Dear Reader,
We are told that in business, you rarely get the chance to be heard. With all the things one can attend to, how can a small business like us make room in your minds? We may boost posts on social media, distribute flyers, hand out freebies, rent a billboard, and use many other marketing techniques that almost always come with a price. But the price paid is not only monetary, but also a price on our principles. Fortunately, the internet gave us something called a blog — a medium that is easily accessible and free. Through blogs, we can communicate with you in depth at very low cost.
At this point, you may be wondering what we mean by principles and why we seem to have an aversion to costs. Conventional accounting might say that costs aim to acquire assets and expenses are “costs” tied to generating sales; but we simply view costs as expenses not of us, but of you — our customers. Before starting The Pet Depot, we accepted from the very beginning that retailing is a cut-throat business with not much room for profits. Small businesses, naturally limited by smaller capital and an even smaller physical presence, may find it nearly impossible to profit from small markups at modest volumes. The result is that small shops would have to price their goods high or run a very tight operation. We choose to do the latter — the hard work of keeping prices grounded in the inherent quality of the product and in our frugality.
That said, as we are just beginning, we will work our way toward offering pet supplies at the best prices you can find in the marketplace. This means The Pet Depot seriously looks for high-quality pet supplies that it can proudly sell in its stores. But this process may take time and — similar to our reader who has reached this part of our letter — requires patience and understanding. Our approach to retailing is to operate for a long time, and we want to earn your trust starting today. And so, we have decided to keep our marketing activities to a minimum in order to uphold our goal of having the best price in the market.
Beyond sharing our view on costs, we also want to share with you what kind of organization we want to be. We want to be loved. And we believe that we can achieve this goal if we do the exact same thing Costco does:
Obey the law.
Take care of our customers and pets.
Take care of our employees.
Respect our suppliers.
If done diligently, in the long run, we bring profits both to you and to The Pet Depot.
We hope that in learning about our approach to retailing, we gain a customer who shares the same values that we do. Thank you for your time.
Sincerely,
Christopher
President