A cat triggers an entrepreneurial boom

**The reason for this is because of the fact that you can’t get a good deal of the money you’re going to need for your own business.

When she woke up early in the morning, Maomao used to pick up her cell phone and shoot short videos of the eight cats in the house, and sent them to the “family cat foster” group she had formed one by one to report to the parents that the “master” was safe.

This is the beginning of her day’s work.

Mao Mao, an energetic post-90s girl, came to Shanghai alone four years ago to work hard. Compared to the material wealth she has accumulated in these four years, she feels that her biggest asset is her family’s three cats and a dog. The reason is because of the love of pets, as well as “more shovel (shit) less shovel are to shovel, make a little extra money” self ridicule, Mao Mao’s cat foster small store has been opened to the second year.

Usually, when one fosters a cat, one will find that one’s circle of life is full of cat breeders. Maomao, who is also a cat breeder, understands cats and cat owners: even if he is not around, he hopes the cat will eat well, drink well, sleep well, and be healthy and safe.

The most important thing to do is to make sure that you have the right tools for the job, so that you can get the best out of the job.

(MaomaoMao’s beloved pet - the ragdoll cat “Little Cream”)

The Lunar New Year holiday was the peak time for MaoMao’s orders, but unlike the first year, when she had an all-comers mentality, this year she is limiting the number of boarding locations to 8 cats, so that she can observe the status and changes of each cat. MaoMao reveals that her foster service is very affordable, usually only 30 RMB a day, but it rises to 50 RMB a day during the Spring Festival and other holidays.

In the process of fostering, cat litter, cat food, canned cat food, cat snacks and other daily supplies needed by cats are provided by Mao Mao, “Actually, if you want to make money, you don’t need to do this.” This year she has a new idea to extend a new business line - door-to-door feeding.

“Filtering and adjusting orders according to the route, accepting only 5-8 appointments a day, charging $30-$50 for close proximity and $50-$60 for more than the standard distance.” Gross envisioned it this way.

**But is it really that easy? ***

Pidan’s “shady merchants make dirty money “: All over the Internet

“No matter how poor you are, your children should not be poor, and no matter how bitter you are, your cats should not be bitter. Recently, however, Wang Lu, who has two garden cats, fell into a deep sense of self-reproach.

As the Spring Festival was approaching, Wang Lu left the two cats in Shanghai because of the long distance and the fear that the cats would not be able to withstand the long journey. After many inquiries, and based on her recognition of the Pidan brand, Wang Lu finally decided on Pidan’s new service, Pidan! Pidan is a new brand of products for cats, with high value and good price.

Pidan, founded in 2016, is a new pet supply brand, specializing in high-end daily necessities for cats, which attracts a large number of cat owners with its high value and good price, and is known as the “net” in the cat world.

“But, I’m screwed.”

February 5 is the first day of the Lunar New Year, and compared to the peaceful atmosphere of joy and reunion, friends, microblogging and other social media platforms are full of groans and complaints, and even a netizen angry at Pidan founder Ma Wenfei: “Cat blood steamed bread delicious?”

It is reported that Pidan is experiencing massive order delays due to the Spring Festival orders exceeding expectations. Numerous netizens complained that Pidan seriously violated the agreement by not feeding our cats on time at all, and my two cats were deprived of food and water for more than 24 hours.

At that time, Wang Lu, who was hundreds of kilometers away, had the same problem. According to her, she followed the link to Pidan’s flagship door-to-door cat feeding service and placed an order in the app, agreeing to two door-to-door feeding services from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Feb. 5 and Feb. 8, including refilling the cat’s food, changing the water and cleaning the litter box, for 159 yuan per visit.

As new users can enjoy the “29 RMB for 159 RMB” one-time experience coupon, the order amount for the two services booked by Wang Lu was 188 RMB. Generally speaking, users of ordinary door locks can place an order for Pidan. After Care, they needed to send the key to Pidan’s staff in advance so they could get in and feed her. However, Wang Lu’s room has a smart combination lock, so this step is omitted.

(Wang Lu’s order details)

However, no Pidan staff came to feed the cats until 12:00 noon on February 5. After waiting and waiting, Wang Lu asked Pidan’s customer service via WeChat, and was told that “the order had been placed, and we would definitely arrive today”, but no one came to the door until 2:00 p.m. at the end of the agreed time.

After no one came to the door again, Wang Lu applied for a refund. After four and a half hours, Pidan finally responded and agreed to issue a refund, and the amount was returned to the account six days later.

