Pretentious Pooch attends the Backer Convention

Last Saturday and Sunday we attended the annual Backer Convention for the pet industry at the Baltimore Convention Center.  The convention had the fewest vendors showing product highlights since we started going.  I fear this Baltimore convention will not around many more years.  It moved to Baltimore from Atlantic City (I guess because of the International Airport accessibility).  They hold the same convention in Chicago and I don't think it will be long until the Baltimore version is eliminated.

Cheers

Here is what we liked and would like to bring in the store:

Rescue Pet pet toys - not the sturdiest of toys but very cute and a portion of the proceeds go to helping shelter pets.

Purse Poop Bags - these pretentious poop bag dispensers (if there is such a thing) are very Pretentious Pooch worthy.

T-Shirts - we found a production company that will produce our custom designs on doggie T-Shirts

Apparel - we found a unique, full size range, supplier that is moderately prices.  We want to bring back more clothing options.

Jeers

Distributors.  It's easy to get sucked in to the vortex of distributors.  These handy but mundane suppliers offer a lot of products but stop at every pet store in town resulting in a crossover of products between Dogma, Howl (Chow! Baby), Lucky Lucy's, Doggie Style, Pet Depot, PetSmart, Pet-Co.  Getting pet food from a distributor is almost essential but we really have to lay-off some of the other things they deliver.  We prefer to find small independent manufacturers when possible.

Yellow Dog Design for eliminating their Ultra Dog tough line.

The retractable leash/pooper picker upper that looked like a machine gun and had telescoping grabber, and flashlight. We'll leave that one for the supply house people.  Good luck to you on that one.

We're glad we attended the convention.  We got a chance to talk to our current vendors about what is new and what is being discontinued, find some new products for the store, and see what else is out there.  Pretentious Pooch is in a serious square footage crunch.  We have to think seriously about what we bring in to the store because every square inch counts.

Tom Berger

Pretentious Pooch

Baltimore Pet Store

1017 Cathedral Street

Baltimore, MD 21201

443-524-7777

www.pretentiouspooch.com