3 Questions with Jim & Margie Seidwand of Pet World Rochester

Jim and Margie Seidewand have been in business for 51 years and on their 47th wedding anniversary, I had the pleasure of having lunch with this charming couple and hearing all about their lives together. Here is their story.

START FROM THE BEGINNING. HOW DID YOU TWO GET STARTED?

Margie: Jim worked at the post office where I worked my first summer between high school and college. Jim had a girlfriend. Jim: Yeah well, that didn’t work out. Margie: When he left in August for MIT in Boston, I never thought I’d see him again. I wrote him a letter every day and I am not a big letter writer. After two years of letter writing, Margie had finished college and Jim returned home from MIT to take a year off of college. The political unrest surrounding the Vietnam War had them worried about his draft number - 203. Thankfully, Jim did not have to report for duty and the path to owning their own pet store began. Jim: I was never allowed to have a fish tank when I was younger because I had the upstairs bedroom. Just as I left for MIT, my parents had given my sister a tank. I remember writing out instructions for the filter system and mailing them back home. We troubleshooted filter problems through written correspondence! When Jim returned home from MIT, he got a tank for his parent’s basement and Margie and Jim got involved in the fish club of Rochester. They helped the club members organize and run the first official Public Fish Show in the region.

Jim’s job as co-manager of this first official fish show was to supply the show with 100 tanks. He found a place in Buffalo that would sell him all-glass, 10-gallon aquariums for $5.45/ea., but they had to spend $2500. The club only needed $600 in tanks to pull off the event. Jim bought up the rest of the tanks and had to figure out what to do with them.

What is a Fish Show? A competition show for aquarium hobbyists and enthusiasts. To learn more, check out Aquafind.com, the Aquatic Fish Database.

As if written in the SNL writers’ room, he returned to his parent’s basement from an amazing fish show and $1900 of fish tanks were delivered — on their front lawn in suburban Western New York during the month of August.

“We piled them in their garage, set up the tanks in the basement and filled them with fish. I guess that’s when we got into the pet store business!”

This was 1970. The Seidewand’s registered their business as the Aqua Shoppe of Rochester and requested a business phone number. Their first couple of years they ran their store right out of the basement of Jim’s family home. Jim and Margie then bought their own house and ran the Aqua Shoppe out of that basement until about 1977 when they leased their first retail location from Wegmans on Lyell Avenue in Rochester, NY.

Margie: It was September 1974. We got married with one night’s notice. Told our family to meet us at the chapel the next morning. I never wanted a big wedding.

The couple honeymooned in Acadia National Park, Maine in Margie’s father’s VW camper. The same VW camper that these two pet store-owning, hippy-lovers would transport their fish in from Buffalo.

On Wednesdays they would close their basement store to shop the two fish distributors in Buffalo. Everything they bought they would bring back in that VW camper.

Jim: It really wasn’t made for transporting things, especially fish.

Until this point in their journey, the Seidewands had only dealt with fish. It wasn’t until they opened their second location that they started selling family pets and became the Pet World and Aqua Shoppe of Rochester that we know today.

Jim and Margie were on the cutting edge of family pet retail. They were designing displays that created a whole new shopping experience for their customers. Jim brought that capability in-house with the acquisition of a small carpentry business and stood up ten pet stores in the Western New York and Finger Lakes regions by the mid 1990s.

Word of their success started to spread. Soon they had designers from corporate box chains flying in to see what they had done so they could replicate it for their stores and a contract with a uniform retail chain for fixtures at 300 locations.

For 14 years Jim maintained his position as a quality control technician for 3M. He resigned to run the business full time in 1984 with four stores open and the other six on the horizon.

Margie: Back then, everything was word of mouth. We didn’t even have a sign. The only thing we had on the front of our house was this stainless steel mobile. It was two fish that swim around in a circle. Everybody knew that mobile as the Aqua Shoppe.”

We built a 21,000 sq. ft. warehouse and purchased a 26-foot truck to go up and down the Thruway and distribute to our ten stores. *sarcastically* My daughter used to love being picked up from school in that thing. - Jim

WHEN DID PET WORLD START SELLING FERRETS?

Jim: We were interested in small animals for our pet stores since we opened our second store to expand beyond fish. While meeting with other small animal breeders, we were introduced to Gilman Marshall, who owned Marshall Farms. He asked us to visit the farm and gave us directions to his place. We brought home ferrets the day we went there and have been selling them ever since!