(Record of negotiation between Wang Lu and Pidan’s customer service)

Wang immediately turned to the idle fish platform and found a person who could provide on-site feeding services. For Wang Lu, the fact that her two cats had not eaten for 24 hours was enough to make her feel guilty.

For Wang Lu, the fact that her two cats had not eaten for 24 hours was enough to make her feel guilty for a while, and the cases exposed on Weibo such as “feeding cat litter as cat food” and “putting salt in cans” were even more shocking. Wang Lu believes that the person who did this must have never owned a cat, so Pidan’s behavior is completely irresponsible.

“No diamond in the rough, don’t take on porcelain work!” “It’s a shame that I used to buy his cat products all the time!” “Making black money in the name of a beloved cat, Pidan is blacklisted!” …… Soon after, the netizens' crusade brought the once-popular brand to its knees, and the multiple apologies and statements issued by Pidan in the meantime seemed particularly weak.

(Netizens speak out via Weibo)

** Shortly thereafter, the Pidan Care service was taken offline. **

Pidan’s Methodology: The Pitch is the Pitch

The “it economy” is at the cusp, the loneliness economy is getting more and more intense, the friend circle sun cats and dogs posts increasing, these cute pet-related content in the major social media platforms to harvest waves and waves of traffic. According to some statistics, the size of China’s pet market has reached 170.6 billion yuan in 2018, with a 10-year compound growth rate of 32.8%.

When Ma Wenfei founded Pidan, he once said that the problem of individual loneliness in humans needs the company of other species to solve. This theory seems to explain why more and more people are willing to own a dog or a cat. However, when pet owners need to be away for long periods of time, their “family” is left alone.

Smart businessmen are always quick to spot a business opportunity. Seeing a need, Pidan naturally did not let go of this big fish, and with the popularity and influence that “Pidan” had built up over the years, decided to open a new service line - Pidan for Cats! Apparently, Pidan Care was rushed online without any idea of the mess it would end up in.

An anonymous veteran of the pet industry believes that Pidan’s incident was due to the fact that they were too hasty, misjudged the daily service limit for in-home observers, and overconfidently lost control.

As Wenfei Ma’s letter of apology reads: “Pidan The original intent of the Care business was to provide a product that consumers could trust with their cats. We were blindly confident and underestimated the unexpected events during the Spring Festival, which caused the actual result to be completely different from the original intention.

But perhaps this is also a hurdle that Pidan must overcome, as Ma Wenfei said in a media interview: “The essence of the methodology is shortcuts, and we don’t want to take shortcuts.

**Does door-to-door feeding work? ***

On the other end of the spectrum, Cat Toto, a Beijing-based chain of hotels dedicated to cats, has thought about launching a door-to-door cat feeding service, but after much consideration, it still feels that the time is not right. Founder Le Qian believes that door-to-door feeding is a good idea, but there are many obstacles to getting it right.

One of them is the issue of manpower distribution. It is important to acknowledge that both the pet hotel and the door-to-door feeding, there is an obvious “tidal” nature of the business, which means that the amount of orders is moderate in normal times, but will increase several times during the holidays. As a result, organizing manpower becomes a big problem.

“Usually do not need too much manpower, but not enough people on holidays, and temporary recruitment of part-time staff, professionalism is difficult to meet.” In addition, it is important to have a scientific and reasonable manpower reserve and deployment, which is the first problem to solve. At the same time, personnel training and assessment and other management processes are also worthy of in-depth study and integration.

In addition, the risk of users and brands in the home feeding process. Due to the special nature of door-to-door feeding, service providers need to enter the user’s home alone, so the user’s finances and other household goods are at risk. On the other hand, how do we protect the platform’s rights when the user returns and for no reason blames the brand or the platform? There are too many possibilities in this.

To this Le Qian believes: “These risks are actually signed in the early stages of some terms of the treaty to disclaim liability, to some extent can reduce the legal risk, but I think the service industry should not only consider the legal issues, or perhaps more on the reputation.” As the saying goes, good things come to those who don’t.

Most importantly, there is the issue of health risks to the cats themselves. Cats are extremely sensitive animals, and even if there is no change of environment, their psychology may change when their owners are away for many days, and they may even experience stress reactions and disease mutations.

Therefore, when there are any health problems with cats during the feeding process, how the staff responds and whether the platform is responsible are all topics that need to be discussed repeatedly.

Likewise, Ren Zhaobin, founder of It Island, a pet hotel brand, is also taking a wait-and-see attitude. In his opinion, there are too many difficulties that need to be overcome for home feeding of pets.

