Jason Skotheim and his partners couldn’t have known it at the time, but their fledgling business was about to get a shot in the arm from events entirely beyond their control.
It was late winter 2007 and Meg Smart, professor of small animal nutrition from the University of Saskatchewan’s Western College of Veterinary Medicine, recalls a troubling and unexpected series of pet deaths as the animals’ kidneys began shutting down.
It wasn’t long before contaminated pet food was suspected, but as more and more brands began to be caught up in the storm of recalls, it became clear that the problem was widespread and was likely linked to low-cost ingredients like wheat gluten and rice protein from China. In the end the USDA estimated that several thousand pets died as a result in the U.S. alone, with products being recalled in North America, Europe and South Africa. Eventually the chemical compound melamine was fingered as the cuplrit.
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“That revealed something most pet owners didn’t understand — that the pet food business has long, globalized supply chains,” Smart says. “When you have these long supply chains, as the recalls revealed, you can have accountability problems. You can also have a large number of products from different manufacturers contaminated by a single incident at a shared supplier.”
When consumers did become aware of these concerns, an increasing number of pet owners began voting with their wallets and sought out manufacturers who gave them more assurance.
“Companies like Horizon got a real boost from that recall,” Smart says. “They offered pet owners a solution to this concern.”
The company has also succeeded because they’ve taken the time to understand who their customers are and what they’re looking for, Smart says. Without that understanding they wouldn’t be able to differentiate their product from any other in the store aisles.
“Basically that’s what you have to do,” Smart says. “What Horizon is doing is assuring their customers of more personal contact and better quality.”
Smart says she’s not surprised by the success the company’s seen so far. If anything, she says, it’s just more proof that the people behind the project have what it takes to build a winning company, and she fully expects to see Horizon maintain its winning streak. The key, she says, will be continuing to provide customers the personal touch that they now expect.
“Jason has been successful because he’s honest, personable and approachable,” says Smart. “The real value of these smaller companies is that they’re like that.”
Smart also says the important groundwork that the company and its owners have done has impressed her as she’s watched Horizon begin and grow.
“They know their stuff,” Smart says. “They’ve done their homework, they know marketing and they understand their markets.”
