Q&A Interview: Al Puntillo, Mud Bay

Al Puntillo, Chief Merchandising Officer, Mud Bay

Professional History Tell us how your career path led you to the pet industry. How did you decide to join Mud Bay?

Animals and pets have always been a big part of my life. Growing up I was a 4-H kid who spent my summers showing horses and beef cattle, and the rest of the year caring for them and all the other pets on my parent’s small hobby farm just outside of Portland, OR. I chose to pursue a degree in Animal Science from Washington State University, which really helped me develop a strong understanding of animal nutrition and livestock production. After college, I worked for about a year as a veterinary technician where I gained an entirely new appreciation for the work that vets and vet techs do each day. I knew that I wanted to keep growing my career in the pet industry, but I wasn’t sure how to best use my degree and experience. At the urging of my father-in-law, I took a job in outside sales for a giftware company. He convinced me that the sales and marketing experience that I would gain as an outside sales rep would be invaluable. He couldn’t have been more right. I loved calling on independent business owners and helping them grow their businesses and was quickly promoted into a sales management role. While I was enjoying all that I was learning in outside sales, I knew that long term I wanted to be working back in the pet industry. After a few months of looking, I was lucky enough to land a job as an outside sales rep at Animal Supply Company where my pet industry education really kicked into high gear. As a distributor rep I helped grow hundreds of brands and learn exactly what retailers needed from their manufacturing and distribution partners. Working closely with so many pet food manufacturers made me curious about the focused role of being a manufacturer’s sales rep and after four years at Animal Supply Company, I took a position with Nutro Pet Foods. After selling hundreds of product lines as a distributor rep, I really enjoyed the focus of being an expert on just one brand, and at the time Nutro was highly focused on building strong relationships with retailers and growing sales through great community outreach with shelters, breeders and veterinarians. In 2005, Animal Supply Company doubled in size overnight with the acquisition of Western Farm Center in Northern California, and I was offered a job to return to Animal Supply Company as Director of Sales. Returning to Animal Supply Company to lead the company’s sales team was a huge honor for me and yet another tremendous learning opportunity. From 2005 to 2013 the Animal Supply Company sales team and I focused on supporting independent retailers as business consultants and partners in their success. Through my roles with both Animal Supply Company and Nutro, I had the opportunity to build relationships and partnerships with many retailers on the West Coast , including Mud Bay. Mud Bay always set itself apart from other retailers in its truly vested and sustainable approach to long term partnerships. When they asked me to join them as VP of Merchandising, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to be a part of such an amazing family and employee-owned company.

What do you enjoy the most about working in the pet industry?

Without a doubt it is the people. The pet industry attracts great people while also bringing out the best in people. Every day I get to be a part of an industry supported by pet parents who care deeply about their pets, business owners whose missions are all about making lives of pets and people better and passionate Muddies (our nick name for Mud Bay staff members) who really care about the work they do and the company we are building.

What valuable lessons and experiences have you learned during your career working in pet?

Some of these may be cliches, but it has taken me a long time to truly internalize them and understand just how important they are: 1) Culture trumps everything 2) People may forget what you said, but they will never forget the way you made them feel

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r From Pg. 40 3) Measure what matters and make data-driven decisions 4) What gets focus, gets results

What trait(s) in yourself do you attribute most to your success?

I am a builder and salesperson by nature. I enjoy the planning, designing, building or re-building of things almost as much as I enjoy helping others see the future potential in what we are building.

Who do you consider to be your biggest advocate or advisor and why?

Without a doubt my biggest advocate is my partner and spouse, Carrie. She is always there balancing love and inspiration with straight-forward, unfiltered truth.

How would you describe your leadership style? How have your previous leaders and experiences influenced that style?

I believe in giving people and teams what they need to do a great job and getting out of their way. For some teams that may be as simple as giving them a clear objective and the resources to make it happen. Others may need additional help to build or execute their plan. Great leaders are constantly on the lookout for what their people and teams need to keep them moving forward.

Pet Industry What creates the differentiation that allows the pet industry to chug forward through all weather? Why has this industry fared better during disruptive times compared to other industries?

it can be summed up by saying now more than ever: pets are family members. We want for our pets what we want for ourselves and our children. As long as the pet industry continues to innovate its goods and services to keep up with the desire to treat pets as family members, the pet industry will continue to outperform other industries in year-over-year compounded growth.

What are you most proud of when you look back at Mud Bay’s response to the pet industry climate during the last 20 months?

