Succession – Plan your endgame

In the busy day-to-day running of a business, especially start-ups and partnerships, the thought of a planned endgame rarely demands any priority and is often totally neglected until there is a real need for it.

Very often partial planning is the biggest issue. When a key partner experiences a catastrophic event, like an accident or severe health issues, a short-term plan is usually available, but the longer-term impact of the event is usually never considered.

There is no single successful endgame, and it may even change over time:

• In some businesses, a total sale is the best fit, especially when all partners have the desire to exit at the same time. In this situation, what is your plan to maximize the value of the enterprise? As partners what is your plan to ensure the business is “clean” and does not have private financial considerations? Should one partner fall away, what is the short and long term plan?
• In other businesses there may be a next generation to consider. How do they take over assets, without any major disruption?

Regardless of what the endgame is, it needs be defined and communicated to all stakeholders.  My hope is that this piece, stops you to think about the ultimate outcome of a lifetime’s work and sweat equity, which you have/are putting into your business. Why not plan early and well for a WIN?

How often do you evaluate your succession strategy, to ensure it aligns well with YOUR planned endgame?  We’d be happy to help.

Lourens Havenga

In today’s dynamic marketing landscape, effectively connecting with your target audience is crucial for business success. However, traditional demographic and behavioral segmentation methods often fall short in capturing the nuances of individual consumer preferences and behaviors.

I have been lucky to work in the companion animal, livestock and aquaculture business of several major animal health companies and have personally felt the limitations and challenges of traditional market segmentation studies.  The reliance on static criteria, like demographics, limited data sources and the lack of behavioral insights has probably held us all back from better segmentation and messaging.

But I think this is about to change. With the tools offered through generative artificial intelligence, large datasets and the ability to assess subconscious needs, desires and motivations of audiences, we can now much better segment our customers and develop messages that better hit the targeted audience.  We are working with a couple of partners to bring these new tools to the animal health industry and to our clients and are excited about what we can do with them.

Ready to elevate your marketing efforts to a new level of effectiveness? Contact me today to schedule a personalized demo and discover how Brakke Consulting can transform your marketing strategy.

Mauri Moreira

In business, “blind spots” can significantly undermine value and growth. These are the unseen or unacknowledged areas in operations that increase the chances for strategic errors, missed opportunities, and catastrophic failures. Blind spots can arise from overconfidence, cognitive biases, ignoring consumer trends, insufficient data analysis, ineffective communication, and resistance to digital technology.

Consider PetSmart’s acquisition of Chewy in 2017 for $3.35 billion. Aiming to boost its online presence amid declining brick-and-mortar sales, this strategic move was meant to compete with Amazon and other e-commerce giants. However, the complex integration process between the two companies strained PetSmart financially. This ultimately led to significant restructuring, and in 2019, PetSmart spun off Chewy through an IPO to alleviate debt pressures.

A common blind spot in the pet care industry is ineffective communication. The 2024 Brakke Pet Medicine Home Delivery Study highlighted a couple of examples here: 1) An overwhelming majority of pet owners say home delivery helps them remember to give pet medicines, while more than half of veterinarians remain skeptical about increased compliance; 2)  75% of veterinarians say their staff actively promotes their practice’s online store and home delivery service, yet more than half of pet owners say they don’t know if their vet offers this.

Identifying and addressing these blind spots requires constant market analysis, rigorous risk management, and adaptive leadership. As the pet care industry evolves, businesses must continually refine their vision to avoid unseen challenges and ensure sustained value and growth.

Richard Hayworth

Those of us in the USA celebrate Independence Day tomorrow, July 4th.  Here in our country, as well as in so many countries around the world, we’re surrounded by division and polarization as the political noise level increases.  Independence Day is a perfect day for us to remember that we have the privilege to disagree, to dissent, to protest, to argue; but all the while we are united by so much more than the petty differences that we hear so much about.

We are united in our knowledge that we are a free people; free to practice our beliefs, free to hold opinions that matter to us, free to say what we choose and free to take action on our beliefs and opinions within the framework of laws that we have created in the almost 250 year history of our Republic.

I intend to focus more of my attention on our common good and less of it on political argument.  I am proud of my country, and I will continue to be.  On Independence Day I celebrate every American who has fought to keep America free, and I resolve to help solve our problems, not to seek division and separation.  The citizens of the USA and all free countries around the world deserve nothing less.  Happy Independence Day!

Jim Kroman

I had the pleasure to attend the AVMA Convention in Austin last weekend, along with around 7,500 veterinarians, staff, and exhibitors. There was great traffic in the Exhibit Hall and a wide variety of educational opportunities available.  Congratulations to the AVMA staff on another successful meeting.

At one of those educational lectures Brakke’s own John Volk, along with Warda Elakkari of Merck Animal Health, presented some of the results of the 2023 Merck Veterinary Well Being Study.  This 1-hour seminar focused on the well-being of veterinary staff (previous presentations at VMX and WVC focused on veterinarian well-being). Veterinary teams are critical to the success of veterinary practices, and every practice owner and industry partner should be actively investing in their well-being. If you’d like more information about the results, you can find it on Merck’s dedicated website.

