COLLAR Company: Simplicity is the Way to Client’s Heart

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Pet Age recently spoke with Yuriy Sinitsa, founder of COLLAR Company, to learn more about teamwork, product development and client support.

How has the coronavirus pandemic affected COLLAR Company?

When the coronavirus crisis started we revised the functions of each department and focused the employees on the tasks useful for COLLAR Company there and then. We rejected all that wasn’t important.

Simultaneously the COLLAR Company started the mapping process. The managers wrote down their actions. At the end of each day and week we made conclusions about the effectiveness. After two months of emergency mode work we revised and simplified the management scheme of the company. We made it three times simpler by erasing one level and leaving only the essential functions. The team, from the employee to TOP team, started to understand their main tasks better. The effectiveness of the team increased by several times.

How would you describe the creative process of a COLLAR Company product?

The manufacturing process is consisted of 12 stages—from the task setting to logistics. The simplicity principle works here as well.

Visualization and design: an innovative product should have a simple and appealing design. The pinnacle of the innovative design is a solid full-functioning product made from a single material. Such products have infinite life cycles and are fundamental to humanity. Fork, spoon or plastic chair are made that way. When you manage to create such product, you may call yourself a market revolutionary.

Name: it is important to come up with a self-marketing name for the new product. The main demands are: one word and no more than six letters.

Marketing: the perfect pitch should contain one message, the client don’t memorize more. Our product pitches have pre-installed marketing (AiryVest—the lightest dog vest in the world, PicoSoft—the world first flexible aquarium LED lamp). We rely on word of mouth marketing: the people share information because they are genuinely interested. A good example of such approach is PULLER—dog fitness tool, created in 2011. This set of two purple rings is absolutely full-functional. The simplicity of the exercises available for any dogs made it popular in dozens of countries. In 2012 the new dog sport—Dog Puller—emerged on the basis of those exercises. It became popular from Japan to Canada and the two World Championships have been handled already.

Logistics: logistics needs to fulfill the clients’ demand as soon as possible. The COLLAR Company manufacturing has adopted LEAN instruments and the full production cycle now is 7 days instead of 45. The warehouses in the client’s region also help to make the delivery faster. COLLAR Company has its warehouses in Poland, Spain, USA, China and Russia. This is the way you make sure that the client always has enough of your essential products.

The simplicity approach works also in the pet shops. The core of the COLLAR Company commercial offer is a ready-made solution for the client: the most popular accessories and all the necessary trade equipment. This is the way we help to promote and sell our products in pet shops.

For example: after our agreement with NASA that allowed us to place their logo on WAUDOG products we developed special trade equipment for it to provide better placement of WAUDOG NASA accessories.

The main purpose of trade equipment is to highlight the key products and increase sales, not only hang them somewhere.

Why is direct communication between COLLAR Company and consumers important to you?

A manufacturer who deals with reclamation issues is a great aid for pet shop owners. They have only to sell the products then. It’s better to have a single phone or email printed on the package for the customer to contact, not bothering the pet shop. The lifetime warranty principle works in COLLAR Company for a set of aquarium products and TM WAUDOG accessories hardware. The EVOLUTOR products — the most durable collars and leashes — are fully covered with global lifetime warranty.

For 25 years of COLLAR Company being in the pet products market, I understood that it is extremely hard to make a simple thing. But if you managed to create it and your product or service is simple for the end users, they will gladly accept it and love it.