It has been a very difficult 20 months, and there are a lot of things that Mud Bay has done during that time that I am proud of. During the early days of the pandemic, it made me incredibly proud to see just how quickly we were able to adapt to take care of employees and customers. Within just a few weeks we implemented Covid safety protocols and signage in stores that had county and state health officials using Mud Bay as an example for other business. We went from having no e-commerce platform, to having are entire assortment available for curbside pickup in less than a month, and we created the Muddy Support Team to support customers via phone and chat.

How has e-commerce impacted the pet industry within the last five years? How do pet owners benefit from having both online and brick and mortar retailers?

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Online sales of pet food and supplies totaled more than $20 billion in 2020. That is 30 percent of all the pet food and supplies sold in the US. Amazon and Chewy were poised to take advantage of the pandemic , and in doing so they have made easy delivery and auto reorder must-have items for every pet retailer. The good news is that in the last five years, e-commerce systems catering to small and medium sized pet retailers have made getting online much easier. Customers want both. They want the expertise, relationship and convenience that comes from their local pet retailer when they want it, and they want the convenience of delivery and auto reorder when they want it. Independent retailers have the ability to offer it all, but they need to get it up and in place ASAP.

What are the top 2-3 issues pet specialty retailers are currently facing?

It seems like for years we have all been answering this question with responses about competition, pricing pressure, etc. But right now, supply chain shortages and staffing are the two issues that I hear the most concern about. The independent pet channel is experiencing tremendous growth right now, and we need manufacturers and distributors to invest heavily to ensure that their supply of product keeps up.

Mud Bay In your opinion, what business practices have ensured Mud Bay’s success in the business?

What has made Mud Bay successful over time is more than just specific business practices. Mud Bay has definitely benefited from building an employee ownership culture, open book management and its long-term partnerships with manufacturers and distributors. But what has made the real difference is Mud Bay’s willingness to constantly work to reinvent itself, always having one foot in the present and one foot in the future.

What makes Mud Bay an industry leader?

Mud Bay’s values are simply a reflection of the values of two truly amazing human beings, Marisa Wulff and Lars Wulff, Mud Bay’s Co-CEOs. Throughout the past 30 years, they have worked tirelessly to make sure that our values show up every day in the work we do. Our core values are: • Accountability. We follow through. • Education. We empower with knowledge. • Integrity. We do the right thing. • Generosity. We help others succeed. • Responsibility. We use our best judgment. • Fun. We create workplaces that are filled with laughter.

How would you characterize your manufacturer and distributor partnerships, and how could they be further improved?

When we refer to the manufacturers and distributors we work with as partners we really mean it. We depend on our manufacturers to provide us with great products, continuous innovation

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r From Pg. 44 and accurate information that we can use to educate Muddies and customers. Mud Bay goes to market differently than other retailers. We don’t do promotions, in-store signage, or shippers and our product selection process can be slow and time consuming. But, once our partners get used to our idiosyncrasies they come to find that we are fair, easy to work with, and that our methods keep sales consistently growing.

You’ve worked in each sector of the industry—on the manufacturing side for Nutro, on the distribution side for Animal Supply and now currently in retail. How does your professional experience allow you to be a stronger partner for Mud Bay’s manufacturer and distributor partners?

The pet industry is still, at its core, a relationship business. Mud Bay is always looking for the best possible products, but we are also looking for the best possible partners: people and companies that we enjoy working with and who are also looking to build long-term, mutually beneficial partnerships. Having worked in all three sectors it makes it easier for me to identify with the needs of our partners and help translate that to other teams at Mud Bay.

During your career working at Mud Bay, what accomplishments are you the most proud of?

Muddies have accomplished so many amazing things in the last eight years that it is very hard to pick just a few. But I am particularly proud of all the work that has gone into Mud Bay’s pet food certification process, Mud Bay Certified. For more than 30 years we have been touring production facilities and requiring the highest level of transparency from our manufacturing partners. Mud Bay Certified has pulled that entire process together into an annualized certification process and into customer-facing information that our customers can use and have confidence in. I am also very proud of Mud Bay’s participation as one of the founding members of IndiePet, a non-profit trade association created to support independent and neighborhood pet retailers, which launched in November of 2020.

All photos courtesy of Mud Bay

What are your top 2-3 priorities as we round out 2021?

Keeping stores full of product though the holidays is definitely a high priority for everyone at Mud Bay. We are also working hard to finalize our plan for what we believe is going to be an amazing 2022.

What can we expect from Mud Bay in the near future?

So many Muddies have been working their tails off over the last two years to make our 2022 initiatives possible. Just a few of the exciting initiatives that will be completed in 2022: • The return of Mudstock (our all-employee day of learning/partner fair); • Free local Mud Bay delivery in all communities that we service; • The opening of our second and third Mud Room locations (Mud Bay’s lifestyle specific grooming); and • Expansion of our Green Pet service, pet waste pickup and composting.