Roughly five years ago, Michael Caldwell noticed a wave of digital marketplaces covering a variety of sectors — but one area where he could not locate a marketplace involved vendor services for pet care.
“What I saw was an opportunity to create a marketplace for pet services outside of what was already being addressed,” he recalled. “When I look back in 2017, there was a couple apps that helped you find a dog walker or pet sitter, but I started to see more and more categories of pet services that were that people were hiring for.
“This was part of the trend of the humanization of pets, with people caring for their pets more and more like children,” he added. “They were looking for different types of pet care services, but it was all over the place — there wasn’t a nice one-stop shop that you could find them all in one place online.”
Caldwell was no stranger to the online marketplace environment — back in 1997, he teamed with Kevin Kinyon to launch GigMasters, a Norwalk-headquartered resource that connected entertainers with party planners and organizers of corporate and public events. Caldwell and Kinyon sold GigMasters in 2015 to XO Group, which later merged with the wedding planner resource The Knot.
Caldwell and Kinyon launched their pet-focused endeavor, Petworks, in Ridgefield in 2019. Petworks covered the country with services listed for the major metro areas in each state. Jonathan Krausche, who was brought on as chief development office, pointed out that Petworks spread its digital net as wide as possible.
“One of the key differentiating factors for Petworks is that we’re trying to capture a pet parent anywhere in the lifecycle and have them as a member for the next need they might have,” he stated. “So, you might have pet training and a pet nutritionist early on, but as they become teenagers you might need pet sitting or dog walking. Then, as they move towards the end of life, you might need some specialists — you might want to actually get a pet portrait done because you’re starting to get ready for passing grief counseling. And we do have euthanasia as a category as well, so it’s the whole life cycle.”
Krausche added that approach was designed to build lifelong subscribers because “most pet parents get to another pet after” one passes away. Pet parents can join at no cost and the platform already has about 20,000 signed up.
Petworks also has 5,500 pet-focused professionals listed online, with Kinyon noting that the Covid-19 pandemic had an interesting twist to one category’s popularity.
“The wellness category is the biggest benefit of that because, much like many people, pets started getting physicals with their doctor online,” Kinyon said. “Telehealth became so much more popular — we saw an uptick in national presence there than in most of those categories.”
For pet-focused professionals who are interested in getting listed on Petworks, Caldwell described his service as a “freemium” platform.
“You’re welcome to join, no strings attached, and you don’t have to pay us anything,” he said. “For that, you get a one-page listing, which is essentially your bio and everything else that you do. To generate revenue, we offer you premium placement — you can upgrade your membership at any time, we’ll put you up higher, and you’re going to get more parents contacting you. So, it’s sort of like you’re going to get a good taste of what we do, and you’re going to get some success —and then we hopefully say, ‘Hey, you want more success? Here’s what it would cost you.’”
Still, not everyone can just sign up — Petworks conducts vetting to make sure the listed professionals meet their local and industry licensing requirements and certifications.
While Petworks offers categories for pet nutritionists, it does not sell food.
“We built the model originally on services — we saw that there was a need in services,” Krausche said. “There were already the massive players like Chewy, so food isn’t on our future roadmap.”
Petworks has been promoting itself via digital advertising on Google and Facebook and through social media marketing. The company has been actively fundraising to expand its liquidity, and Caldwell envisioned the possibility of going public as something that “would be an amazing outcome,” although he has more pressing matters to address.
“To be honest with you, right now we’re so focused on just building this thing out and our immediate goal is to find a strategic partner with expertise in either the pet or the platform space, or both, to help us ramp up that funding so that we can build out the functionality that we want, increase the reach, and ramp up our premium features,” he said. “That’s really our main focus.”
