Dog groomer

A lifelong love of animals and a head for business has seen Chris Taylor build one of the world’s most successful mobile dog grooming franchises, Aussie Pooch Mobile.

Pooch pampering has taken the world by storm in recent years and 36-year-old Chris Taylor from Burpengary, Queensland, is definitely one of those leading the way. In fact, she’s been doing so ever since she came up with the bright idea of turning her love of dogs into a dog washing business at the age of 16. Twenty years on, Chris now runs Aussie Pooch Mobile, one of the world’s largest mobile dog grooming companies, and has just won the 2005 ‘Australian Women in Franchising’ award. As she begins to expand into the demanding UK and US markets, Chris still manages to raise her young family, enjoy time with friends, and pamper her own menagerie of dogs, horses, cats, birds, chooks and ducks.

6am: Chris and son Daniel, eight, leave for their daily walk with border collie ‘AJ’ through the sleepy rural streets of Burpengary, just north of Brisbane. “It’s easy for me to get out of bed early because I feel so grateful for every day I walk on this earth,” says Chris, who underwent back surgery for an old skiing injury two years ago and can now finally walk without pain. A couple of times a week she attends a Pilates class, to help keep up the strength in her back and relieve the stress of her busy life.

7am: Chris and Daniel return to their five-acre property, which could well be mistaken for the home of Dr Dolittle, as the King Charles spaniel named Sally, the cat named Vinegar, the lorikeet named Lori, two horses named Cheeky and Swampy, and about a dozen ducks and chickens all descend upon them as they enter the yard. “I love all the animals. They can be hard work at times but it’s great to have them all over the place,” Chris says with a grin. The pair are also greeted by Chris’ husband David and 13-year-old daughter Brooke, who are preparing for the day ahead.

7.30am: After the family feeds most of the animals, they head into the kitchen for breakfast before the school bus arrives at 8am. “The bus comes to the door, which is so handy because it saves the kids having to walk to a bus stop or me having to drive them.”

8.30am: Chris and David tidy up the kitchen and then head into their home office to start the working day by checking their respective emails. David joined Chris in the company a few years ago and is now in charge of ‘systems’. “We have very separate roles and he makes sure everything is running smoothly, from the computer systems to the stock and the machinery... He handles it all so well that I don’t need to worry about that side of the business at all,” Chris explains. 

9.30am: The couple sometimes works from home for the day, but most days Chris goes in to work at the Aussie Pooch Mobile headquarters just a few minutes down the road. “The office is good for me. It keeps work and home life a little more separate even though I do work from home quite a bit,” says Chris.
“I think it’s good for the staff as well because we feel more like a team when we’re all bouncing off each other in the office.” The atmosphere is fun, bright, simple and energetic, which is testament to Chris’ approach to work. “We know what we do and we love what we do and that makes all the difference,” she says. “We do something that makes another living thing feel good so the vibe throughout the company is a pretty positive one.”

It was this positive vibe that enticed Chris into the pooch pampering trade when she was a young teenager. “I used to do a bit of work experience at a dog grooming parlour when I was fifteen and I just loved working with the animals. It was so much fun and very cute to see them come in a bit messy and go home looking and smelling so good,” she laughs. By the time she was 16, Chris had an inclination that there might be something to this dog grooming thing. A few fateful signposts guided her to a decision that would change not only her life, but the dog grooming industry forever.

“I was in Year 11 at school, but I was thinking of leaving so my parents suggested I help run the family business, which was a bait and tackle shop,” she explains. A few months later however, Chris’ parents decided to sell the shop and Chris was left wondering what she should do with her life. “I knew I wanted to go into business rather than work for someone else, but I wasn’t sure about exactly what to do,” she says. “Then, one day it just dawned on me that the dog grooming parlour I was working for part-time was overloaded and I went home and simply told Mum and Dad that I was going to start my own dog grooming parlour in the backyard!”

“I didn’t think too much about it at the time. I was too young and naïve and you don’t think about things like business risks when you’re younger... You have no experience of failure and nothing to lose so you just go for it, or at least that’s what I did.” In the years that followed, Chris tried her hand at a number of pet care businesses including a pet store, boarding kennels, dog salon, along with a non-animal related answering service. “I was always coming up with ideas for businesses and it really honed my skills in knowing what works and what doesn’t, early on.”

10am: Chris and David might have a meeting with their warehouse manager, Kerry, who distributes the company’s specially designed dog washing trailers, along with a growing supply of dog grooming and healthcare products, uniforms and equipment to the company’s ever increasing fleet of franchisees throughout Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, New Caledonia, the UK and the US. Chris now has over 165 franchisees worldwide. “We wash around 30,000 dogs a month just in Australia,” laughs Chris, who still can’t believe how enormous the company has become. “There are smaller, individual operators, but nobody who’s doing it in the structured, uniformed way we do,” she says.

11am: David leaves to meet with the supplier who builds the Aussie Pooch Mobile trailer units and Chris heads to her office for a meeting with office and support manager Tracy Sullivan. She then has a phone conference with one of her state support managers, who are responsible for managing, training and supporting all the franchisees in each state. She’ll talk to each manager around three times a week and flies interstate for focus meetings with all the managers every six to eight weeks. Chris also meets with her national sales manager, who is based in Sydney, every couple of months. Every year, she conducts a seminar for all 165 franchisees and will also need to travel overseas at least a couple of times a year now that she’s broken into the US and UK markets. “The UK is our fastest growing market at the moment and the US is about to follow now that the pilot operation is complete. It’s exciting to know that I’ll be travelling around the US and UK, but it’s also another thing I have to learn to juggle... but I have great support staff and I know we’ll be able to balance it all.”

12.30pm: Chris and her staff try to head up the road to the local pub for lunch at least once a week and Chris relishes the chance to relax with the people she has come to know more as friends than staff. “I love socialising with everyone from work,” she says. “I started this business because I wanted a flexible working life and
I don’t ever want to let that go. Our work takes up a big portion of our lives so it has to be fun. It can’t be all hard slog,” she says.

1.30pm: If she’s not flying interstate, Chris will spend the afternoon out on the road, meeting with her managers or helping to train new franchisees in the company’s tried and tested methods of dog washing. “I love that part of the job. It’s the reason I started doing this in the first place,” she says. “I love animals and when you’re doing something that makes another living creature feel better, it makes you feel something special.” She is adamant about the attitude of her franchisees and encourages them to have a holistic approach to caring for the animals they treat. “We go through a fairly extensive interview process to make sure their hearts are in the right place,” she says. “We use healthy products on the dogs and because we’re massaging them, we’re sometimes the first ones to notice if there’s anything wrong with them. If there’s any unusual lumps or infections we alert the owners and recommend a trip to the vet.”

To find out more about Aussie Pooch Mobile, call 1300 369 369 or visit www.aussiepm.com.au.

 

Words: Linda Peatling. Photography: Scott Hawkins. Hair & make-up: David Novak-Piper.