Q & A With Iowa Entrepreneur – Alex Taylor

22 Feb Q & A With Iowa Entrepreneur – Alex Taylor

Welcome to the second feature in our series of Q & A’s with Iowa Entrepreneurs! In this blog series, Iowa business owners share their stories. Find out how and where they got started, the challenges they faced along the way, rewarding experiences, most pivotal relationships, advice and more. Our goal with this series is to inspire new entrepreneurs, inform others about what it’s like to start your own business, and to show the impact (great or small) you can make as a result of starting your own business.

With business names like Go2Dog and TopDog, you have to know serial entrepreneurs Alex and Laura Taylor from Coralville are something to ‘bark all night’ about. I met Alex in 2011 when we participated in the ABI Leadership Iowa program. I wasn’t much of a dog person back then, so I wasn’t overly excited to go to a ‘dog biscuit bakery.’ However, I went along with the group and I was beyond fascinated with this Iowa entrepreneur!  The one thing I couldn’t get over was their supply chain management and ability to ‘scale-up’ a business to serve this industry across the whole country! YES! There is a high demand for gourmet dog biscuits! They have gone from having a boutique dog bakery in Coralville to now having over 650 locations nationwide that provide the BEST dog treats you could possibly imagine.

We had no clue what we were doing but most things are “figureoutable,”
and that’s my jam (as the young kids might say).

EMERGE MARKETING SOLUTIONS: Describe your business including your vision and primary goals as an Iowa entrepreneur.
ALEX TAYLOR: We purchased Woofables Gourmet Dog Biscuit Bakery in 2010 from two ladies who started it as a hobby in 2004 and grew it into a small retail interest (900 sq. feet) in Coralville. Our vision was to expand the paw print by creating an e-commerce solution for customers to purchase online. So we built a dynamic e-commerce website and search-engine-optimized this to attract consumers from all over the U.S. In addition to the online consumer, we began to attract wholesale vendors such as boutique pet stores and the like. So we adjusted our model to be more wholesale friendly, and it was at this point (2012) that our business really took off.

Our list of vendors includes HyVee Grocery Stores, Dillons, Ritz Carlton Properties, Theisens, Bomgaars, Woofgang Bakery, Marshalls, and many, many more.

We truly believe we have the best dog biscuits on the market, made with human grade ingredients, by hand, and with care. And to our knowledge, we are the ONLY gourmet dog biscuit bakery who can customize, bake and deliver gourmet treats to spec: shape, color and size. And last, but certainly NOT LEAST… we pride ourselves with BEST IN SHOW Customer Service to set the gold standard for our industry.

EMERGE: Why did you want to start your business in Iowa?
TAYLOR: We sort of inherited it already in Iowa. But we won’t leave because the work-ethic of our community supports our customer service expectations, and the central location in the U.S. helps us with distribution to both coasts.

EMERGE: What have been the biggest challenges you’ve encountered over time as an Iowa entrepreneur?
TAYLOR: There are two challenges we’ve become accustomed to. The first is scaling our growth when we bring on new, large accounts. For example, we brought on a recent customer who wanted us to provide bulk and decorated treats for 40 stores within a six week period of time. That’s a lot of biscuits! This leads to our second challenge: finding the right employees. With low unemployment rates and the transient nature of college students, it can be hard to find the right employees who truly care. We find them and generally keep them, but eventually they move on.

EMERGE: What is the most rewarding part of your business?
TAYLOR: Gosh, who doesn’t like dogs? Dogs are soooo appreciative when they get their treats, and many compliments we receive from pet owners to our loyal vendors reinforces our pride in a great product with great customer service. The other aspect that is deeply important to us as owners is that we are able to support many area charities with donations and support to help them grow and succeed as well. We enjoy tremendous satisfaction by giving back to our community.

EMERGE: What partnerships were most critical for your business?
TAYLOR: Establishing good relationships with shipping and delivery organizations such as USPS, Fed Ex, and UPS.

We also were smart about working with Iowa State Center for Industrial Research Service (CIRAS) to stay ahead of FDA and Agricultural regulations which helps us guarantee a very high quality and safe product for our customers.

And last but not least, we established an informal board of advisors who have some knowledge of food production, business management/growth, and retail distribution and sales. We meet with them periodically to give them updates on our progress, and get strategic input from them to grow our business and avoid costly mistakes.

EMERGE: What’s your best advice for other Iowa entrepreneurs just starting out?
TAYLOR: I have lots of advice…and scars to prove it! Here are a few morsels.

Don’t be afraid to try new things and occasionally make mistakes. This is how you learn and grow.

Ask questions and get input from others. Very few successful entrepreneurs are the absolute experts in everything about a business. Listen and learn from others and be willing to accept constructively critical ideas and opinions.

Stick with your strengths and what you are good at, and avoid shiny objects if they don’t fit into your strengths.

Surround yourself with good people, and LISTEN to them!

EMERGE: If you could do it all over again, would you?
TAYLOR: HELL YES!! It’s been a great ride and we hope the success of our business (once a side-gig) will someday help bankroll our retirement.

EMERGE: Would you consider yourself a serial entrepreneur?
TAYLOR: I would say yes, I’m a serial entrepreneur. The reason I say so is that in addition to three or four start-ups (Peninsables, Aleami Marketing, Erasmus LLC – MarCom Consulting and LIVEware5 – distance learning), most of the jobs I’ve held have been entrepreneurial in that I’ve been assigned undefined tasks and was told to figure it out. During my work at Taylor Corp. (no relation), I had to figure out how to re-package and organize the email marketing programs of 21 brands into a unified approach taking revenue from $800/year to $3M/year in 18 months. At the University of Iowa, I started the EMBA program in Des Moines, and also started OHLE (Office of Healthcare Leadership) by combining the resources of Tippie College of Business, the College of Public Health and College of Medicine to provide business leadership skills to healthcare professionals. And now my work at IDx is VERY entrepreneurial… we’re making the market (pricing and strategies) for image data used to develop and test AI algorithms. We had no clue what we were doing but as you said, most things are “figureoutable”, and that’s my jam (as the young kids might say).

Pretty impressive, huh!?!  Yes…Alex is quite the inspiration to me as I have started my business and become an Iowa entrepreneur!  Since that first visit to their location in Coralville nine years ago, I now treat my pup every once in a while to a Woofables treat that I purchase at Bomgaars in Carroll, Iowa.

Learn more about Woofables Bakery at https://www.woofablesbakery.com/.

To read more Q & A’s with Iowa Entrepreneurs, visit our Emerge blog page!