Newcomer in Spain

“We would like to become the leading pet supplies retailer in Spain,” is the message from the Masquepet headquarters in Madrid. The name of the new store chain is Kiwoko and the speed with which the first stores have been opened has impressed international industry experts: after the first five outlets opened in November 2007, a further 26 were launched by January 2011. These included the former Maxi Zoo stores (Fressnapf Germany) in June 2010. The “Kiwoko” brand appeared in December 2008, a year after the company was established, with the website www.kiwoko.com following in September 2009. All the stores are owned by the company and run from Madrid. This situation is not expected to change: “We are not big believers in the franchise model. We like to be able to tightly control the direction and changes in our stores,” says CFO Javier Osa. Fifteen people are employed in the head office, and this number is likely to rise. The other members of the management board are CEO Álvaro Gutiérrez and COO Emilio Goyanes. Prince Capital Partners, a private equity fund, is the investor. Over 150 people in all are employed in the stores, including more than a dozen biologists and vets. Particular emphasis is placed on training and further education for the staff. Attractive in a Spanish style The stores are intended to be youthful and colourful with an appeal to the emotions, focused on premium merchandise and attractive to kids and families. In the stores, the ranges are broken down into six product families: dogs, cats, fish, birds, small animals and reptiles. Each segment is discernible by customers at a glance thanks to the colour concept. The live pet offering is described by Kiwoko as a key element. “Traditionally Kiwoko has been very focused on the premium and super-premium segments. As our store model evolves to a larger, more comprehensive concept, we are working more and more on the mass-market segment with promising results,” Javier Osa told PET worldwide. Individual stores place their orders directly with the headquarters in Madrid. Masquepet has no warehouse of its own and so the stores receive deliveries directly from the suppliers. The company currently has no brand of its own for this reason, but a private label range is one of the areas that it intends to tackle later. The Kiwoko speciality retail chain has been developed on the basis of two store concepts: so-called proximity stores are less than 250 m² in area and are located primarily in shopping…