If you've ever been around town, chances are you’ve seen the purple-and-white trucks of Pet Love Mobile Grooming driving from one appointment to another. Purchased by Southlake resident Barbara Stone in 2003, Pet Love Mobile Grooming has exploded since then, with stylists serving as many as 200 dogs and cats per day. From training groomers to growing her fleet of mobile vans, Barbara loves pampering pets and can’t wait to expand her operation across the state.
WE MOVED [TO SOUTHLAKE] IN… 1992. We actually brought our three kids here, because we wanted to live in the country where they could grow up in a small town. All the kids went K-12 at all the Southlake schools. We’re diehard Southlake folks. We have a soft spot in our heart for Southlake for sure.
MY HUSBAND AND I… bought an existing company in 2003. They’d already changed the name to Pet Love — it had previously been Puppy Love for years. But it was a small, personally owned company in Dallas.
MY HUSBAND’S HISTORY WAS… in franchising. We saw an opportunity with a business model that was going to be well-received by people in multiple areas. We saw a franchise opportunity with people wanting to take care of their pets… so that’s what brought us to the company. We saw Dallas being a huge target market and with an opportunity to go into other large metroplex areas.
WE HAVE THREE TIMES… more vans and employees than when we first bought the company. We average about 200 appointments a day now versus 80-90 appointments a day then.
I’M A HUGE PET LOVER SO… I like to make sure that we’re taking great care of our pets, but I also like to make sure that we’re taking care of our employees. Many of our employees have been with us for 15-20 years. It’s a huge family.
WE TAKE CARE OF ALL… breeds of dogs and cats in the Metroplex. We do a basic bath and brush package, or we can do a haircut if it’s a breed that needs a full groom. Usually, [our appointments] are about an hour per pet. Most stylists will see six pets a day give or take, depending on how many are at one house.
OUR VANS ARE LIKE… having a salon that you would have anywhere, just on wheels. Everything is high-tech. All the equipment that we need is right there. The table is hydraulic, so once the pet is in the van, the table lifts them up so a stylist doesn’t have to be trying to pick up heavy pets. The tub is basically the same size as a normal tub, so we can accommodate small and large dogs. There’s even a platform in the bottom that lifts up and down, so if a pet is real small, you can get them up to a higher level so they’re not down in this big bottom of a tub.
MOST OF OUR CLIENTELE HAVE… standing appointments where they have an automatic [appointment] every four weeks, so they already have a spot on the schedule. But then those that just like to call in and book an appointment, we’re usually able to get them in within a week or two.
THE CHALLENGE IS… training people. It takes six months to train someone to groom, so we’re constantly looking for people that have a good work ethic that we can train and bring into this career path.
THE THING THAT DIFFERENTIATES US… from other mobile services is that most of those are one person, kind of a mom and pop shop. They have one vehicle, maybe two, whereas we have a whole fleet. We can get to people more rapidly and we can make sure to take care of them. If somebody is out, we have somebody else that can step in and make sure we get things taken care of.
I SEE US GROWING INTO… other large metroplex areas before we expand too much outside the Dallas-Fort Worth area. The massive metropolitan areas are really the best for us as far as travel logistics between appointments versus the small towns. I would say going to another massive metropolitan area like Austin would be our next move before we would get too much further out of the Metroplex.
IT’S ALWAYS FUN TO ME WHEN… people say, ‘I saw your van today’ or ‘I see your van pass my office every day.’ We’re kind of everywhere all the time, so it feels fun to know that I have a whole fleet out there — that we’re present in a lot of neighborhoods all day, every day.