We're all about cats. And since you're here, we guess you are too!
Our journey began in Nancy's garage in 2017. Looking back at our modest beginnings, we're proud of how far we've come in such a short time because we fell into this business pretty much by accident.
She and I were regularly ordering products for ourselves (and all of our cats), but it wasn’t long before our friends started noticing them. We lost count of the number of times we heard:
until Nancy wondered out loud whether we shouldn't be circulating an email before every order figuring that it might streamline our retail therapy and help our friends at the same time. Well, it certainly did - at first.
What started out as a small weekly buying cooperative (in a space previously occupied by a car, using a personal email account, a beat-up laptop computer and a recycled whiteboard) snowballed into a subscription list of more than ten thousand! It took us 6 months to reach this milestone without us trying at all – we were simply keeping our friends satisfied and happily making new ones along the way.
And even though it was hard work chasing people to meet deadlines, processing and double-checking the hundreds of payments that went into each order, facilitating shipping and pickups, dealing with suppliers etc, the sense of community made it worth it for us. We stuck at it for nearly a year (and another 8,000 subscribers) before realizing that something would have to change: our little cooperative wasn’t local any more. And it was no longer little.
The email list had spread all over the country. We were spending nearly all of our time reading and replying to emails, often 3,000 in a single week! The final straw was our first international order. In the middle of the controlled chaos of closing out a weekly order, we had to get down and dirty with international shipping.
This was the point at which we agreed we had outgrown our business model.
We brainstormed options with our families. The one that made most sense was to centralize our operations into an online store so that we could dispense with our overflowing email infrastructure. This was the right decision in our opinion. The new platform has empowered us to refocus on what we do best and has automated the drudgery of our old order process. All of our friends from the old business model stuck with us as we made the transition and many have commented on the ease and simplicity of the new, modern layout. This makes us very happy. Our ranges are always expanding (faster now that we have our time back), but quality remains unsurpassed. We stand behind the products we sell, mostly because we use them ourselves.
After the stressful cut-over, and now using the power of our e-Commerce engine, we have been able to fulfill the mission we set ourselves when we launched our little buying club in 2017: to provide our friends with an unparalleled feline-related shopping experience, bringing together our exceptional customer service, great merchandise and affordable prices in one convenient place. We publish regular newsletters containing interesting, in-depth articles about cats and their care, and have dedicated a small section of it to showcasing our new releases, competitions and money-saving special offers. It's simple to subscribe (and just as easy to drop off if you find it's not for you): just look for the Newsletter section at the bottom of any page.
We work closely with our manufacturers and vendors to provide you with quality products minus the usual high markups. All products are backed by a 30-day money-back guarantee, so buying from us is as close to risk-free as you can get.
In addition, our new platform has also allowed us to launch an exclusive rewards program. We’ve called it SofistiRewards, and it unlocks an all-access pass to exclusive rewards and perks in store. You can:
Earn valuable rewards every time you buy.
Unlock discounts for both you and your friends when referring our store.
Earn rewards for social media Shares and Likes.
Earn rewards on your birthday.
Earn Bonus reward points on signup... and more.
You'll find the SofistiRewards icon on every page, so it's very easy to get to. Join our loyal kitty-customer community to stay informed about everything that goes on in our corner of Planet Cat. We would be honored to have you aboard!
Gosh! When we think back to how our email lists used to work before we scaled to eCommerce... Those were the bad old days!
Linda Deane, storyteller and chief scribe of Planet Cat
