Hi John, tell us a little bit about yourself!

My name is John Hollinrake and I own Harvey’s Dog Grooming Salon in Carnforth, north west Lancashire. I am married to Michelle, and we have our grown up sons and now a sprinkling of grandchildren arriving, which is absoloutely lovely. We live by the sea with our three dogs, our two cats and our chickens who keep us well stocked in eggs. I haven’t always been a pet groomer, I had a long career in the banking industry as a business analyst for Lloyds Bank. I worked for them for 23 years up until 2021. I took a complete career handbrake u-turn that year. I contracted Covid Pneumonia in January 2021 and was in intensive care for several days. At one point I was told that I wouldn’t survive as the infection across my lungs was so bad and there was little that could be done. I was offered a trial drug (this was before the covid vaccinations were available) and thankfully I began to recover. I spent almost two weeks recovering on a respiratory ward before I was finally allowed to go home. Whilst at home recovering with long covid (something I still suffer from) I was made redundant from my job at Lloyd’s Bank! I was at a complete crossroads in my life and had a decision to make regarding my career. I had become disillusioned with working for the bank, it was a rather faceless and soulless job with little interaction with people. My wife suggested I take the opportunity to do something completely different and work for myself – we settled on pet grooming. I had groomed my own dogs occasionally and enjoyed it, and being a dog person all my life it was an exciting decision to make. It was a real leap of faith to go from always having a salary and a ‘safe’ job to all of a sudden working for myself ! I found a fantastic groom school in Gisburn, Yorkshire, and took level 3 City and Guilds. I passed and that was that – I was setting up salon! I decided to name the salon Harvey’s, after our beloved golden cocker spaniel. He was such a lovely, handsome boy and we miss him so this was my way of having him around. I started by renting a room to groom from at a local pet boarding kennels with the idea being there would be a steady stream of dogs needing grooming after their stay at the kennels. It didn’t really work out like that however, most customers having spent good money on having their dogs at the kennels didn’t want to go that bit further and pay for their dogs to be groomed upon collection – I was building up a small client base but not at any great speed. The other factor was that my grooming room was within the main building of the kennels and I had no signage or advertising of my own, and I struggled to stand out and create my own identity. When the shop in Carnforth came up for rent just across from my childhood home and my parents’ shop it was almost like it was meant to be – I viewed it and signed up immediately. The shop was mine and it was going to be a success, I was sure. Being on a busy high street was a huge change, and all of a sudden we were growing at a fast pace. I was busy all the time grooming dogs on my own, which is so much harder work than I thought it would be, especially to someone who came into it later in life and after a whole lifetime of desk jobs!

Tell us a little bit more about how you started with Emmi-Pet Teeth Cleaning.

This leads me on to how I started with Emmi-Pet. There are two main reasons. Grooming so many dogs per day was causing me to burn out. I needed to find a way of reducing the sheer amount of heavy lifting I was doing each day but I also needed to maintain a good income from the salon. I am also focussed and dead set on not being just a dog groomer, I want to be known as a salon that has many strings to it’s bow. Being a dog groomer is great, but there are many groomers about. I wanted to stand out from the crowd and be that salon that offered other services apart from just dog grooming. I had a chat with my business mentor and he suggested we offer teeth cleaning for dogs. It was relatively new to the grooming world, and a great way to add to my service list as well as reducing the number of dog grooms I would need to do each day to keep the salon profitable. He put me in touch with Anastasia. I discussed with her the benefits of Emmi-Pet teeth cleaning and it was like the perfect solution to what I wanted to achieve.

I underwent the training session and bought my Emmi-Pet toothbrush kit. I was away. All of a sudden I was offering teeth cleaning appointments, both standalone and with grooms. My clients love it and I have gained many, many additional clients who just come for teeth cleaning. Without going into exact figures, I have been able to reduce the number of grooms I have to do by 20%, with the difference in income made up by Emmi-Pet teeth cleaning. This has made a huge difference to me both mentally and physically. I’m doing far less physical work and I’m also not worrying about finding new grooming clients as the Emmi-Pet teeth cleaning is growing all the time. I have noticed more groomers around me are now offering the service to their clients – however, I have just purchased the new Emmi-Pet Physio device, so I’m looking forward to adding ultrasonic physiotherapy to my service list very soon.

Thank you, John, for sharing your success story with us!