Paws & Purpose: Building Community in Pet Franchising with Michelle Sandonato

**SPEAKER_2** (0:04)
The Bliss Business Podcast, the show about empathy, connection and consciousness in business. Today's episode is brought to you by Zero Company, your paid search, social media, and programmatic ad experts.

**Stephen Sakach** (0:17)
Welcome back to the show, everyone. I'm Stephen Sakach here with my co-host, Tullio Siragusa, and we've got a special guest who we'll introduce in a moment. So Petcare is one of the most emotional and relationship-driven industries in business. And for many people, a dog is not simply a pet, it is family. So when it comes to a customer walking into a grooming business, they're not only looking for convenience or what's on the service menu, they're looking for trust, safety, and care. And so today we are exploring building community and connection in the modern pet care industry.
Tullio, introduce our guest today.

**Tullio Siragusa** (0:56)
My pleasure. Our guest today is Michelle Sandonato. She's the co-founder and president of Bowie Barker Bath and Groomerie.
Bowie Barker is a modern dog grooming brand offering personalized services for every pup, including full service grooming, self-service wash stations, health checks, sustainable products, all natural treats and toys, and a convenient app-based experience. Founded in Los Angeles, California, Bowie Barker opened its flagship store in West Hollywood in 2022 and was created to update the traditional dog grooming experience through thoughtful design, technology, membership-based care, and high-quality services dog owners can trust. Michelle brings deep experience in strategy, guest experience, and franchising, including previous leadership work with the Now Massage and Sky Zone. Michelle, welcome to The Bliss Business Podcast. We love talking pet franchises. We love pets.

**Michelle Sandonato** (2:01)
Same, by the way.

**Stephen Sakach** (2:04)
Michelle, so your business is born out of the need for high-quality care that dog owners can trust. What did you see like the traditional grooming experience that needed to be reimagined?

**Michelle Sandonato** (2:16)
Yeah, I mean, that is truly where this whole concept came from. I think all great brands like see a hole or see a problem and prevent a solution. For us, it was around COVID time and I used to take my dog to a local chain here and it was a fine experience.
It was six weeks to get in, if you remember, during that time period though, because everyone was getting dogs and it just was very transactional. They never felt great and my dog would literally put on the brakes. He was a Cocker Spaniel, that's what I had at the time, and I would have to carry him in. As a pet parent, you go, what's happening back there? Again, I didn't think anything bad was, but I also didn't think that they were really connecting with my pup in a way that made him want to come back. That was really the basis and a lot of people, all my partners and I had that same experiences with our pups. That was really what we said, is there a way to create a more stress-free environment, not only for the pet parent, but also for the pet itself? Now, you're never going to take the stress completely out of grooming for the dog, but can we make it a little bit better and make it the place that dogs want to come into? That's really where Bowie Barker came from, was we did a lot of guest surveys and found out that really it was the stress that was preventing people from even taking their dog to get groomed. The stress that they felt, the stress that they felt their dog felt.
We designed premium space and a lot of little touch points along the way, including using just some modern technologies to make the pet parents less stressed and also the pet less stressed.

**Tullio Siragusa** (3:51)
Now, pet care, let's admit, it's deeply emotional because dogs are family. How does empathy shape the way Bowie Barker thinks about grooming, wellness, and the customer experience? Tell us a little bit about that.

**Michelle Sandonato** (4:09)
Yeah, great question. So on the empathy side, we hire dog lovers first. First and foremost, every person we hire has to be a dog lover. And that sounds obvious, of course, you're hiring dog lovers. That's not always the case in this industry.
But we figure we can train skill, but we bring every single person in from the front desk to the bathers and the groomers. And this also goes, of course, with our franchise partners. But we watch how they interact with dogs. We make them go through a bathing practical, a grooming practical, because if they are dog lovers first and they love the dog and the parent sees that love, the parent's going to trust us, the dog's going to trust us, and the experience is going to be much better. And so that's really where that empathy comes in, is making sure that these are true dogs. They don't have to have a dog, but they have to love dogs and be able to understand what that parent might be going through and what that dog might be going through as well.