One Business Turning Mess Into Success

The pet supplies market is vast, but until recently the issue of dealing with dog ‘business’ in city dwellings had hardly been addressed - Rebecca Spicer talks to the entrepreneur behind an innovative solution that has many scratching their heads asking, why didn’t I think of that?

Pup-Pee Solutions is just over 12 months old, but the little business dealing with the issue of doggy-doo is already exporting its Pet Loo solution to seven countries, not to mention its 450 Australian stockists.

But the business didn’t start out with commercial aspirations. About four years ago a couple in their mid-20s, Tobi Skovron and Simone Iglicki, went in search of a solution to be able to keep a dog in their rented Melbourne apartment without the dog ‘messing’ in the unit and without having to take it for walks on the nature strip at 3am. They couldn’t find anything except puppy pad-type products, which Skovron says were an unnatural and expensive option.

A self-confessed go-getter, Skovron saw an opportunity and the idea for the Pet Loo started to take shape. “I felt if I could combat this situation, not from a commercial point of view, more from a personal point of view, I could buy Sim a dog.”

Iglicki is the pet and people person in the duo, while Skovron is the business mind behind Pup-Pee. He has a background in corporate health and personal training, while she’s worked in pet shops and as a vet nurse while studying an animal-assisted therapy degree at university. “I’m driven not from a financial standpoint, but from Sim’s passion for animal companionship,” explains Skovron. “While I’m not passionate about the dogs doing their wees and poos, I am passionate about people of all lifestyles being able to own a pet and keep that companionship going.”

And while dog number one for the couple did come along while the Pet Loo was in production, dog number two came along as soon as the product was available. And the dogs are such a huge part of the couple’s life they’re either at the office or travelling interstate with Skovron, or they’re with Iglicki at the hospital, working as a therapy tool for the elderly.

The first of the Pup-Pee products, the Pet Loo, started with a soil and grass patch in a wooden box. But this posed too many issues with keeping the apartment clean, and the grass died every time a dog urinated on it, because of the acidity.

Through trial and error the product evolved, and took three years to go to market. Skovron admits that while product development was quite rapid, the slow start-up was mainly due to financial barriers. The couple weren’t in a position to throw everything they had at the potential business, in case it failed.