![]() ![]() We hired a veterinarian to help us educate every Muddy on the basics of dog and cat physiology, nutrition and behavior. Every month, we found new, well-made supplies for dogs and cats-many from tiny cottage industries and many made within the Pacific Northwest.Īs we continued to grow, we worked on becoming better at helping people choose healthy foods for their dogs and cats. ![]() In 2007, we tripled the size of our distribution center to accommodate the hundreds of manufacturers Mud Bay buys from. In 2003, we opened our own distribution center to improve our ability to source directly from the smallest and the best manufacturers we could find. ![]() Improving Distribution and Education: 2003 – 2012 The turnaround took more than two years, but by the end of 2002, Mud Bay was a profitable company of eighty-five people who were contributing to the health of dogs and cats and the happiness of their owners in nine neighborhood stores around Puget Sound. The process of turning these stores into Mud Bays began with giving staff the kind of education in dog and cat physiology, nutrition and the pet food industry that would enable them to help owners choose the right foods for their animals.įrom education, we moved to inventory, phasing out lower quality, less natural products-and products for animals other than dogs and cats-to make room for a deeper selection of natural foods and supplies. When Mud Bay learned that these stores were about to close, we saw the opportunity to save sixty jobs and eight neighborhood stores-and to take our approach to healthy nutrition for dogs and cats to Seattle. In the summer of 2000, Seattle’s largest chain of small format pet stores became insolvent. Instead of trying to be everything to everyone, Mud Bay focused on using natural food and accurate information to contribute to the health of dogs and cats and the happiness of the people who care for them. By 1999, Mud Bay had become one of the pioneers of natural pet care and sales had quadrupled. Mud Bay’s focus on consumer education and healthy foods for dogs and cats worked. Sifting facts and opinions, we trained staff members and wrote booklets to help Mud Bay’s customers make informed decisions about what to feed their dogs and cats. We quickly recognized that giving people accurate information was just as important as providing them with healthy foods. We even rented a local bagel bakery on Friday nights and used their oven to bake our own organic dog cookies. The healthiest dog biscuits we could find were made by a little company on Long Island, so we shipped them across the country. The foods and supplies we wanted weren’t carried by local distributors. Instead, we focused our efforts on researching canine and feline nutrition and on searching for healthy, natural foods for dogs and cats and other animals. With a tiny facility surrounded by farms that were giving way to housing developments, Mud Bay realized that it was unlikely that we could excel at selling fertilizer and farm feed. ![]() Elsa’s youngest daughter, Marisa, returned from Holland, where she had just finished an MBA, and joined the effort in 1993. Recognizing that his mother couldn’t afford for the business to fail, Elsa’s son Lars became Mud Bay’s third employee in 1989. The store was housed in an eighty-year old building on Mud Bay Road, which runs west out of Olympia and spans the bottom end of Mud Bay, one of the southern arms of Puget Sound.Įarly on, Mud Bay sold a little of just about everything, from locally grown oysters, pop tarts and folk art to hog feed, fertilizer and hay. Mud Bay began in 1988 when Elsa Wulff bought a tiny farm store. ![]()
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