Berkeley Cole is a new luxury brand of pet furniture, for people with lovely homes who love their pets.
We’re a Gloucestershire based company, introducing a range of unique, patent pending luxury motion pet beds and footstools called Snoozzers. Snoozzers are a multi purpose product designed to fill a gap in the market. Snoozzers are combination, footstool, pet bed and occasional seat.
Each Snoozzer is an effortlessly functional piece of furniture in its own right, a fully upholstered pet bed that matches your home styling. It stands on sturdy legs, raising your pet’s bed to the same level as the rest of the furniture, which means he/she can feel part of the family without feeling the need to take over the sofa! Snoozzers compliment your home décor and are designed to provide optimum comfort and support to your pet however they choose to lie on them.
As a footstool, it’s the perfect height, ensuring a comfortable leg elevation with the robust cushion top supporting the feet and ankles. This versatile piece of furniture also works well as a children’s gaming chair when you or your dog are not using it.
The unique patent pending design allows for the cushions to be removed and machine-washed.
Berkeley Cole was launched at Badminton Horse trials 2015 with great success, winning third best stand at that year’s show.
Our current range is hand-crafted in the UK and brings high quality design to a bed range for the pet market. “Never before has so much effort gone into designing a truly luxurious yet practical designer pet lounger. Your dog’s bed no longer needs to look like a dog’s dinner!” Says Tony.
Berkeley Cole Snoozzers have been featured in a number of publications including Vogue, Elle Decoration, Ideal Home, Cotswold Life, Good Housekeeping, Tetbury Life and Country Living magazines where the quality, uniqueness and functionality was raved about.
Berkeley Cole is predominantly a direct sales business selling through its own website and social media platforms. We also retail through Not On The High Street, Amazon and EBay platforms too. Berkeley Cole attended a number of Dog, Horse, Game and Country Shows during 2015. The response from the shows has confirmed the enormous potential for the Snoozzers concept.
Our goal is to develop our direct sales business while building a business-to-business sector, retailing to established furniture retailers. No current pet supplier is selling pet beds that match your furniture and selling them through the furniture retail sector. With the ever-increasing trend to humanise pets, our trading experience shows that there is a real appetite for quality pet products for our beloved four legged friends.
Goal 1 - to build on Berkeley Cole’s 2015 direct sales success. Strengthen the e-commerce brand with further social media campaigns; attend more Game, Horse and Country Shows to build audiences.
Goal 2 - to commercialise the business by launching a range of “Snoozzers” into the home furniture retail space; and in doing so, increase sales volumes significantly, reducing the manufacture costs across both sectors and increasing margins on direct sales business.
This will allow us to take the business from, an artisan bespoke manufacturer, to a national volume business capable of supplying the biggest and best retail companies.
The current obstacle to sales growth is the high cost of raw materials due to small sales volumes, which means the sales price is too high, which suppresses sales volume.
We are looking to raise £40,000 investment to commercialise the business by underwriting purchase volumes with suppliers to secure best price to reduce the cost of manufacture and put in place a cash contingency to enable the business to flourish.
Our goal is to offer value for money volume lines from UK supply partners and retail the Snoozzers through UK furniture retail outlets as well as develop our direct sales channels.
The more successful we are at driving the direct sales business, the lower cash requirements are on the business and quicker to breakeven is reached, which is currently forecast around month 22 (Feb 2018) if funding is available and sales targets met.
Market
Berkeley Cole retails in the luxury pet market sector selling through its e-commerce direct sales and social media channels. The majority of Berkeley Cole’s customers are dog owners though Berkeley Cole does manufacture Snoozzers for cats too.
Our target customers are pet owners who are typically in the 30-50 years age group.
Dogs have recently taken over from cats as the number one pet in the UK apart from fish.
Veterinary records estimate that there are about 10.2m dogs in the UK.
800,000 new dogs are born every year with 223,000 registered with the Kennel Club as pedigree.
