Lessons from Dolly

I couldn’t help but read the many tributes to Dolly Parton this week. I do not have any stories to tell about her other than she owned a small cottage in Solvang, California, which is in the Santa Ynez Valley where I grew up and where most of my family still lives. But the story of her life is amazing and something that we can learn from.

We learned from these tributes how kind, considerate and generous she was to everyone, not just her fellow music and movie stars and not just at the end of her very successful career. She was that way her entire life. Dolly had what I consider to be the two keys to success: she was self-aware and was authentic. She was not born into wealth, her education stopped after finishing high school, maybe she was lucky, but she seemed to work hard, built wonderful relationships with people, and she clearly was able to recognize opportunities in the entertainment industry.

But at the end of the day, Dolly Parton was a talented and genuine person – she knew who she was and never strayed from it. She was able to build trust and was as authentic as it gets. Her life is a reminder that knowing who you are, staying true to it, and treating people well may be among the most enduring foundations of success—in life and in business.

Bob Jones, CEO

Beware of AI Without Expertise
AI is becoming ubiquitous in animal health, from diagnostics and market analysis to due diligence and fundraising. But its value—and its risk—depend heavily on who is using it. Experts rarely accept the first AI-generated answer. They challenge assumptions, test conclusions and iterate. Without that expertise, a polished output can too easily be mistaken for a reliable answer.

A recent lawsuit involving an Oregon veterinary hospital and an alleged misdiagnosis by an AI diagnostic tool illustrates the issue. Whatever the eventual outcome of the case, it raises an important question: when AI contributes to a recommendation, who is responsible for validating it? That answer applies whether interpreting diagnostics or advising on strategy, the professional remains responsible for the recommendation.

At Brakke, we are applying that principle to a program helping animal health startups and growth companies prepare for fundraising. AI can organize diligence materials, build checklists, identify documentation gaps and manage much of the preparation process. That can significantly reduce the number of expensive consulting hours required. But it does not eliminate the need for expertise. It allows experienced advisors to spend their time where judgment creates the most value: positioning, priorities, investor expectations and identifying the questions management may not know to ask.

AI may reduce the cost of expertise; however, it should not reduce the standards of expertise.

Alexis Nahama, Senior Consultant

Brazil’s Veterinary Market Is Moving Fast — Is Your Fund Already Behind?

Brazil, Latin America’s largest veterinary service market is also the most globally dynamic market and its being reshaped in real time. The window to get in early is narrowing. Markets that grow this fast don’t wait for latecomers. New challenges are emerging inside the veterinary profession, yes, but so are windows of opportunity that won’t stay open for long.

SINDAN, the animal health industry association, conducts the RadarVet survey to capture the profile of small-animal veterinarians in Brazil and track how it evolves over time. With competition intensifying — driven by a growing number of veterinary schools across the country — veterinary professionals are adapting fast. Three clear dimensions of change are already reshaping the small-animal veterinary market:

— Specialization beyond general practice. Surgery, dermatology, and anesthesiology stand out as three of the most sought-after specialties — and demand is only accelerating.
— Explosive growth in the number of veterinary establishments nationwide.
— A decisive shift toward contract-free work, with veterinarians increasingly practicing autonomously rather than being tied to a single clinic or hospital — upending the traditional employment model that investors have relied on to size this market.

And here’s the piece that should really catch an investor’s attention: a broader ecosystem is emerging around pet owners and their animals. Veterinarians are building support networks that offer products and services to dogs and cats treated as full-fledged family members — connecting owners to specialists in health, nutrition, and wellness. This isn’t a niche trend; it’s the next layer of value creation in the market, and it’s forming right now, ahead of where most capital is looking. Investors who wait for the data to be obvious will be buying at a very different price than those who act on what’s visible today.

Want to understand the Brazilian market as a gateway for investment before the window narrows further? Get in touch — let’s talk now.

