … the word spread and she was on her way. About five years ago she finally broke through with some international recognition, and now, with those two children all grown up, she’s making a living at the work she loves.

“It’s about building relationships,” she says. “And also recognizing that all dogs need something to keep them busy, working and happy. These are toys all dogs can use, even the very old. And they’re toys every pet-owner can use, as well. In fact, I’m really happy to tell you that these toys are used by people who have service dogs. A disability doesn’t keep anyone from helping a dog get some exercise. In Sweden, we’re now using these toys in nursing homes, with stroke victims using them to interact with dogs, and it’s really helping them!”

Nina has two new toys coming out soon. She showed them to me but made me promise not to write about them, so I won’t. But I will say I’ll be among the first to order them, but my dogs won’t be the first to try them: Everything she designs is tested by her own Bouviers first.

Before we left the booth, she handed me a toy to use as a giveaway. It’s the Dog Brick, which just happens to be the toy McKenzie’s puppies played with when they were seven weeks old, and also the toy I sent with them to their new homes. I don’t really have time to set up running a real contest, so you’re going to have to trust me to draw randomly for a winner. Put “NINA OTTOSSON” in your subject line and send an e-mail with your name and mailing address to McKutie@gmail.com by 9 a.m. PT on Friday, and I’ll choose a winner then.

Bonus: Here’s Nina Ottosson talking about her creations:

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Image: Me and David interviewing Nina Ottosson (taken by Ericka)

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Oh, and speaking of Victoria Stillwell, she came by to say hello to Dr. Mugford while I was interviewing Nina Ottosson, so a got a couple minutes with her, too. Smart, charming and real. I liked her. A lot. Here we all are with Dr. Mugford:

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Right after this picture was taken, someone asked, “Can we get another without … uh … whoever you are?”Ha!

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Last week the Pet Connection sent a team of reporters to Global Pet Expo, which is not only the largest pet industry trade show, but the eight-largest trade show of any kind in the entire world. We fan out across the massive Orlando convention center, each of us looking for a dozen or so products to make the first cut for Dr. Becker’s Best, a top 10 list we put together at this show every year.

Then we meet and trim the list, cross-check each others’  lists, meet again, argue, negotiate and finally come up with 10 items, and then suggest to Dr. Becker which of them the team likes best. He then picks the No. 1 product, and usually adds or deletes one from the list of 10, and then it’s another mad hustle to get the vendors to pull products out of their booth for the press conference.

And then …

The “Good Morning America” producers huddle with Dr. Becker to figure out which of the 10 they’ll have on the show, a selection that’s always guaranteed to disappoint someone. Some hopes get dashed right away, when companies don’t get asked to send product to New York at all — the GMA folks don’t have time for 10 products, so they tend to choose those that make the best TV. But I always feel worse for the occasional product that makes it to the set, but doesn’t get on TV because of a last-minute time constraint or other problem. Last year, that was the Warm Whiskers Pet Therapy Jacket; sadly, the company website is gone, the domain name for sale. Would getting on “GMA” last year have made the difference? Who knows, and really, it’s not our job to think about it, or the “GMA” producers’, either. So it goes …

This year, the “GMA” folks asked for couple of products in addition to the Becker’s Best 10, making the competition for time even more keen. We’ll see this morning who makes the cut for the segment, when Dr. Becker appears on the show this morning. I’m guessing the Best in Show winner — the Food Maze from Hagen – will make it, since the top winner seems to have a leg up. I’m guess the Eyenimal pets-eye-view videocam will, too, just because of the “wow!” factor. Anything else is anyone’s guess.

Check it out this morning on your ABC affiliate. Dr. Becker will be back on the show April 15, for the official launch of “Your Dog: The Owner’s Manual,” after which he and I (and my dog McKenzie) start a two-month, 30-city book tour on a specially wrapped 45-foot “rock-star” bus.

More on that last thing soon, I promise!

