Wow oh wow! What a fabulous week we have had. We are delighted to tell everyone that Not Just Pets has just been named as PetQuip UK Independent Pet Retailer of the Year 2013! Isn’t that fantastic? The awards were given at a dinner at PATS Harrogate (Pet and Aquatic Trade Show) and were sponsored by Westland, Petface, Group55 and PATS with the media partner being Pet Business World. We were commended for devotion to customers, knowledge, creativity and work within the community. We have worked hard during the past year to forge links with our local community and support local animal charities as well as promoting the cause of the independent retailer. We were completely gobsmacked to win this award and we are obviously over the moon, especially as the calibre of other entries was so high, such as Scampers and Dobbies.
Not only that we have just discovered that we have won the overall award for National Pet Month for our events during National Pet Month this year. The judges felt that our events did the best to further the aims of NPM and to promote responsible pet ownership. It means so much to have all the hard work of the team at Not Just Pets rewarded in this way. Everyone at Not Just Pets worked really hard this year to think of new ways to get our community involved with events for National Pet Month (including dressing as Jedi for May the 4th), and we had fantastic support from so many different people, from our local vet, local rescue centres (Bath Cats and Dogs and Bath Bunny Rescue), our fabulous suppliers, local pet portrait artists, animal experts/trainers and of course our wonderful customers. We raised over £1300 for local animal charities and did a grand job of promoting responsible pet ownership – and we had fun doing it!
We feel that these awards really show that hard work does pay off and that it is important to keep evolving and adapting to move forwards in our industry. We try to listen to our customers and get involved in our local communities with events, through social media, supporting local animal rescue centres etc. We are very keen to promote responsible pet ownership and to keep driving trade to the independent retailer. We were in prestigious company at the PetQuip awards and are delighted too for all the awards given to our partners and suppliers in the industry such as Peregrine Livefoods, Beaphar, Collarways, Canagan, Natures Menu, Burgess, James & Steel and Marriage’s Feeds.
We had a busy weekend as we were judges for some of the product awards and there were so many fabulous products in the showcase. It was a real treat to see so many British products on offer and also so many strides being made for the independent retail trade by suppliers offering good quality, unique products.
We shall soon be working with Pure pet foods and their fabulous dehydrated dog food – which is made in a human grade factory so it really is good enough to eat. Plus we shall be stocking the new Beaphar Calming spot on – a great alternative to other calming products especially for pets on the move. We already stock the Natures Menu range and we were delighted to see some fabulous new products in their Country Hunter range (don’t say that one too quickly!) We also really liked the new Soopa treat range – good enough for us to eat again although not recommended for owners, more for dogs (a little chewy). These come in yummy flavours like Papaya, Coconut and Sweet Potato. We shall be stocking these soon.
We are moving things around at the Bath Pet Shop with some changes coming soon – including a new Pet Boutique instore. Do let us know if there is anything particular you would like us to stock.
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Not Just Pets is based in Bath, Larkhall and Frome with the main store at 8-9 St James Parade, Bath, BA1 1UL and a website at www.notjustpets.co.uk. You can follow us Facebook at www.facebook.com/notjustpets and on Twitter at @NotJustPets