26% homes have a dog, which equates to 6.8 million homes.
24% of homeowners with a dog earn over £50K
1.63million homes with a dog are classified as high earners.
According to an article by Market Watch and a study by AMA research, the pet bed sector is worth £35m (2012) with the majority of sales being dog beds, which is estimated to be around £28m (80%).
UK domestic upholstery furniture market is worth around 1440m in 2013
Footstools make up around 1.5% of domestic upholstery sales.
The footstools market in the UK is worth around £21.6m per year.
On average, 72,000 footstools or equivalents being sold every year.
6000 footstools per month with an average price of £300
According to John Lewis, footstools account for 2% of Upholstery sales.
With a retail price of £299 for a standard medium Snoozzer, our target is to sell 178 dog beds/footstools direct per month at the end of year 3. This equates to 2.2% of the target footstool market per year: with a gross profit of 42% based on lower unit cost as a result of getting the £40,000 investment.
And 206 per month through business to business sales. This equates to 2.6% of our target footstool market per year. With a gross profit of 20%
Total revenues for the end of year 3 is forecast to be in excess of £728,834 with net profits estimated at 20.3%.
By designing a multi purpose pet bed, footstool and child’s gaming chair, Berkeley Cole increases its marketing opportunities to include interior designers - furnishers as well as pet customers.
Pets are being humanised more than ever before and dogs are more humanised than any other animal. As society changes and more people are choosing to live on their own, more single people are choosing a pet as a companion rather than a human, with dogs being the number one pet of choice.
The humanisation of pets allows for new and innovative products to gain market share, which Berkeley Cole plans to take advantage of.
Longer term: we believe the Snoozzer is a game changing product and will change the way people will look at their pet beds in the future. Let’s be honest, how many times have you gone to visit your friends who have fantastic interior design, and beautiful designer products, and then there in the corner is a tatty old blanket for the poor animal? Well now there is no excuse for your dog’s bed to look like a dog’s dinner - now your pet’s furniture can actually enhance your room and look nearly as fantastic as the gorgeous beast lying upon it.
We believe that Snoozzers can become a significant home furnishings product sector with sales in excess of £2million in the UK over the medium to longer term - 5-7 years. We have also put significant thought into the international possibilities for Berkeley Cole (especially the USA) where luxury pet beds could be 4 to 5 times that of the UK.
PROSPECTS - according to Euromonitor International 2015
“Based on provisional 2015 estimates, pet products are expected to grow 4% in current value in the year to reach £886 million. Pet products are expected to benefit from a number of factors in the forecast period, including rising economic confidence and the pet humanisation trend. Consumers are expected to increasingly view their pets as companions or members of the family, with many thus increasing their spending in this area.”
Berkeley Cole Luxury Pet Furniture
03 Stoney Pool Poulton Cirencester Glos GL75LR
www.berkeleycole.co.uk
social media handles: *
https://www.facebook.com/berkeleycolepetproducts/
https://twitter.com/BerkeleyColePet
https://www.instagram.com/berkeleycolepet/
The business was founded in 2015
Our first years revenues were £8000 (not a full year of trading).
We have not recieved funding from any other source.
We own 100% of the company.
Founder name(s): *
Tony Wilson
An impressive fact the founder(s): *
Tony designs fabulous sofas for large multiple retailers (John Lewis, Furniture Village, Harvey’s Furniture). The top 20 Harvey’s Furniture upholstery ranges were designed and purchased by Tony while Design Director for Steinhoff UK upholstery, with sales in excess of £80 million at retail.
Tony set up a Design and Sourcing company (Inspire Design Solutions Ltd) in Dongguan, China in 2008. Designing and sourcing furniture ranges for companies all over the world. Inspire Design Solutions went on to design and supply products to Associated Independent Stores in the UK and some of the UK’s best-known furniture companies.
www.berkeleycole.co.uk
This project closed unsuccessfully on 12th August 2016