We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Shelly Fledderjohann. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Shelly below.

Shelly, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to go back in time and hear the story of how you came up with the name of your brand?

It was really fairly easy. 25+ years ago, we got our 1st computer and we needed to come up with an email address. Dogs were one of our passions and Toys-R-Us was very popular so we just thought we’d put a “spin” on it and had our email be Dogsrus. A few years after that, we decided to open up our own grooming salon. We were not going to service cats so we wanted to try and make it clear that we would be dogs only. So we decided to use our email address and just add Styling Boutique after it. That is how dogs-R-us Styling Boutique was created!

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

A little over 28 years ago, my husband and I were trying to adopt. We were going through a county agency. I was working 2nd shift in a factory making seats for Honda Accords. Back then, by going through a county agency and not a private one, the state would not allow the “adoptive mom” to be on 2nd shift. So I’ve always wanted to work with dogs so I just kept sending out resumes to as many animal facilities as I could in hopes someone would hire me. I had a vet reach out to me and asked if I would be willing to go to school to learn to groom dogs. I knew absolutely nothing about grooming dogs but I decided to take a leap of faith and I quit the factory job and went to school to learn how to groom and have a job during the day so we could be allowed to adopt. 4 years later, we finally got a call to adopt our 1st child. 10 months and 1 day later, our sons biological sister was born. She was premature and addicted to drugs when she was born. After 2 years of battling with the “bio parents “ we were able to get her adopted too. When our son was 4, he became very ill and was also diagnosed with autism. We struggled greatly with trying to find child care for both children with all of their “issues “ and trying to work. So we decided to open our own salon so I could still work and help provide for our family but if I needed off or I needed to bring our kids to work with me I could. In August of this year, it will be 20 years of being in business. We are a Mom & Pop operation, it is just my husband & I. He does all the bathing/drying, nails & pads. I do all the finish work. We offer Daycare, Boarding and even coloring!

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

Word of mouth has been the most effective especially in the beginning. As the years have gone by, then we’ve done some social media marketing with just a facebook and Instagram page.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

I’ve strived to do continuous education over all of the years. I’ve even gone on to become Nationally Certified, which there are no others that are nationally certified in my area. I like to do things that set me apart from others!

Contact Info:

• Website: www.dogsrusboutique.com
• Instagram: Shelly_fledderjohann_90
• Facebook: Dogs-R-Us Styling Boutique,LLC
• Other: On facebook I have K9 Crochet Company for my crochet business