Pedigree News
Industry Profile PBW News
Published: 05/2009
Wholesale service
Pedigree Wholesale can list an impressive array of facts and figures to demonstrate why it is a leading pet business but the company believes the real reason it ticks all the right boxes is its focus on people – both its own staff and, more importantly, its customers.
Pedigree Wholesale have been successfully serving the independent pet & aquatic retail sector for nearly 40 years and can in fact trace its roots in the pet trade all the way back to 1926 when William (Billy) Brown started a boarding kennels at Gamston, near Nottingham. It was Billy’s son Ken who then saw an opportunity to not only provide quality boarding for their customers pets but to also breed pedigree dogs with the highest welfare standards for supply to the public. Ken, whose desire to do the very best for his animals and customers alike, also had the foresight to provide insurance to cover the puppies sold from the kennels. The formation of the ‘Pedigree Livestock Insurance’ company in 1963 helped shape the pet insurance market as we know it today. In 1970 and after a spell working at the family kennels, Ken’s son Terry together with a colleague Derek Slater, started their own business, a pet products wholesale business, servicing local pet shops. The business started in a rented hanger on Tollerton aerodrome with Terry & Derek visiting customers to take orders one day and then picking and delivering them the following day in a 3 tonne Ford lorry. To provide the best possible products even at this early stage, they mixed their own bird seed on the floor of the hanger with a shovel and spade, and packed peanuts in nets at home. The following year a 4,000 sq ft warehouse was built at the back of the Kennels site and they took on their first member of staff, a delivery driver.
Through lots of hard work and a real desire to please their customers, Pedigree Wholesale continued to successfully develop and grow, extending their geographical reach throughout the UK by opening brand new depots and acquiring competitor family owned wholesalers. The completion of a new £1.5m 22,000sqft purpose built warehouse and aquatic centre on the original Gamston site (In addition to the 43,000sq ft warehouse currently on site) today makes Pedigree Wholesale one of the leading suppliers of pet and aquatic products, including live fish into the UK independent retail sector.