Mauri Ronan Moreira
Senior Consultant, Brazil

As major segments in our industry get crowded and new players with analog molecules or generics enter the market, there is risk of price erosion and segment value reduction.

Prescription/purchase decisions based on lowest price carry no brand loyalty. Decisions based on unique product benefits generate brand loyalty, thus creating and promoting unique marketing claims really pays off. The parasiticide market is one example where those unique claims give a brand a competitive advantage. Zoetis has been differentiating the moxidectin-based products as the heartworm preventives that perform best in the face of resistant worms, leveraging work initiated when I was supporting Advantage® Multi (Bayer-Elanco). Finding out the unique features of the product/molecule, performing surveys or clinical studies to support this differentiating feature, and generating advocacy by customers and experts is critical. The marketing and sales teams can then leverage these claims and gain consistent market share.

I recently led the work on differentiating EASOTIC® (Virbac) as the otitis treatment that provides fast relief of otitis signs. When first launched EASOTIC® was positioned as “easy to dose”. Since then, Osurnia and Claro took that position from it. This repositioning allowed an older product to grow sales >20% for several years in a row.

Are you entering a competitive market, or have a mature product that is facing intense competition? Maybe price cuts aren’t the best option to gain/maintain share. You may want to consider a technical/market analysis to reveal alternative strategies to gain share at a profitable price.

Cristiano von Simson
Senior Consultant

Recently at an internal company event, I had the opportunity to hear a keynote speech from Sarah Furness, a former combat helicopter pilot for the British army.

Her presentation was very impressive, and there were a lot of takeaways to think about. One that resonated with me especially was in a crisis in the pilot’s seat, she talked about “…just flying the plane…” which was a message around in times of stress and anxiety- focusing on the most basic important operation you can do, and are trained to do.

While there is a lot to unpack personally around this concept, I believe that applying that in our industry, it means with all the noise of channel management, digital, consolidation and so on, it still comes down to the relationship between a veterinarian and a company, and more specifically the salesperson managing that relationship to its best outcome.

Our research at Brakke on sales force effectiveness demonstrates that ‘trust’ is the most important aspect when choosing a supplier.

In my view, ‘just fly the plane” means just manage the basic relationship with veterinarians in a good way, and good things will happen.

Paul Casady, Senior Consultant

The veterinary clinic pharmacy has gained a new competitor with the announcement that CVS pharmacies are getting into the pet medication business. CVS stores will begin filling prescriptions for many pet products, including parasiticides, dermatology products, pain management, cardio-vascular and several other categories.

There are nearly 35,000 veterinary clinics and only 9,000 CVS stores, so why is this such a big deal? Traffic. A pet owner typically visits her veterinary practice once or a few times a year. She visits her drug store multiple times a month. Plus, at CVS, the pet medications are subject to the same auto-fill and home delivery services that customers get with their own prescriptions. One more thing. Many human drugs are prescribed for pets and those prescriptions are already being filled at the local pharmacy. So, it won’t be the first time many pet owners are picking up scripts at CVS. (I stopped at a large CVS in downtown Chicago this week. The pharmacist was aware of the program but had no training or information about a start date.)

Of course, not everyone shops at CVS. But it will be interesting to see how aggressively CVS pushes its pet medicine initiative. If it’s successful, you can bet real money that Walgreens will follow suit with its 8,000 stores.

No doubt CVS is searching for as many ways as possible to serve customers and bond them to the store. After all, their visits are down, too. Last year Walgreens closed 1,200 stores, CVS about 300. Are pet meds the business boost that will get them back on track?

John Volk, Senior Consultant, Chicago, IL

In last week’s Viewpoint, I reviewed the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) reforms for the veterinary sector and ended with a comment about trust — it’s not a vague sentiment made on my part. The CMA found that fewer than 50% of clients at large veterinary groups (CVS, IVC, Linnaeus, Medivet, VetPartners) knew their practice was part of a chain, and those veterinary groups averaged prices 18.3% above independents while scoring worse on client satisfaction with cost. That looks like erosion of the very thing that used to substitute for regulation in professional-service markets: personal/localized reputation.

