Renee Ryan, an executive in the beauty industry and a dog lover, saw a need she felt others had missed.
“Most people in New York City bring their dog to a groomer, but in stores, most of the items I saw were bath products,” she says. “I couldn’t find any maintenance systems that extended the fresh look and scent of a professional groom.”
So in late 2006, Ryan founded Sexy Beast, (http://www.sexybeaststyle.com), a site that markets things like dog shampoo, fragrances, sprays, powders and similar products. All the items are made from vegetable-based sources, and are tested in both laboratory environments and on humans.
So far, the company has been promoting itself through search engine marketing under such key words as pet beauty products. For that term, it ranked at number three in the organic listings on Google and fourth on Yahoo earlier this week.
Online, the company pulls in mostly upscale animal-loving customers from major cities around the U.S. and as far away as Norway, Ryan says.
Sexy Beast does a good bit of its business through retailers, having launched itself at New York’s Fred Segal Studio last November.
Another way the company gets its name out there is by staging events at retailers and by participating in causes like Dogs Walk for Cancer, at which it donates a portion of its sales to the American Cancer Society.
Ryan decided to finance Sexy Beast on her own after being turned down by several venture capitalists in the beginning, but she isn’t ruling out approaching them again in the future, she says.
At present, the business has pulled in less than $1 million in annual revenue but Ryan hopes to more than double that figure in the next year, partly by introducing new products.
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