Having built up two successful pet related businesses, puppreneur family, The Maxteds, from Horsham in West Sussex, have recently launched their third pet business.
Peter and Julie, plus their now grown-up children have always been a pet-loving family. It was in 2002 that Julie started a pet sitting business when her children were younger. The business greew and in 2008, when husband Peter retired as a firefighter, they decided to develop it into a franchise business and The Pets, Homes and Gardens Company was born www.petshomesandgardens.co.uk. They now have twenty-five franchises across the UK, all the way from Whitley Bay to Plymouth, and it continues to grow.
Daughter Charlotte has been working within the petsitting side of the business since she was 16 years old. Now a 29 year old mother of two, Charlotte continues to work in the business taing care of the social media side of the businesses and pet visiting.
Son Chris graduated from university last year and having undertaken a Management Degree, he is putting his skills to good use in the development of the Dog-G8 Company. He is progressing the on-line sales of Dog-G8 and helping with the social media and marketing too.
The family and their franchisees have seen the huge increases of more daily calls to homes from postal workers and the online shopping couriers and in turn, the dangers when looking after dogs and in particular, puppies. With this increase, it was becoming apparent there was a massive safety issue for both dogs and the callers to the home. The flash point being every time the front door was opened. On average, eight postal workers are bitten every day in the UK, and the other delivery companies and couriers also face the same problem.
So Peter went looking for a simple and cost-effective way of resolving this issue, as well as keeping the dogs and puppies safe behind an open front door. He looked at various types of 'gates' designed to try and stop this happening, however, he felt just didn't deal with all the aspects of this problem enough. He therefore decided to develop his own safety gate. After many months of in-depth development, and also working with a Peterborough-based engineering company, the Dog-G8 (www.dog-g8.com) was established.
The beauty of Dog-G8 is that it fixes really neatly to the front door of a house and it is very attractive in appearance. DOg-G8 will stop a dog or pup running out every time the door is opened, by keeping the pup safely behind a physical barrier. IT also protects the caller at the door, which is really important. Peter has designed Dog-G8 to be easily removable when not required, and fully modular should you wish to extend DOg-G8 wider. Dog-G8 Plus has been developed to help with stairs and to be used as a room divider.
The Dog-G8 Company knows it has developed a 'game-changer' regarding the safety of dogs and puppies to any home that has a Dog-G8 fitted, as well as safety for the callers. The family are also very proud that Dog-G8 is a totally British-made product.
