Creative retail campaigns: Healthy Pet Store

Healthy Pet Store created an exciting campaign to capture potential customers’ imaginations, showcasing products in an innovative way.

Modern Retail had the pleasure of speaking with the team at Healthy Pet Store about their dog ‘catwalk’ campaign, as well as giving top tips for retailers to generate engagement with new products and retail campaigns.

1. How did Healthy Pet Store begin and how has it evolved since you first opened?

Healthy Pet Store was first launched in 2014 to provide a huge wealth of nutritious frozen food to improve the health and wellbeing of meat-eating pets. Each week Healthy Pet Store sells ten tonnes of frozen meals and this figure is continuing to grow. 

Due to the success of Healthy Pet Store, managing director Deborah Burrows saw an opportunity to expand the business and moved to a much larger outlet in 2020 during the middle of the pandemic. The pet food and accessory retailer is now a local hub for nutritious food and dog-friendly training gear and it is cemented within a community of pet-lovers – both cats and dogs. 

The store is up 50% on sales in comparison to last year and has an on average 8 brand new customers a week. It is now open until 8pm due to demand.

Healthy Pet Store also offers a local delivery service and now offers deliveries to the Isle of Wight. 

2. Tell us more about your idea to launch a dog ‘catwalk’ to show off your new Autumn and Winter range of dog coats from Pomppa.

Healthy Pet Store wanted to reflect Pomppa’s high-end, dog-centric fashion wear persona and created a red carpet ‘catwalk’ to showcase the new launch of the Autumn/Winter jackets. Instead of just telling customers about the new jackets and its features, Healthy Pet Store wanted to show customers why the jackets are a brilliant purchase and how fantastic they look on different sized dogs in a range of colours. 

With a focus on increasing average basket spend, Healthy Pet Store decided to promote the Pomppa coats because they are a high-end product but still very popular. The aim of the catwalk was to show customers beautiful photos of the trendy jackets with the hope it would drive more traffic into the shop and spark interest in the Pomppa coats. 

3. What was the reception like to this fantastic idea?

The catwalk received much attention from passersby and visiting customers of the shop with people even asking if their dogs could take part. Viewers also asked if there would be any future catwalks, either showcasing the Pomppa coats or different products. 

The caregivers were very excited about their pets taking part and are delighted with the images that have come from the photoshoot. 

4. What would your top tips be for retailers wanting to generate a similar amount of excitement around their products?

Create lots of hype on social media and your website which tells a story about a product. Instead of posting about a product once and leaving it for a few months, feature one product multiple times throughout a month to create a story and a buzz. This will make your customers excited about a product and wanting to find out more – hopefully leading to more sales. 

Try to think outside of the box too. Rather than posting a picture of a product hanging up in your shop, try to be creative with your photos such as creating lifestyle imagery which show people or animals in a real-life. This can be far more engaging for your audience and helps to tell the story. 

5. What’s next for Healthy Pet Store and how can our readers stay up to date?

Healthy Pet Store is focusing on growth and readers can keep up to date by following its social media channels. 

Facebook – @healthypetstorehq
Instagram – @healthypetstore
Twitter – @HealthyPetHQ

Visit the Healthy Pet Store website here: https://healthypetstore.co.uk

Get started on your own creative retail campaigns

It’s time to launch your own creative retail campaigns. Think about ways that you can capture your customers’ attention through exciting uses of products and lifestyle imagery or events.

One of the main benefits of designing exciting retail campaigns is that you can make your brand more memorable, as well as growing reach through word of mouth, local press and other platforms such as social media.

A great starting point for any creative retail campaigns is to think about the ways your products are used and the things that your customers are passionate about, looking for synergy and using this to shape your own retail campaigns.