Anna Zege Podcast Transcript
Anna Zege joins host Brian Thomas on The Digital Executive Podcast.
Welcome to Coruzant Technologies, Home of The Digital Executive Podcast.
Brian Thomas: Welcome to The Digital Executive. Today’s guest is Anna Zege. Ms. Anna Zege is the President and Co-founder of Groomit. American entrepreneur, Anna Zege studied economics at New York University. She then started her career in real estate as an intern before she became a banker in Manhattan at AXA Advisors.
In February 2017, Anna co-founded Groomit.me after she found out how tricky it is to find a pet groomer who had come to her place at a convenient time. Groomit is an on-demand grooming service for pets and provides its app-based services across the USA. Anna is a New Yorker and entrepreneur at heart, and as a former fashion model, calls style and design her hobbies aside from her always groomed pet.
Well, good afternoon, Anna. Welcome to the show!
Anna Zege: Hi, it’s great to meet you. And I appreciate it.
Brian Thomas: I know traversing time zones is always the fun thing I like to do, and tonight we’re talking between Kansas City and New York. So just an hour time difference. I appreciate you jumping on. Jumping into your first question here, why did you start Groomit? What was the initial idea behind it?
Anna Zege: Grooming came out of the love I have for my dog. I love my dog and treasure her so much. You know, a lot of people can call me a paranoid pet parent, but I wanted to see what is happening at my dog at all times. And I felt very uncomfortable. My dog is four pounds to give her off to a grooming salon and not know what goes behind the scenes.
Like different people can work on the dog. They can mishandle her, God forbid. Put her in a kennel. I did not want her to feel uncomfortable. So, it came purely out of love for my dog. And I started calling salons. It was just a story, a true story. I called salons. I had this puppy that was half a pound and then she grew to four pounds.
And I was calling salons and trying to schedule someone to come to my house, which was virtually impossible. I probably called 14 salons. And after someone said, fine, we’re ready to come to your house. It was two or three weeks in advance. It was very difficult to find it. And I was just wondering, I’m like, I I’m so used to convenience, you know, I pay for Instacart on demand.
I have groceries in 40 minutes, Uber in two minutes. I have someone come to my house and use Zeal and do massage therapy. I just didn’t understand why this didn’t exist. Like there’s definitely a need for it. And I’m the kind of person who will order, you know, a $20 sandwich and pay $30 because it was delivered from downtown, and I live uptown, and I want this sandwich. and I value my time more than anything. And I just wanted someone competent to come to my house. And my dog would be safe and comfortable, and it would be transparent because there’s no transparency when you go to a salon, you know, sometimes some salons are really good and sometimes you don’t know what you’re getting.
So, it’s like, I did not want to risk that. My dog is my family. There was nothing like that technology driven. And I thought this would be an incredible idea. And I think the common misconception about grooming is, you know, oh, it’s like, so the dog looks cute. I think it’s health preventative and it’s not just looking good.
It’s about safety. Like a lot of groomers can find, you know, there’s a knot. And the hair is matted, and blood flow doesn’t go to that area, or they find a bump that, you know, you could go to a vet and prevent some God forbid illness. There’s so many things around that area that I thought that, you know, we want our pets to be safe and comfortable and make it very convenient.
Groom bit when I came up with that idea, I was like, wouldn’t it be amazing if I could have an app, and someone could come to your house same day? I mean, that would be incredible. That’s what we’re actually offering now. And there’s nothing like that nationwide, you know, grooming is, is mostly mom and pop shops.
Brian Thomas: Absolutely. Mom and pops. And sometimes there’s not that luxury of them to get out and deliver that service. You’ve found a solution to a problem there in New York, at least to start. So, I appreciate the backstory on that. I think that’s really important for our listeners to understand. And Anna, where does Grumman stand today in terms of its development and success?
Anna Zege: So, as I said, it started with my dog and I’m a very particularly difficult customer and it started in 2017. I started it with my business partner. It started in home and it developed over after the 3 years it started, then COVID hit and we started introducing vans, which people love. They loved vans and I actually do recommend it for larger dogs because it is a mess grooming dogs in a home that are larger.
So, people loved it and it’s now kind of pivoted into vans. We’ve completed about 140,000 rooms. The company is growing 100 percent year-over-year. And it’s just it’s crazy. We’ve been testing different areas and. You know, it’s just so interesting to see people will pay the average was around 220, but we see like 2nd and 3rd tier market like Atlanta, Georgia or Arizona, Tennessee, people are paying like 500 a month to groom their dog.
