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Date: 2/12/2020
SOUTHWICK – The first 20 years of the 21st century have been the age of online shopping thus far, and there is no sign of that going away any time soon. Online shopping options for just about every kind of store and product are now available, with some places going so far as online grocery delivery and pickup.
The ever-creeping trend of online shopping has moved into pet food and supplies as well, impacting the livelihood of local physical pet supply stores, such as Russell’s Tropical Fish and Pet in Southwick.
Owner Mary Russell, along with her husband and co-owner George and their two children have owned the pet supply storefront for a little more than a year now. Russell said that trying to compete with an online pet store like Chewy.com has been rather difficult.
“The disadvantages of having a physical store outweigh the advantages,” said Russell, “That’s really only because, as a relatively new pet store owner, we have not established as much of a customer base as we would like to.”
She said she often sees new customers come in to ask about a certain product for their pet, only for them to pull out their phone and look up the product online at Chewy, where they can get it cheaper.
Her main disadvantage is that she is unable to purchase products in bulk as Chewy is typically able to. When one purchases a large amount of product, it will usually be much cheaper for each individual item overall, allowing for that store to sell it for cheap.
“I am only buying products one at a time or 10 at a time, because that is all that I can fit in my store,” said Russell.
She noted that it is typically older customers who prefer to come to a physical store and talk to the staff to learn about a product for their pet. Younger customers tend to prefer online shopping.
“It’s the way of the future and it is something that we have to figure out a way to deal with,” said Russell.
She said that she has had to compete with Chewy and similar services being able to provide products online that one would not imagine to have been available online at all, such as live crickets for reptiles to eat.
She did note that there is a sort of comradery between physical pet stores, and that they all talk to each other.
Russell purchased the store last July from someone who had been running a similar pet store for about 18 years. When the former owner left, they left behind many of the fish and live animals, which Russell was able to care for. They benefited from already having the animals, but they had to work to establish an inventory of pet products.
In order to compete with their online equivalent and larger physical stores, Russell has had to adapt and focus on what they can do better than the competition can. She has been focusing on building an inventory of fresh and saltwater fish, coral, and reptiles. They are currently constructing a room in the back of the store that will be dedicated to all kinds of fish and reptiles.
She noted that other stores have been able to do online sales of fish out of the store itself, but that she does not intend to go in that direction.
“I prefer to have people come in, to have direct contact with them, to have a good product to have it on display in the appropriate tank so people can see what it looks like other than just a fish in a bag or blank tank,” said Russell.
She added that sees the Southwick and Westfield area as being “starved of good quality reptiles” and that she intends to fill that niche herself. They are also in the middle of creating a section of the store that will focus entirely on different kinds of reptiles.
One thing they did not expect is to find quick success with sales in the front end of the store where they have their pet foods, toys, and other supplies.
“I find that the front end of the store helps us get to the point of building the back end of the store,” said Russell, “We did anticipate that dog food, cat food and supplies for those animals would be able to hold us in business until the fish section was finished.”
There was apprehension on the Russell family’s part when they first opened, as they feared that they would never be able to compete with an online giant like Chewy. However, she said she was pleasantly surprised to find that their sales have been growing continually since they opened.