The things I forget about Critter Cabana...

Not to toot our own horn, but we truly have a great store. Every once in a while Brittani, Scott and I, do an I-5 tour up into Washington looking at all the different pet stores out there. I remember when we first opened Critter Cabana these trips could be overwhelming to the point where we would come home 50% super excited to execute some new ideas and 50% depressed at how much work we had ahead of us. In this most recent trip, my experience was quite different.

I have an appreciation for any independent pet store, we are held to MUCH higher standards than our big box competitors and for good reason, the ways in which both their customers and animals are treated is B grade at best. However, it is still necessary to maintain our prices at a level that delivers good value.

Anyway, an independent pet store owner has to make sacrfices to stay in business, and for someone attached their business its painful to make sacrfices. Every surviving pet store out there has some sort of model for staying in business, somewhere along the line they've figured out the sacrifices that need to be made in order to make a living. I found two general categories, some pet stores have animals, but sacrifice image, location, and sometimes more in order to support the staff necessary to keep minimal standards for these animals. Unfornately, when a store has poor image, poor location, etc they find themselves hurting for the resources to take care of the business. On the other hand there are the stores that sacrifice the maintenance of animals and don't sacrfice on image or location. These stores are always much more stylish, trendy, and in hot locations. But they never have animals, its usually a "too cool for Sunday school" urbanite reading behind the counter while you try to figure out which of the 20 different varieties of holistic, organic, and uber premium dog foods is best for you.

My tour of the area revealed both of these store models, and I have yet to find a model that combines the two quite as well as we do. I think both myself, our employees, and our customers its easy to get complacent about what we've accomplished. The truth is that you can't find a pet store anywhere thats like ours... the best of both worlds. Friendly, truly knowledgeable and helpful staff, great prices, a fun environment, healthy pet foods, quality products, the highest quality standards for our animals, in a beautiful historic downtown local building...

We are truly fantastic, and I stand behind it encouraging anyone reading this to do their own pet store tours. You don't only have friend in Critter Cabana, you have the best value pet store out there. We care about getting you what you want, we care about serving our community, and we nurture this business like a newborn child... (although we do have a newborn in the family too). You won't find us flawless, but you will find a store with character, substance, beauty and value... what more could a Newbergian ask for? (Other than a drive-in... wait... we have that too!)
We love you Newberg and we want nothing more than for you to love us back... and for all those who do love us... you rock, thanks.