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(Gina’s note: Kathie Kerr is our publicist for the 30-city Big Bus Tour that kicks off April 25 in Houston for the new book, “Your Dog: The Owner’s Manual.” She came to Orlando during Global Pet Expo, so all the tour folks could have a final planning meeting. After the meeting, I asked her to take a spin through through the trade show and share her impressions.)

When you’ve attended as many trade shows as I have, even the greatest of them can become a little dull after that 50th trip down the aisle. That’s when I don my alternative personality and become the fairy godmarketer. I leave the earthly carpeted floors of trade shows like the Global Pet Expo and enter the realm of my imagination in which exhibitors have unlimited budgets to jazz up their presentations –  building codes be damned.

My first act  as fairy godmarketer  would be to create an event to show off the tens of thousands of high-fashion cat and dog collars displayed at the show.  In display cases they are boring, but make them part of a fashion show sporting celebrities wearing their favorite collars, and old boy:  Lady Gaga has on a Cartier dog collar made from reclaimed meat packaging products with a diamond entrusted buckle. Charlie Sheen sports the “winner” collar, a no-holds bar clear transparent collar with a cocktail mixture swooshing around inside.

On the next stage (yes, there are several stages), there’s an international Bollywood musical going on. Beautiful men and women in eye-popping costumes are dancing and singing the story of how  Himalayan Dog Chew got its start in humble beginnings on yak and cow farms in the mountains near Nepal. The latter part, at least, is true.  Himalayan Dog Chew began in 2003 when of one its founders, Sujan Shrestha, took in an abandoned puppy off the streets in the eastern city of Ilam in Nepal. The puppy ate up the yummy treat that is a hard cheese-like product consumed by Nepali people, too. Supposedly, American dogs are loving it, too, and a side story is that the family venture is creating new and much needed economic opportunities for the yak and cow farmers.

As an urban chicken farmer, one of my favorite sections is the new hen houses and portable chicken coops. Over there, chef Bobby Flay is taking eggs freshly laid from the hundreds of exotic chickens on displayed and preparing omelets on demand for the crowds. The chickens ring a little bell with their beaks each time they produce a fresh egg.

There are so many games and toys to keep pets occupied that it’s hard to take them all in. But there’s one game for dogs that just can’t be overlooked—poker. Over in the games section, big screen televisions are relaying a blow-by-blow account of a high-stake poker game. The English bulldog appears to have the winning hand. C.M. Coolidge would be so proud.

Because my husband is a bicyclist, one of my favorite products at Pet Expo is the Bike Tow Leash, invented by mechanical engineer and service dog trainer Michael A. Leon.  You can hook your dog to your bicycle and the dog can trot along side-by-side the bike, without tipping the rider over. This is another family-owned and operated business venture. To demonstrate the product, guess who’s in the arena with his bike and greyhound, Spins? Well, of course, it’s Lance Armstrong and he’s wearing his black-and-white-spotted plastic wristband encouraging the world to be kind to animals.

Back by popular demand is the talent show and beauty contest to determine “America’s Veterinarian Idol.” Dr. Marty Becker, author of the new “Your Dog: The Owner’s Manual,” took the crown after a ventriloquist act in which his dog, Quixote, sang “Who Let the Dogs Out?” Dr. Becker barely moved his lips at all and the leopard colored Speedo swimsuit was a shoe-in winner in the beauty contest.

Another favorite of mine: Judge Judy puts parasites on the stand to determine culpability in spreading diseases. They were small, but you could definitely hear their testimonies with today’s high tech microphones.

Finally, at the end of the show, (in my head, anyway), there was a touching finale when school children from the Orlando public schools and singer Celine Dion performed “It’s a Beautiful World,” while truck after truck loaded up items to be donated by the exhibitors to local pet shelters. That last part is true about the kind donations of items that exhibitors don’t want to pack and ship home. They are donated locally to pet shelters.