And I was like, I thought, like, I was a crazy parent, but there’s nothing crazy about it. It’s humanization of animals. And. It’s your family. This is your family member. This is your baby. Like you will do anything, and your family member is safe. That are well taken care of your time is valuable as well.
And there’s a huge market for it. You know, it’s an 8 billion a year industry, which is growing and growing, just grooming. And it’s completely inelastic as well. People are willing to pay no matter what the market is doing. You know what I mean?
Brian Thomas: Absolutely. And I’ve seen that probably in the last 10 years, I saw that pet owners, kids are no kids, they treated their pet as their own.
And I’ve seen pet owners, they had their own room, and they buy them a human bed. And it was just, it’s interesting how that all works, but I appreciate you kind of delving into this a little bit, the growth of your company, the success, but, but why the why behind it is obviously the pet. So, I appreciate that.
And Anna, how are you addressing the problem that Grumman aims to solve?
Anna Zege: So, we kind of want it to be the first to market and be kind of the first nationwide app of its kind, which we are now, no one is really offering this. As I mentioned before, it’s all mom-and-pop shops. We’re driven by transparency and convenience.
The selection of groomer, you can have a favorite groomer. And I think that’s also a great thing because your dog will get used to a certain groomer. Like my dog is a complete diva. And if you can groom my dog, you can groom any dog. And she, she will, you know, start barking or biting or being very aggressive.
But once she has a groomer that she likes, she thinks it’s like a game. She’s like, “oh, this is fun. It’s okay.” She lets the groomer groom her and she’s totally okay. It’s very easy to book a same day availability. And also, I think what kind of separates us is we have an extremely intelligent backend system.
It’s not just a grooming service. It’s a tech company. It’s an incredible backend system where it’s the tech development. Basically, let’s say you’re in New York and you have a groomer assigned in Brooklyn. The system takes into account the time it will take to groom and the next location of the groomer.
Like, they’re not going to, you know, select the next groomer to be in, in, I don’t know, Bronx or whatever. It’ll match in proximity. We have over 500 groomers on the platform. And it’s just, it’s a very intelligent backend. And I have thoughts for it to develop even more as a tech company.
Brian Thomas: That’s awesome. Really do appreciate that. Again. I love it when entrepreneurs find a solution to a problem and obviously there’s a market for it. So, I do appreciate that. And in a last question of the evening here, what are your future plans for Groomit?
Anna Zege: I want to be a household name, like Kleenex house me a clean. I used to groom it.
I need to groom it. You know, I want. I want it to also be a one stop grooming solution, like an open table where you’re able to, because it’s difficult. Like, let’s say you need to groom in a salon, and you’ll have to call different salons and book. And it’s, it’s just whatever you want to groom. It’s like an Amazon for grooming.
You’ll just go to Groomit and see the next available salon. What time is available in terms of that as an open table, then where we want to use AI development. For scheduling, we want to use, let’s say you upload a picture of your dog, and AI would be able to tell, because a lot of people don’t know what a puppy cut is, or a lion cut, or different haircuts, because different breeds have different haircuts, and they don’t know even sometimes what they want, but if they’re able to see it, they would be able to see their dog and what it would look like with a particular cut, which I think, you know, a picture is worth a thousand words.
We’re also looking into creating a grooming Academy, meaning we’re going to recruit people and teach them how to groom and it provides actually amazing opportunities for people because groomers are making probably a protocol. They’re making, I don’t know, 40 or 50 grand a year. And with us, they’re making 120,000 a year.
I don’t know any job that you don’t need to go to school for that. You’re going to after a few years, make 120,000 a year. Another thing we’re going to offer is we want to develop a subscription-based service based on how often certain breeds need to be groomed and expert advice on that.
Brian Thomas: That’s awesome.
Going back on a few of those things, obviously, you would like to see grew up, become a household name, like a name brand like clinics, which I think is amazing. And so far, the success you’ve had probably came with a little bit of marketing and advertising. I’m sure you’ll get there. But I like you looking ahead, giving opportunity to other entrepreneurs, franchisees, right?
Franchise owners that have an ability to go on their own and make a little bit more money than what they typically make. So, I really, really appreciate that. And Anna, it was such a pleasure having you on today. And I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
Anna Zege: Thank you.
Brian Thomas: Bye for now.
Anna Zege Podcast Transcript. Listen to the audio on the guest’s podcast page.
