Founder of JungleChief, Jeremy Welch, talks about his journey of starting, running and selling his petcare service businesses. Through starting with daycare, launching boarding and grooming, having to eventually build their own premises and then selling the business. This is his story, warts and all.
The idea of a pet daycare centre, didn’t start with a big business plan. It started with frustration. To be fair, the idea had been floating around for years — one of those “one day” dreams that sits quietly in the background.
But what actually pushed me over the edge was something much simpler.
I took our two dogs to daycare one morning — a place my wife Mandy and I had trusted for years under the previous owner. It had been great. The dogs were happy. The service was good. We felt comfortable.
Then it was sold. And on day one under the new ownership, everything changed.
I walked in to pick up our dogs… and no one spoke to me. No greeting. No eye contact. Nothing. I literally leaned over the fence, picked up both of our dogs, and walked out the door without saying a word to anyone.
And that was the moment.
Because if I could pick up my dogs without anyone noticing … anyone could. Nothing stopped me. No check. No system. No awareness. That was the first and last time I went there. Not long after, one of the staff members — an absolutely fantastic lady who genuinely cared about the dogs — was let go.
We approached her privately and asked if she’d look after our dogs instead. She started picking them up, walking them, and doing little daycare sessions either at our place or hers. Within two weeks, other dog owners were contacting her. She couldn’t take on any more work but she told us about it.
It became very clear, very quickly — there was a need. We decided if we were going to start our own dog daycare centre, it was now or never.
It was November and we were off. 4 Small Paws was born, but there were a lot of questions we still needed to answer:
Where would we have a dog daycare?
Would the council approve it?
Will a landlord lease to us?
And most importantly, could we afford it?
I made a running spreadsheet with every every cost balanced against a changeable income calculation so I could shift daycare cost and numbers to see the effect. It looked like we could make it work. We live in Upper Hutt, Wellington and so that’s where we planned to have our dog daycare and started by looking to rent a suitable space. But finding a landlord willing to lease a building for a dog daycare — with outdoor space — was incredibly difficult. There were false starts. Landlords who led us along but never intended to sign. Buildings we loved that council said “absolutely not” to. Eventually, we ended up in what used to be the cafeteria of a lino factory. It was certainly not glamorous. But we had our location.
It had barely any grass and it didn’t have any fencing. We had to build fencing. We had to completely kit out the inside. When I say “we had to build fencing,” I don’t mean we got contractors in. There was no money for that. It was me and Dad. Tools out. Figuring it out as we went.
To be continued…
