Walk into almost any grooming salon and you’ll find more than flying fur and buzzing clippers. You’ll find professionals constantly weighing what is best for the pet, what the client is asking for, and what their own bodies and schedules can realistically manage. Those crossroads…
A backup clipper is one of those purchases that feels unnecessary right up until your main machine dies halfway through a fully booked day. Then, all of a sudden, it’s the most important tool you own.
When we’re talking about grooming tools, there seems to be very little middle ground regarding swivel shears. Groomers seem to either love or hate them. But why? Why all the love and why the hate? The following aims to give you the knowledge to decide…
IIt doesn’t take rocket science to see that grooming prices are all over the map. One salon might have such low overhead that they’re still charging $35 for a full groom. (Yes, people really do charge that little.) On the other end of the spectrum,…
When most individuals hear the term “cooperative care,” there’s an automatic assumption that it means letting the animal in front of them make all of the decisions as though it is a hands-off, optional approach to grooming. Which, of course, sounds nice in theory, but…
Many groomers don’t enjoy grooming cats because they claim they are unpredictable. However, cats are very proud creatures and will 100% tell you what they are feeling. If we are surprised by their actions, we are just not listening.
Growth is exciting, but it also exposes weaknesses. Informal pricing, inconsistent expectations, unwritten policies and unclear responsibilities become more costly as the team expands. A grooming business does not need every system perfected before it grows—it needs an operational foundation that supports growth. The following…
For decades, cats have been the pet industry’s afterthought—the “self-cleaning” animal that got a nail trim at the vet once a year and little else. However, that era is over. The American Pet Product Association dubbed 2025 and 2026 the “Year of the Cat,” and…
Every spring, four longtime groomer friends—Harper, Zoey, Finn and Layla—meet for an annual dinner where talk inevitably shifts from poodles to profits and taxes. Each groomer makes about $100,000 a year in net profit, but each has structured their business differently.
A s groomers, we all know just how much work goes into learning the skills needed to do our job. We spend years learning and honing our craft to safely and efficiently groom pets to each individual client’s expectation. However, as an industry, we are…
I used to joke that the hardest part of house-call grooming was backing down strange driveways. And while there may be some merit to that, maintaining professional boundaries and enforcing policies truly was much harder.
Most groomers dread the day they see a Newfie or a Great Pyrenees on the schedule. They say things like, “My back is going to hurt so bad after this” or “It’s going to take me forever to groom them!” But it’s time to change…