All-in-all, another job well done by the fairy godmarketer.

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What a difference a year makes. As we wrap up coverage from this year’s Global Pet Expo, I can’t help but look back on where I was and how I was feeling a year ago.

While I was blogging last year, I couldn’t tell you at the time how intimidated I was by the whole scene. I mean, c’mon, I had scarcely been on the Pet Connection staff a few months.  Gina (the only one on the entire staff I already knew personally beforehand) was asking me to help cover the largest pet product show in the world, being held in a convention hall that seemed to be intentionally designed to get you lost in its cavernous expanse.  I barely knew who Ericka was until we met at breakfast before the first day — that breakfast staff meeting, an hour before hitting the show floor, was also when I met Dr. Becker for the first time.

After the first day, the only thought running through my head was how much my feet hurt. Somehow (and I have to admit, I don’t remember all the details), it all went ok. Better than ok, according to Dr. Becker and Gina. I learned some important lessons through the experience.

1. The big, glitzy, well-lit booths in the center of the hall have the cushiest carpeting and the best food for visitors (don’t be stupid – stop by there and look interested!), but for the cool stuff you have to walk to the perimeter areas. With the “little guys,” you won’t speak to paid representatives, but instead you get to chat with the president and founder of the company. They don’t just know the products, they built them themselves. That’s a whole different ballgame. Their passion for what they do is infectious.
2. Pace yourself and take very good notes. One small corner of the hall can easily take two hours, and in short order you can walk by hundreds of items spanning 15 categories. It’s all a blur after ten minutes. Good notes are key, so was thankful for my journalism training from way back when dinosaurs still roamed their earth…I wonder what their trade shows looked like?
3. Your experience isn’t everyone’s experience. In our meetings, one person (sometimes that person had a beard and was named David) would say “this was absolutely the dumbest product in the hall,” and two others would immediately point out why it was actually very creative and deserving of another look. Remember our motto “Question everything” that we repeat all the time? It applies in trade shows, too. Of course, then I’d have to walk another 489 miles to get back to that product I originally didn’t like, and those booths never have the good snacks.
4. The big staff victory dinner the last night of the trip — worth all the work that preceded it.  Let’s just say there’s nothing like a great victory meal with friends.

Another important truth: as engaging as he is on television and in print, Dr. Becker is much more magnetic in person. There’s no other way to say it. You have to meet the man to really understand what I’m talking about, and I love watching people’s reactions when they realize ‘That is Dr. Marty Becker!’ After working with her for just two days, Ericka became a dear friend, and I couldn’t wait for March 2011 to roll around so we could all be together again.

During the rest of the year, my staff role evolved.  Now, I help Gina and Christie “keep the trains running” on the blog. When it came time to strategize for this year’s GPE, the circumstances were very different. I wasn’t the new guy anymore. I knew the drill. I knew how the floor was laid out, what went into the selection process, and how the blogging process needed to work. More importantly, Gina and Dr. Becker are now in the last minute stages of preparing for the Big Bus Tour, which is like figuring out the world’s biggest Rubik’s Cube. In a phone call a week or two ago about something else entirely, Gina said in an offhand way “Oh yeah, I want you to run the coverage for us. You know what you’re doing. It’ll be fine.”

My response to Gina, no matter what she’s ever asked, has always been “Ok, I’m on it.” Here was the latest challenge. Coordinating the coverage and selection process would have been terrifying if it hadn’t involved such a tremendous team. For me, this year involved at least double the work as last year, but it’s also been double the fun. The proudest moment for me was yesterday afternoon in the press room when, after our roundtable meeting (Dr. Becker, Gina, Ericka and myself), I knew we had our list and our winner. It was a team effort, and there’s no team better than Team Becker. The products are outstanding, and although there were a few choices that required some discussion, in a way they almost picked themselves.

My biggest regret? I have to wait another whole year to do it again.

Photo credit: Team Becker at Petmate’s GPE booth

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