Mobile Grooming Book: Starring… GT!
A new book is on the market. It’s called The Mobile Pet Grooming Guide. Some of the mobile grooming conversion companies are mentioned in the book, and GT Grooming Trailers has a photo of one of our salons right on the cover! The book, understandably, is heavily weighted towards a good company called Wag’nTails, which is the largest and most known conversion company in the business; but a balance of other brands would have been good for the industry. For example, one of the only pictures of a trailer interior is of a GT. After all, Wag’nTails is like a PC, and GT Grooming Trailers is like a Mac! But I’m happy we at least made the cover and a few pics inside.
The book has strengths and weaknesses.
STRENGTHS: Very good information for start-ups looking for advertising ideas. The book has suggestions on how to handle the phone, route appointments, and tips for almost every aspect of the job. There is also some good information about running a fleet of vehicles, retailing products, etc.
WEAKNESSES: First, the author assumes that trailers are for “starters” because trailers are cheaper than vans. After serving about one hundred customers, I can safely estimate that those who purchase trailers instead of vans are not simply starters, they are SMARTER. The author obviously knows a lot about the “business” of mobile grooming, but has little knowledge of how different salons operate and the benefits that trailers offer over the debt-trap / energy hog vans. The author throws out a lot of false assumptions concerning power needs of different salons. Her assumptions give an inaccurate portrait of some mechanical designs–leading would-be shoppers in the wrong direction. Also, there is NO mention of how important a quality mobile grooming salon is for groomers. GT Grooming Trailers is known for quality while other conversions are simply known for being the cheapest. Some discussion of quality would round off the book in a manner that would aid an entrepreneur. The “fact checking” was pretty poor–just in GT’s case alone, the author gave the wrong price for our trailers and the wrong website for our company. Fortunately, the pics of our trailers have big signs on them with the accurate web address (good eye, editors).
OVERALL, I think the book is the 2nd best resource available for mobile groomers (the best being this blog). The book feels like it should sell for about $19.99, but for $59.95, YES, SIXTY BUCKS it can be yours from amazon–or you could just spend an evening reading our many articles on this blog.