BUYING CANADA!!!
At the beginning of January, we started to plan our newsletter and promotions for the month of February. decided to rework a blog that I wrote in September of 2020. Remember that time? Full bore COVID shutdowns. Our stores were in lockdown, only allowed to service customers curbside and delivery. Delivery of US products into Canada was extremely limited and retail stores that relied on US products to fill their shelves were struggling.
There are some remarkably interesting parallels to what is(could) happen to our economy today due to the current political environment and what happened almost 4 years ago. Nobody wins in a trade war. Especially the consumer.
In the last week, 1 in every 2 customers visiting our stores are asking what the impact may be on their ability to purchase food/treats/supplements and the price changes that may occur. It is also interesting to observe how “Buy Canada” is becoming increasingly prevalent in the purchase decisions of our customers. If there is one good thing that comes out of our neighbour’s potential tariff decisions (and the retaliatory Canadian tariff decision) is the movement that has ensued to support Canadian businesses.
We have great products manufactured in Canada!!!
When we started Back To The Bone almost 15 years ago, Donna and I made a conscious decision to merchandise our store with Canadian products as best we could. As we reviewed all the products we could choose to merchandise in our store, we quickly realized that we could source most of the raw food, healthy treats, raw bones, and supplements from small local business right in our own back yard!
Today, we are enormously proud to share that we have stuck to our guns!!!
100% of the raw pet food we offer is Canadian (majority Ontario)
100% of the raw meaty bones we offer is Canadian (majority Ontario)
100% of the supplements we offer is Canadian.
90% of the treats we merchandise in our stores is Canadian.
What does this mean to you the customer? When we had a supply chain crisis during the pandemic, there were no disruptions to the products we merchandised. Stores that relied on U.S. products, well, their shelves were bare. If Canada puts a tariff on U.S. manufactured products, you can be confident that there will be price increases (and significant ones) to any U.S. manufactured product imported into Canada for sale. It does not matter if the retail store is Canadian owned or not, the U.S. manufactured product is going to experience inflationary adjustment to price (because it is going to cost much more to purchase products due to the tariffs.)
The economic impact of supporting local small businesses and Canadian products is incredible. The cascade effect that a purchase decision has on the local economy may not be so apparent. But it is huge. 15 years ago, we met Caroline and Dave, who were starting a commercial raw pet food brand called Bold Raw. They were starting out in their town of Erin Ontario at the same time we were launching Back To The Bone. The product they were making was of amazing quality priced right and located in our own backyard. All the boxes were checked off and we brought the Bold Raw line into the store. It is still in our store 15 years later. So here is the cascade effect I mentioned. As our business grew over the years, more pet owners purchased the Bold Raw product. Our orders with Bold Raw increased, as it did with all other stores smart enough to carry their line of food. Dave and Caroline continued to grow to the point that Bold Raw and Mega Dog Raw (Mega Dog a second raw line by Dave and Caroline, as the demand called for it, and they answered) are now distributed to pet stores across the country and available to pet-owners country-wide. Think of the economic impact this has had. Employment opportunities, business to business transactions and the impact it has had on other businesses who source to Bold Raw. You can see where I am going with this. At the end of the day, supporting 1 local small business can positively impact a multitude of other businesses and eventually the health of the overall local economy. Jobs were created across Canada, and this all started from the dream of a few local people but plausible because of YOU – the local shopper.
Supporting local, small, and independent business can also be a great advantage to you, the consumer. We like to think of ourselves as specialists in providing high quality and fairly priced products in the raw pet food space. More than that, we take a lot of pride in making sure all our customers are educated in pet food nutrition and how we can put together a balanced and healthy menu plan. We will spend as much time as we need to help our customers who have issues or challenges with their pets regarding food and even supplementation. Being independent and small allows us to continue to provide a level of personalized service that may not be readily available with other “large chains.” Our staff are hand-picked and trained to provide the level of consistent service we have been striving for over the last 10 years. Regardless of the business you are shopping at, it seems to us that the level of customer service and expertise is extremely high when dealing with small local independently run businesses.
One last example of how we all benefit from supporting local, as best we can. Back in 2020, as Covid-19 was spreading throughout the world, many of our customers were wondering whether they would be able to get their pet’s food. Our stores experienced a significant increase in sales volume and our inventory was depleting quite quickly. Since we support local, and most of our raw food, bones, treats and supplements are sourced locally, we were able to make phone calls directly to the companies (usually the owners themselves) to see if they could ship us more product so that we could meet our customers’ demands. They all came through and we had special deliveries being made on short notice into the evenings and on weekends. Pet parents were unsure as to what would and would not be available, but we were able to continue to have product, and we took pride in ensuring your pets needs would still be met in a time of chaos. We had no supply chain interruptions. In fact, many of our raw food suppliers had built significant inventory levels to manage the increase in demand. They are small and flexible and can make decisions quickly.
Looking back, we are so grateful that we chose to focus on Canadian products, and more importantly have access to some amazing local entrepreneurs who we have been able to partner with. The events of the last couple of months have made many people rethink how and where they shop. To those who have made a choice to shop Canadian, thank you sincerely.
Love where you live, love where you shop!
THE PROOF IS IN THE POOP!!!