Michelle Devereaux quickly discovered that the canine snacks she made in her kitchen filled a hole in the market for healthy dog food and treats – she’s now at the helm of a $5 million business.
Melissa started making dog treats in her kitchen in 2014, quitting her job in 2018 to focus full time on her business, Laila and Me. In recent years, Melissa and her team have overcome supply-chain issues and scepticism about female-run businesses to scale up. I sat down with Melissa to find out how Laila and Me achieved such impressive growth.
ISB: What was the inspiration behind the launch of Laila and Me?
MD: My own dog, Laila, had major skin allergies that seemed to be caused by diet, sparking my interest in looking for healthy alternatives for her. I quickly learned that everything in stores that was marketed as ‘healthy’ and ‘natural’ had nasty additives and fillers hidden in long lists of ingredients that were difficult to understand, and even pronounce. There was literally nothing I felt totally comfortable feeding her.
“We want to ensure that Australian-made products remain on our shelves.”
Through my hours and hours of research, I was shocked to find that pet food in Australia is completely unregulated, and some would say unethical. Now savvy pet parents are starting to say no, wanting better quality treats and food for their pets, realising that diet is key to their health and longevity. The consumers also value sustainable products that are Australian-made.
ISB: When and where did the business launch?
MD: The business started from humble beginnings in 2014 in my own kitchen, where I baked up treats for Laila who needed to be on a strict elimination diet. I started posting about what I was doing along with the recipes I was formulating and videos of Laila enjoying them on social media, which sparked the interest of friends and family. Word got around quickly. I then purchased a small dehydrator and started to both bake and dehydrate a range of treats for other people’s dogs, selling my homemade products at local markets, and what started off as a hobby quickly began taking up most of my time. This was very rewarding, I was really enjoying it and didn’t want to stop.
Fast forward to today, we employ nine staff members (eight women and one man) over our two warehouses in Thomastown and Bendigo. We offer contract manufacturing and white label for other Australian brands. We hold current HACCP and PrimeSafe certifications, which allows us to support smaller businesses in the industry with processing and distribution of meat products.
ISB: I understand you quit a high-flying job to start the business in your own kitchen. How did you scale up the business in the early days?
MD: The business snowballed quicker than I could have ever imagined, and I ended up leaving my full-time job as a national event manager to focus on Laila and Me in 2015. I really wanted to make sure I was doing everything right from the start and surrounded myself with experts and learned as I went. From pet dietitians and vets to business advisers, I was knocking on everyone’s doors (or sliding into their inboxes) to learn as much as I possibly could to ensure my product was the best it could be and I was doing everything I could to make sure the business had the best shot at success.
ISB: What have been the biggest challenges in managing such rapid growth?
MD: High-quality, locally sourced ingredients are hard to come by, especially with the current supply-chain issues making them extremely expensive. This usually results in businesses going international in search of a cheap, low-quality product to import, which we would never do. We want to ensure that Australian-made products remain on our shelves and are accessible to every Australian pet.
Finding a power source has also been a problem for us. We purchased freeze dryers and fitted out our Bendigo warehouse to house them, then found that the warehouse didn’t have enough power for them all, which left us running at 20 per cent capacity. It was frustrating. We were advised that we could call our energy provider to ask for more power, but this wasn’t the case because the substation was so far away. The local council was not helpful at all. It quoted us $250,000 to rip up the roads and upgrade the power. Just before Christmas, we got the good news that we were successful in obtaining another warehouse in Bendigo that had enough power to run all freeze dryers and allowed us to stay in rural Victoria and not have to let our rural staff go.
Being an almost all-female team has had its challenges, too. We are often not taken seriously when we make calls to source raw materials – when they hear our voices and when we say we are a dog treat business. You can almost hear the eyeballs rolling through the phone. Once we explain the volume and frequency of product we are after, however, people are quick to realise we are a serious business and change their tune. They are suddenly very happy to help.
Another example of this is when we receive deliveries on pallets. Drivers are often looking around to see who is going to help unload it, and seem very shocked and/or impressed when one of us girls jumps on the forklift.
ISB: What has overcoming these challenges meant for the further growth of the business?
MD: Finally finding a warehouse that meets our needs means we can run at full capacity and attempt to meet the ever-expanding demand. It has also allowed us to launch our pet food range (Rawvolution by Laila and Me), which has been in the pipeline for a couple of years. We are in the final stages of sorting out packaging and logistics, and aim to launch in the next few months.
Supply of raw materials is still a problem, but we now have the facilities to trial different products and come up with ways around this without losing out on quality, having to import from overseas, or having to up our prices too much to cover the cost of extremely overpriced local materials.
As we grow, word is getting around the industry, and we are finding that being taken seriously is also becoming easier. People have usually heard of us now; arranging meetings for quotes, being sent samples of packaging, etc., are becoming much faster processes.
ISB: How do you see Laila and Me growing and developing in the next couple of years?
MD: Currently, Laila and Me pet treats are exported to China, Taiwan and New Zealand and we have plans to expand into the US (California and Oregon), Singapore and South Korea in the next 12 months. These countries have shown a desire for Australian-made, high-quality pet food.
We aim to work closely with local farmers and businesses to improve our sustainability practices and are working on upskilling our team to develop and retain staff by sending them on courses that help support them and the business.
We will also be launching our freeze-dried and raw frozen food range in regional Victoria and Melbourne Metro in the hopes that we can grow to be a national leader in pet food.
This article first appeared in issue 40 of the Inside Small Business quarterly magazine
