Route 12 South: Barking Up The Right Tree
Clean & Clip Doggie Spa,
137 Schofield Ave., Unit 14, Dudley
And so far, that's worked out well for the Clean & Clip Doggie Spa in rural Dudley. The spa is a tenant in the sprawling Stevens Linen Outlet Mill, which sits in the woods along Route 12 not long after the road takes a sharp left turn out of Webster.
Owners Danielle Filo and Jacqui Roush moved Clean & Clip out of Filo's Thompson, Conn., basement and into 2,400 square feet on the mill's second floor Sept. 6, 2007.
That's right, Sept. 6, as national and state economic indicators were screaming that consumers had less money to spend on discretionary items and that a recession was in the near future.
But people love their dogs, and in many cases, the pooch may the last member of the family to go without when budgets get tighter.
"We can't say the economy sucks for us, because we've done really well since Sept. 6. We could do better, but we've done better than we expected," Filo said.
Santa's Little Helper
In fact, Clean & Clip didn't grow simply by moving to actual commercial space, they've grown since moving by adding a retail component to the shop that customers demanded. So, not only can customers have their dogs groomed, or have them taken care of, they can buy dog food, collars, leashes and dog toys.
"After three years, we moved from my basement, we took most of our clientele, and we've more than doubled our business since moving here," Filo said.
And that clientele is unwilling to refrain from having their pooches pampered even as gas, food and other necessities become more and more expensive.
"We get people all the time who say, 'two more weeks, two more weeks,'" Roush said. But they won't allow their doggies to simply go without a good clean and clip.
Filo and Roush have also found that customers go wild for cute doggie pictures, and Clean & Clip does "big business" when it does poochie pics. Halloween, Christmas, St. Patrick's day, customers dress their dogs in appropriate costumes and Filo and Roush pose them for pictures. It's wildly popular - the walls inside Clean & Clip are covered with photos of dogs big and small dressed as Santa Claus, reindeer, witches, etc., and customers ask Filo and Roush constantly to add more holidays to the roster.
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