A strong syndicate

Henrik Wulff and Lars Dahl spent their summer vacation in 1996 independently of one another in the same Caribbean resort at the same time. The two pet shop proprietors got talking and quickly discovered that they had something in common in their native Denmark: they each ran an independent pet store. Henrik Wulff’s family had other pet stores at the time and Lars Dahl likewise had two other pet shop proprietors in his circle of acquaintances. Their conversation in the relaxed Caribbean atmosphere gave birth to the idea of a joint initiative with regard to imports and range composition. Using start-up capital from the six pet store proprietors in all, the foundation was laid for the present company. “The two of them had made it their aim to obtain the best products at the best price and sell them to their customers,” says Poul Jorgensen, who now runs Poppigruppen with Henrik Wulff. Co-founder Lars Dahl stepped down from the management just last year and sold his shares, but still runs his own Poppi outlet. Joint success Other Danish pet shop proprietors quickly realised that it was better to join the purchasing syndicate and pet store chain than to continue working alone. As a result, Poppigruppen now has 25 outlets, including 20 Poppi Dyrecenter and five Superpet stores as well as a 1 500 m² warehouse at the company’s headquarters in Gadstrup. The Superpet stores were added to the concept by Thomas Wulff and continued by him. “All the affiliated pet store proprietors were and still are independent,” stresses Poul Jorgensen. One feature common to all 25 pet stores is their location on Zealand (Danish: Sjælland), the biggest island in the Baltic covering an area of 7 031 km² and also the most densely populated of the Danish islands with over 2.1 mio inhabitants. Store sizes vary from 150 to 670 m² of retail area. Poul Jorgensen considers a retail area of between 350 and 500 m² to be the ideal size for the pet store concept. In cities and conurbations such as Copenhagen, however, he says this size is not possible on account of the rental costs and is restricted primarily to rural regions, therefore. The retail area or building of over half of all the stores is owned by the respective proprietor. Training and the provision of advice to the customer are considered especially important in the Poppigruppen concept, as is the range of live pets for sale: only one of the 25 outlets does not include any live pets in its range. Strong brands under one roof…