Lynn Fondon

Recently I attended the 91st WOAH Congress in Paris, which in fact was the 100th anniversary of the organization( formerly known as the OIE). At the event, a new Director General was selected and she is Dr. Emmanuelle Soubeyran. Dr. Soubeyran is the Chief Veterinary Officer in France and amongst her many experiences and attributes, has been very strong in being pro-vaccination on controlling HPAI. In fact France is the only country currently vaccinating, albeit in the duck population. Let’s hope she can bring that support the global level as the HPAI causes serious challenges to both domesticated animals and wildlife. In my opinion, the only way to get this under control is through aggressive vaccination.

In fact, Transboundary and Emerging diseases, under the broader subject of Veterinary Public Health, represents one of the greatest threats, but also one of the greatest opportunities, for our industry. To provide solutions to threats like HPAI, which is a major threat to global food supplies; or rabies, for which the leading cause of death in human rabies comes from exposure to disease infected dogs, is what we as an industry can provide.

However, companies struggle with the vagaries associated with this activity, and try (incorrectly) to apply traditional private models for business operations. It takes a different approach and willingness to be successful. And our customers and the general public expect this from us. How is your company doing in the VPH segment?

On a final note, take time off this summer to enjoy friends and family. Turn off social media and enjoy the quiet. You think it is crazy now- just wait as we get closer to elections this fall!

Paul Casady

Telephonophobia is a new term that I recently learned when reading an article in the Wall Street Journal.  It means the avoidance of using the phone for a good old phone conversation.

I am going to show my age a bit here but the lack of willingness of our younger generations to pick up the phone and talk to someone drives me crazy.  The article says that the younger generations actually experience anxiety with placing a phone call.  Likewise, the roadblocks that companies put in place to prevent you from speaking to a human to help resolve an issue drives me over the cliff.

During my professional life working for a major pharma company, I could see this evolving.  With the explosion of email, employees communicated primarily via email instead of by phone and that further evolved with text messaging and instant messaging tools.  An issue that could be resolved with a five-minute conversation routinely took 10 or more back-and-forth messages with the incidence of misunderstandings increasing.

The phone now fits somewhere between a text message and a Zoom call. I realize that convenience and speed drive us toward electronic communications, but have we lost the ability to simply use a phone?  Try it, you might like it.

Randy Freides
P.S. Call your father this weekend to wish him a Happy Father’s Day…with your phone.

Brakke Consulting gets a lot of inquiries from investors about pet health insurance.  There are two items of note about pet insurance in today’s newsletter.  Independence Pet Group, which owns more than a dozen brands of pet insurance, has expanded its portfolio with the addition of Spot.  And Nationwide, which is the second largest pet insurance company, has announced the cancellation of 100,000 policies citing inflation and the rising cost of veterinary care.

Pet insurance is one of the fastest growing pet care categories with annual increases greater than 20% for the last four years, according to trade association NAPHIA.  But margins are tight, no doubt contributing to Nationwide’s tough decision to cancel some policies.  Many pet insurance companies routinely lose money.  However, continued willingness of pet owners to spend more at the veterinary hospital, and the innovation of more sophisticated treatment options are viewed as growth drivers for pet insurance.  We expect the rapid growth to continue.

John Volk, Senior Consultant, Chicago

This week we published the latest edition of our annual Pain Management Products report.  It’s a fascinating time in the market segment, thanks to the launch last November of Zoetis’ Librela, a monthly monoclonal antibody injection for treating osteoarthritis; and that of Solensia – the feline equivalent – in late 2022.

This new class of pain management drugs has the potential to revolutionize the treatment of chronic pain.  Most veterinarians are already using monoclonal antibodies in their osteoarthritis patients. But how often are they reaching for them?  Are they stand-alone treatments, or part of a multi-modal protocol? Will Librela completely replace the use of NSAIDs in treating osteoarthritis? Is Solensia creating a new market, much like Rimadyl did so when it was launched in the 1990’s?

Our Pain Management Product report answers these questions and more, with direct feedback from our 350-veterinarian survey as well as PIMS-based dispensing data as of April 2024. If your company is part of the companion animal pain management market, you won’t want to miss out on the valuable insights in this report.

Lynn Fondon

Evaluate and Adapt your business – Sooner rather than later

On Monday I went into town, to visit one of the local Vet Retailers, privately owned and with a long history in the community.  I had my script in hand and on presenting it a very interesting scenario played out.

Last week’s poll yielded some interesting yet not terribly surprising information. Only Gen X and Baby Boomers sometimes indicated their preference was to shop at a physical store, and in both cases it was less than 15% of respondents. Over all generations, the preference to shop only online ranged in a narrow band from 19% – 39%. Folks preferring to mix up online and visiting a physical store varied from 50-75%.

Back to my Monday errand, the store did not have the product on hand, but they could get it for me by Friday to pick up as they had an arrangement with each major supplier to deliver a specific day of the week. I used my phone and within minutes could arrange for a next day drop ship to my home, from a vet distributor with an online system geared to accept a script and payment.

The simplicity of the cell phone has provided access across generations, to a magnitude of online shopping experiences. The simplicity of the procedure to search for a product, upload information like a script and paying has greatly contributed to acceptance, again across generations.

I showed this to the manager at the store and both him and his assistant, commented that they have always done business this way, that carrying inventory is problematic and that increased regulations, requiring more and more products to be under control of a veterinarian is problematic. They have a website and people need to call in and ask for what they need.

I am afraid that very much like Bed Bath & Beyond, not paying attention to the customer and his changing behavior and legal access to a multitude of online product suppliers, may hurt this entity in the long run.

How often do you evaluate your business, to ensure it aligns well with the customer needs?

Lourens Havenga