What is it they say in the acting business? “Don’t work with children or animals”! And there are loads of TV outtake programs that provide testament to this. Nobody will ever forget the late Richard Whiteley and thatmischevious ferret clinging on to his finger with its front teeth.
But is there money to be made from animals? You just have to look at the new breed of pet hypermarkets to see that the answer is a definite “Yes”. As well as the traditional pet shops there is a whole range of out of town store that have sprung up to serve the demands of our pet industry.
There are between eight and ten million pet cats in the UK at the last count. Not a precise number, you understand, but near enough to give a good perspective. In previous times , and here I’m talking about seventeenth century through to the early part of the twentieth century cats had a role to play in rat control. But now hardly any cats are kept to kill and eat rodents although it’s not always easy to stop them bringing you a little “present” when the mood takes them.
Dogs number a bit less with a good estimate being five million or so. Again the amount of working dogs in this category that actually have to do some work is pretty small. Everyone knows about police dogs and guide dogs for the visually impaired or the deaf and there are a couple of working sheep dogs and guard dogs about, but dogs mostly have a very pampered life.
Animal, almost exclusively pet, based businesses centre supplying basic animal needs such as feeding, exercising, accommodation and amusement. But how you actually do this in reality has led to a huge commercial industry. Anyone who has kept a pet knows that they can be fussy over their food, especially cats, and budget food very often simply will not do! Hence the scores of product options to feed your pet. There are a number of Franchises that cater for the specialist dog and cat feeding market and the fact that they have been around for so long shows the viability of this section of the industry.
Catteries and Kennels aren’t cheap either but unless you have fairly substantial premises then this sort of business would be beyond the means of your average punter wanting to get into an animal based industry.
Dog walking has become something of a recent phenomena as cottage industry. My local park has a number of “Packs” controlled by a couple of dog walking entrepreneurs. I believe the walking rate is in the order of fourteen pounds a week per dog so depending on how many dogs you can handle and how much effort you’re prepared to put in this could be a nice little earner.
Franchises that involve working with animals and pets in general are quite widespread and considering investing in a business on a Franchise For Sale basis could provide a very enjoyable lifestyle for animal lovers along with a way of escaping the chore of the day job. All Franchises involve an up front payment, the franchise fee payable usually on investing in the franchise but they do provide on going support and generally a proven businessformat that can be repeated on a area basis.
An example of a Home Based Franchise opportunity for people who love working with animals is the Animals At Home franchise. This is a franchise opportunity and the details of the Franchise For Sale can be found at http://animalsathome.co.uk/franchise.php . Whilst being a Home Based Franchise this opportunity does involve a good time away from home as you will be visiting pet owners premises to do such jobs as picking up and returning animals from the Vets, catteries, kennels etc as well as daily feeding and other duties that the pet owners for some reason or the other are not in a position to perform.
People are always going to have pets and , as we all seem to have less and less time on our hands, business people catering for our animals must surely be set to rise and prosper.