No ****, cleaning up after dogs is big business

updated 9:29 a.m. ET Oct. 6, 2006

FAIRFAX, Va. - Doug Barnhart was so repulsed by the notion of picking up dog poop that he hired a service to do it.

But he is gradually overcoming his revulsion now that he’s planning to open his own scoop shop later this year in Virginia Beach, Va.

“I’ve been going into my neighbors’ yards and practicing, steeling myself,” Barnhart said.

Barnhart is starting a franchise of Palmyra, Va.-based Doody Calls, part of a small but rapidly growing niche in the pet-care industry focused on pet-waste pickup.

Doody Calls launched in 2000 with two University of Virginia graduates who picked up dog waste on weekends. Now it has more than $1 million in annual revenue and roughly 1,500 clients in seven states — Maryland, Virginia, Massachusetts, Oregon, Texas, Massachusetts and Connecticut — and the District of Columbia.

Until very recently, poop-scooping was the exclusive domain of small, locally based businesses, if service was offered in an area at all. But Doody Calls and Frisco, Tex.-based Pet Butler — operating in 14 states with expected revenue of $2.5 million this year — introduced the franchise concept to the industry in 2004 and are adding new locations at a steady clip.

Today, pooper-scooping represents a fraction of the pet-care services industry, which has grown at about a 10 percent rate in recent years into a $2.7 billion industry, according to the American Pet Products Manufacturers Association. Baby boomers with expendable income and empty-nest syndrome have helped make the services sector the fastest-growing part of the pet industry. Much of that growth has come from luxury services like doggie day spas and in-home day care.

For some, outsourcing poop pickup duties falls in the category of a luxury.

“If you think back ten years ago and somebody told you you could develop a national franchise in scooping poop, you would have marveled at the lunacy of it,” APPMA President Bob Vetere said. “It truly is a luxury item when you can hire someone to come in and clean your yard when you could walk out back with a plastic bag and gloves and do it yourself.”

Deb Levy, vice president of the Association of Professional Animal Waste Specialists (APAWS) and founder of Yucko’s Poop ’n Scoop service in St. Louis in 1990, said pooper-scooping didn’t really take off until 2000. Franchising is simply an extension of that growth.

Levy estimates about 400 companies nationwide offer scoop services in one form or another. The association counts 119 members, most with pun-heavy names like The Grand Poohbah and Scoop De Doo, and will hold its fourth annual convention January in Las Vegas, complete with scooping races, Levy said.

Doody Calls founder Jacob D’Aniello, 29, said that with 40 percent of American homes owning at least one dog, he has found a gold mine in all those lawn land mines.

Most people dismissed his idea as kooky when he started out, but he was convinced the business had moneymaking potential, he said.

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