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She's Leader of the (Franchise) Pack

When Amy Nichols worked as a sales representative for Verizon, she often found herself hanging around pet stores on weekends, gazing longingly at the puppies.

A longtime pet lover, she yearned to start a business that involved dogs but wasn’t interested in selling them. She didn’t want to start a kennel, either.

Her inspiration came from her Boston terrier, Griffin. Nichols worked long hours and felt guilty about leaving her dog alone all day. She found a couple of dog day care centers in Washington, D.C., but none near her workplace in Northern Virginia.

So in 2001, she left her job and started looking for a place to launch her own center. A year later, she opened Happy Tails Dog Spa in an industrial park in Tyson’s Corner, Va.

The center, since renamed Dogtopia, is in a cavernous building that previously housed a telecommunications company. Dogs spend the day in one of four playrooms, ranging in size from 600 to 2,000 square feet. Older and laid-back dogs can spend the day in the lounge; active pups are accommodated in the largest room, known as the gym. Dog owners who suffer from separation anxiety can go to Dogtopia’s website and watch their pups on a webcam.

Nichols says she chose the location because it’s a hub for thousands of Northern Virginia commuters. “I knew 50,000 people come to Tyson’s Corner every day,” she says. “I didn’t want to be where the homes were. I wanted to be where the jobs were.”

To finance the facility, Nichols sold her house in Alexandria, Va., which generated about $80,000, and moved in with then-fiance, Mike Schlegel. Even though the couple had solid credit, she had a difficult time getting a business loan because most banks had never heard of dog day care. She finally succeeded in getting a $75,000 Small Business Administration-backed loan from Southern Financial Bank.

With a limited marketing budget, Nichols launched a grass-roots marketing campaign. She attended pet expos and other dog-related events and talked up the business with former telecom colleagues who owned dogs. She wore her company’s shirt when she went shopping.

She paid a designer $5,000 to create her website, because she was convinced that’s how Web-savvy residents of Northern Virginia would find her business. The Internet “is still the No. 1 source of our customers.”

By 2005, the Tyson’s Corner center was so successful that Nichols decided to pursue her dream of a national chain of dog day care centers. She says she hadn’t considered franchising until she attended a franchise event in Washington, D.C. “I got really excited at the idea,” she says. “These people will own their business, they’ll have the pride of ownership I have but be part of a system where we can help them and train them.”