Historically, “trust the vet” worked as an informal market mechanism because the vet was a known individual in your town whose livelihood depended on local reputation over a career. Word travels fast in a small market, and the vet bore the reputational cost personally — a strong incentive against overcharging or overtreating. When ownership shifts to a private-equity-backed chain, that mechanism breaks down: prices aren’t always set locally, the trusted local clinic brand now sits inside a different ownership and incentive structure, and personal reputation is diffused across a corporation.

This isn’t “markets work-versus-markets fail”, and it isn’t that “corporate vets are untrustworthy” — trust in individual vet professionalism remains high across the board according to the report. It’s that the mechanism that made this market self-regulating for decades was itself a market feature- localized reputation. Consolidation dismantled it faster than any replacement emerged. The CMA is betting mandated disclosure can rebuild enough information for price competition to work again. Whether that bet pays off is an open question.

Bob Jones

Like a lot of our readers, I consider myself a free-market guy. Let the market decide, keep the government out of markets, and that free and open competition for consumers is good. So, when I read recent articles written about the United Kingdom’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) reforms or rules for the veterinary sector, my free-market radar went off.

The CMA’s investigation started almost three years ago and brought 56,000 responses, 45,000 from the public, 11,000 from those working in the veterinary industry. That’s massive. You can find the full report here.

What set the radar off for me was the price cap on prescriptions fees, which drove me to learn about the other ten reforms the CMA has imposed on the veterinary industry. I was sure that these reforms were all going to be bad, but after thinking about the reforms, I am not so sure. It seemed to me that most of the reforms were focused almost entirely on disclosure: price lists, written estimates, ownership transparency, comparison tools. A hardline free marketeer would tend to support most of those.

The report looked at the differences in pricing, satisfaction, and other things between large veterinary groups (LVGs, or corporate groups) and independent veterinarians, some of the differences are eye-opening. One of my observations here was about trust and how this has been impacted by the formation of LVGs, which I will address in the Viewpoint next week.

Bob Jones

When Paul Revere rode his horse to warn of the British arrival to spark the American Revolutionary War, the horse was a vital part of every aspect of the colonies.  As the new country forged its way, that dependency continued for another 175+ years until cars, roads (1910-1930’s) and mechanical farming (1940 – 1950’s) transitioned them to their current role in society.  In the 1920’s an estimated 25% or 5 to 6 million households owned horses. Today they represent approximately 2 million households; they dwarf the 71 million households that have dogs (according to the 2025 APPA National Pet Owner survey).

Horses once played a critical role in people’s lives, but innovation changed that- however that doesn’t necessarily mean that as a profession and an industry we should focus our time, efforts and most importantly financial investments on species that have the largest numbers or households. Investing in areas that meet a specific need/ niche offers larger opportunities than can be anticipated.  We are seeing some of those now (i.e. Dalan’s Bee Vaccine) and I hope we see more in the future.

Dr. Christine Merle

If you haven’t had a chance to provide feedback on the new look of the newsletter, we would love to hear from you. 

Supporting Early-Stage Animal Health Innovation

The launch of Elanco Ventures, along with recent investments by Veterinary Angel Network for Entrepreneurs (VANE), are a welcome boost for early-stage innovators in animal health. This stage is often one of the toughest points in a company’s journey, especially as the company moves beyond friends-and-family funding and begins to look for more substantial capital.

Investors like Digitalis and NovaQuest have helped lay an important foundation, but the industry still needs more capital focused on these earlier stages of development. Investment support at this stage can make a real difference in keeping new ideas moving forward through funding proof-of-principle and proof-of-concept work leading to new tools, solutions and products.

A stronger funding ecosystem from early to late stages, gives the animal health industry a better chance to keep growing and innovating over the long term.

Chuck Johnson- Senior Consultant