Margie: Initially there were very few products. I think they were just selling the animals and the food.

In the late 80s ferrets were new on the scene as pets. In fact, it was Marshall Pet Products and Marshall Farms that helped ferrets become the number three domestic pet in America. And ferrets would never have remained as popular without small pet businesses like Pet World supporting ferret families.

Pet World did not always turn a profit. Like a lot of small pet store owners, there were years where Jim and Margie had to support the business with personal investment. As rents increased and the crowds thinned, the Pet World stores in the malls started closing.

“Now it is a very good business! Over the past 50 years we have built a familyfocused companion animal business servicing multiple generations of pet owners. We have grandkids of our original customers that are coming to our store! That tells me we are doing something right.”

Ferrets were a great alternative to other small animals when customers were looking for an intelligent, social and emotional pet without the lifestyle of being a dog owner.

Margie: They were easy to hold and cuddle with. There is an unmistakable instant bond that a customer experiences when they hold a ferret for the first time. Ferrets have a way of captivating the customer, engaging them emotionally and comforting them with their nuzzles. They were the perfect animals to help us educate our community on proper pet ownership and care.

CAN YOU TELL ME ABOUT CONNECTING WITH THE COMMUNITY AND RAISING A FAMILY WHILE SUPPORTING YOUR SMALL PET BUSINESS?

Margie: All of our kids grew up in the store. Of course, when they were young, they would hang out on my back. I wore all of our babies through my shifts in the store. I would let them take naps in empty tanks next to the register. Customers would come up to me and ask to buy my baby!

Jim: Margie’s focus in the store was building the team. She has a legacy of bringing in young people from a stage where they can’t even introduce themselves, to being one of the top sellers on the floor.

Such was the case with their own daughter; shy but knowledgeable. Margie trained her on the floor and supported her from afar. After talking to her first 1,000 people about their family pets, she could handle herself professionally in a conversation.

Jim: It’s a good life lesson to work at a pet store! So many kids came in our store so green and now they are out there as functioning adults. I’d like to think that it is a little bit because of Pet World.

Margie and her employees would take ferrets into classrooms to educate kids on taking care of family pets. The curious students would be so excited to see the small, lovable animal in their travel crate.

The Pet World ferrets visited daycare centers, nursing homes and hospitals to spread the love and educate the public. They would do educational talks at local libraries, malls and community centers.

“We used to do summer classes at the store called “My Pet, My Friend.” The first day was how to set up an aquarium and the rest of the week we would watch the aquarium develop and come alive. The next week we would do small animals, then dogs, cats, so on and so forth. Just teaching the children how to properly take care of the family pets we love.”

Margie: We’ve been so fortunate to have extremely devoted employees. They come in as enthusiastic hobbyists that pass that passion and excitement onto the customers.

Before you knew it, both the employee and customer were part of the Pet World family. So many of our previous employees return to the store with news of their successful lives. Children from families in the 90’s are returning with families of their own. And we couldn’t be happier.

Jim: You know the Peanuts cartoon with Lucy and the $.05 sign over her head? I used to joke, that was Margie. Sitting down at the register. Listening to all the stories and getting to know all of the kids.

While Margie indulged her love of animals to educate the community, Jim decided to explore another hobby, astronomy.

Jim has done a fair amount of public education of astronomy through the Rochester Museum & Science Center and has run the telescope on the top of the Planetarium for the past 26 years. Through this time he has done hundreds of talks and put over 100,000 people through telescope school.

Jim: She’s a people person. I’m a geek. I’m a details, numbers guy.

Margie: We’re quite different if you haven’t noticed.

I have never seen a better example of opposites attract than Jim and Margie Seidewand. My personal run-ins with them at the Global Pet Expo were always filled with lots of laughs. It was halfway through the interview that I realized our family had been one of those families to have purchased a dog from the Marketplace Mall location in 1994. I remember the experience vividly as the employee handed me our new puppy. That’s when I realized that those are the memories that are Pet World’s business.

WE ARE A DIFFERENT KIND OF PET STORE from the franchise pet stores of today. 25 years ago dog food became pet stores and we kind of pre-dated that. We never became the pet food-centered store. We are the old pet store combination of a variety of live small animals with a deep selection of supplies for companion animals of all kinds. We train all of our employees to educate the customer on how to best take care of the animals. We encourage them to talk to customers about what they need and talk them out of buying the things they don’t. At the end of the day, it is not about commission or sales; IT’S ALL ABOUT THE FAMILY PET.