Happy Dog Naturals

How did you decide to create a product that can cure dog mites & mange?

As they say, necessity is the mother of invention. Our owner, Pete Blews, was battling skin problems with his dog and was getting nowhere with conventional veterinary treatment. The dog just wasn’t responding. After thousands of dollars, dozens of vet visits and treatments that were worse than the problem, he was out of options. Rather than put his dog down he developed an all natural treatment. The results were almost too good to be true. The type of mite his dog Belle had was the contagious variety that causes Sarcoptic mange. When the dogs Belle had come in contact with began to show signs of infestation, Pete provided their owners with his concoction and their results mirrored his. Knowing there must be other pet owners searching for options to end their pets’ suffering he decided to try to market it online and it took off in a way that no one ever expected.

What’s the main difference in choosing natural versus “traditional” mite cures?

The term natural means different things to a different people. When we say “all natural” we mean that all our ingredients originated in nature as opposed to synthetic compounds that come out of a lab. For the last few decades the traditional treatment for mites has been to administer chemical pesticides that become part of the animal’s internal system. The animal essentially becomes a toxic buffet for the parasites it’s hosting. Unfortunately, that comes with a high incidence of side effects and a poor success rate. Natural treatments eradicate mites, but not at the expense of the dog. And the best take a holistic approach and tackle the compounding problems that happen before and after a dog has had mange. Take clove oil for example. Not only is it wicked mean to mites, it kills more than 60 types of bacteria, 15 strains of fungi plus has pain relieving and antiviral properties. It deals with the bugs, the germs they carry and the damage they do yet it’s never killed a dog. The same can’t be said for traditional pesticides.

Many of our customers are already committed to natural animal care. Others have gone the traditional chemical route and are looking for a more effective and safer way to help their pet. The common thread is they all want safe choices that work.

How has ShipStation helped you with your business?

Oh ShipStation, how we love you. Let me count the ways. You save us a boatload of time, reducing hours of work down to minutes. You’ve increased accuracy by completely eliminated shipping errors. You’ve shown use shipping options we didn’t even know existed and saved us postage on the ones we did. You’ve given us easy access to data that helps us be more efficient and profitable. You’ve enhanced our customer services capabilities with an intuitive, organized interface that lets us find information quickly. You’ve improved our efficiency and allowed us to reallocate our personnel resources.

When we started this, we didn’t place that much importance on shipping. Big mistake. When people have sick dogs, they want their orders delivered quickly. And because we pay shipping, finding the best rates is crucial to our survival. Getting this done was becoming a nightmare. Payment gateway and computer platform issues forced us to use a slow, painful and expensive manual process that was placing a huge drain on our operation. Our sales have been increasing about 25% a month for the last year and we were fearful for the future because order fulfillment was projected to be the single biggest obstacle to continued growth. It’s ridiculously easy now. ShipStation lets us do what we do best; help sick dogs.

What’s your favorite ShipStation feature?

One? Seriously? Please don’t make me do that.