We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Angela Velasquez a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Angela thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What’s been the best thing you’ve ever seen (or done yourself) to show a customer that you appreciate them?
As a cat specific pet supply store there is ample opportunity to demonstrate customer appreciation by listening carefully to what’s going on with their cat, and offering sound advice based on first-hand experience, or relayed by another customer who went through something similar. Customers feel appreciated with they are heard, and even more so when they are helped (which can’t be done effectively unless you listen and ask the right questions first.) I do my best to offer this service to every single person who walks through my door. Recently I was given the opportunity to help a customer with a cat that was in the hospital, not eating, and about to be discharged early by the caretaker. I got her call on a day I was closed, but I live close so I came to meet her at the store. She asked me on the phone about a food I mentioned a few days prior that I had at home and had offered a sample. So I took that with me as well. After learning about he cat’s health timeline, symptoms, and hospital diagnosis (which wasn’t confirmed, but at best pointed to upper respiratory) I made a few small suggestions. One item I don’t even carry in the store because I don’t qualify to sell it because I am not a vitamin shop. I told her to check locally where she could pick it up right away and she quickly found a place. I provided her the rest of what she needed, which wasn’t very much and told her to pay for the items next time she was in the store. Long story short, the cat is home, feeling much better, in part because of his caretakers fast action and determination, and in part because of my assistance. If you ask her today if she felt customer appreciation on that day, I think you would get a resounding yes!
Angela, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
In New York City it’s culturally ingrained in people to be more cat-savvy, cat-compassionate, and cat-aware, since there are a lot of strays there. Having lived there for such a long time, I naturally adopted this way of thinking and as a result have been doing cat rescue, TNR, and colony management for over 17 years and counting. Helping cats has never once bored me, burned me out, or distressed me.
So, like many folks after Covid-19 hit, I wondered what my future held. Working in an office would never be the same again, and I always got bored of those jobs anyway. Running a business was tricky since it would now have to be something pandemic-proof, which does put a tight reign on options. Working with cats would be very comforting, but could be quite depressing if rescue became what my finances depended on. I am not one to ever mix business and pleasure. And working to help cats, for me, is a genuine serotonin-releasing experience. I also knew that stress wasn’t something I handled well, and even less so as I get older. So that was my conundrum: How could I do something low stress, not exploitative, sustainable, and cat related? That’s when it hit me: I could run a small cat store! A simple retail model is low stress for me because there isn’t a lot of pressure to constantly re-invent myself or an idea. And I would be able to help cats visa-vie their caretakers, and I would still get to do rescue on the side. And the sugar on top is that I would be exposed to so much more information regarding cats, their health, medical developments, personal challenges and how someone overcame them, and that thought excited me more than anything else. I would be positioned to be a hub of knowledge and wealth of information that I could share with others when it mattered most.
So I opened up my very first brick-and-mortar retail store: The Kitty Bodega. And I haven’t had an ounce of regret about anything, and I doubt I ever will.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
This line of work can and will expose you to dire, hopeless, and scary situations that a pet is going through. I takes a thick skin to go through the thick of it alongside your customers, without losing touch with your empathy. I have helped customers find urns for their pets ashes, rushed kittens to ER’s only to lose them, gone through roller coasters of successes then failures to get a cat eating again. And it will never stop or slow down, but someone has to do it. And I love that I have been entrusted with the opportunity to go through these experiences with my customers, all the while knowing that I will fail them sometimes because some situations are just outside of our control.
We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?
I think this is easier for a cat store than probably a lot of other businesses, given the popularity of cat and kittens online. Nevertheless, one way I get the most exposure and followers is through regular posting and through TikTok and reels. Having a broad audience isn’t as important for me as having a targeted local audience since I don’t sell online, but if and when that day should come. I will have a great runway to start with!
Contact Info:
- Website: http://thekittybodega.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kittybodega/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thekittybodega/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/avelasquez1/
- Other: https://linktr.ee/kittybodega
Image Credits
All photos are by me.