**Family fostering vs. pet hotel, who’s better? ***

When she heard about the Pidan case, Fluffy was outraged and really felt bad for the cats who were suffering. But as far as pet boarding is concerned, she is not the only one who sees opportunities. With the development of China’s pet market, pet boarding has also ushered in a consumption upgrade, and exclusive pet hotels have started to appear in the market, focusing on high-end users and seeking to upgrade their services.

In the face of competition from different businesses in the market, Maomao doesn’t seem to be worried about her family’s foster care business. According to the data, 38% of Chinese cat owners are young people born in 1988-1993, 26% are office workers born in 1983-1987, and 20% are middle-aged people who had families in 1973-1983.

Among them, most of the pet owners are financially limited, and high-grade pet hotels can cost as little as 100 yuan a day or as much as several hundred yuan, while family foster care is affordable and the preferred option for many young owners.

But from the perspective of pet hotel operators, family foster care is not an optimistic solution,” Leqian told Huyun.com. But from the perspective of pet hotel operators, family foster care is not an optimistic solution, Leqian told Huntingcloud.com, because there are not too many costs of family foster care, “cheap” is the biggest advantage. The flip side of the coin is that as many cats live together in a family foster home, if one cat gets sick, the chance of the other cats being infected is very high, so there are many potential pitfalls in family foster care.

At the same time, family fosterers do not sign relevant procedures and contracts with clients when they start their business, and they do not have the professional ability to guarantee the health problems of cats that occur during the foster process.

On the other hand, each room in a pet hotel is equipped with a 24-hour online smart camera, so owners can check the cat’s movement through their mobile devices at any time and from any place, giving them a greater sense of security. Family foster care, on the other hand, is usually filmed and sent to the user by the staff themselves due to privacy issues.

In this regard, hunting cloud net has experienced a pet cat exclusive hotel in Shanghai, the store only receives 5 months to 10 years of age between the cat, and the owner must provide proof of vaccination within the validity period, as well as deworming records for the past month.

The store manager told Hunting clouds, for the check immunization thing, some people feel the trouble, some people feel redundant, after all, pet foster standardization and most of the current domestic foster environment is contradictory, many people have been accustomed to the hassle and convenience of foster care, forgetting that safety is the first.

“We don’t slack off in checking vaccines and basic skin health status of cats before they move into hotels. Ensuring the safety of your pet’s boarding is not only about routine care and daily nursing, but also about risk management. Checking vaccinations is only the first and most important step.”

It Island has gone a long way in standardizing its daily processes, as founder Ren Zhaobin explains, “We collect all the cases we encounter on a daily basis, and then tailor the process to suit the situation, continuously developing and revising the process.”

It is said that in addition to pet identification and health certificates, when checking out, It Island also adds a procedure: confirming with the owner that the pet is healthy and normal when leaving the store, and signing an agreement. In this way, it eliminates any disputes that may arise later.

In addition, based on the professional boarding scene, pet hotels also provide additional services such as pet bathing and pet supplies, which meet the needs of pets and pet owners in many ways, and also bring more channels of revenue. As for the health risks of pets, large pet hotels are usually equipped with professional veterinarians, while small pet hotels cooperate with nearby veterinary hospitals, which is a win-win situation for both parties.

As you can see, there are advantages and disadvantages to both the family foster care and pet hotel models. The most important thing to do is to make sure that you have the right tools to do what you need to do to get the job done.

** warm water to boil a frog, how to break out of the pet business? ***

“really understand the pet market capital is rare, this industry is difficult to do, the investment is also like a ‘warm water boiled frog’, after a step did not go out of business, or else they later died and went out of business, or else has been tepid.” In a pet economy sharing conference, Ma Wenfei has lamented about pet capital investment.

In fact, in the industry ceiling has not yet appeared, the figure of the giant has not yet appeared in the industry status quo, the pet economy, the track numerous entrants, but most of them stay in the Series A before.

In addition to the fact that you can’t find a lot of people who are not in a position to get a lot of money, you can also find a lot of people who are not in a position to get a lot of money.

So, entrepreneurs want to get into the pet economy, and how to break out?

Ai Xiao, a senior investment manager at Qingshan Capital, shared in “Pets - What Investors Say” that from an industry perspective, the pet market segment would be an ideal entry point. As to how to choose a market segment, Ai Xiao believes that the entry point should have the following three elements.

1. The market segment should be large enough: if the industry is too small, there is limited space to break through.

2. Competitive status of market segments: relative