Morpeth dog retailer secures £37k investment for scale up

A Morpeth dog food retailer has secured a five figure investment from a North East development fund.

Angell Petco, which sells healthy dog food, received the investment from the North East Small Loan Fund, supported by the European Regional Development Fund to help it put its scale up plans into action.

The Morpeth-headquartered business, which has seen a “significant spike” in demand in the last few weeks, is aiming to more than double its annual turnover by the end of next year.

It has worked with regional fund management firm NEL Fund Managers to secure the £37k investment, which is being used to support a number of improvements to its systems and offering.

Phil Butler, owner of Angell Petco, commented: “When we took over the business, we saw opportunities to build on what it offered to customers and to make structural and operational improvements that would help us do even better in the future.

“Our focus has always been to ensure we’re providing the sort of high-quality products that we’d be happy to give to our own dog at the best possible prices, and the work we’ve done over the last few months has helped us get the business model where we want it.

“There’s been a real surge in demand over recent weeks, but we’ve been able to cope with it pretty well - our supply chains have been standing up strongly, stock levels remain high and our couriers are doing a great job in getting orders out to customers as quickly as possible.

“The new website and marketing drive will help us maximise the benefits we can gain from this surge in interest, while gradually adding quality new products to the range will give customers more reasons to spend a greater proportion of their pet budgets with us.

“The Small Loan Fund investment has been central to us putting all these plans into action and the support we got from the NEL investment team made bringing it into the business a very straightforward process.”