Tails: The Bahraini Pet Food Brand

“Tails” is the regions first all natural pet food brand that has been officially launched in February 2012.  Their aim was to provide healthy pet food that is free of preservatives, added colors and flavors as well as the use of 100 percent natural human grade ingredients. They club their services with the Highest Quality, the Best Customer Experience and Value for Money.

Being the first of its kind in the region, and with the general lack of data availability, i immediately thought ” How did they know that this was going to be successful?”

Leap of Faith 

i was fortunate to meet with the owners, in class we talked about all the different forecasting techniques and determined when it was best to use each technique. But what do you do if you had no history/data to use?

Well in this particular case there was no entity in Bahrain that actually registers or even keeps track of Dogs in Bahrain. The owners did alot of research and found that the only entity closest to giving them information was the airport customs office, and they only recorded how many dogs came into Bahrain and how many dogs went out. Moreover they started to get samples and estimates from vets. And the final number they came up with somehow met their expectations and they were comfortable with getting even 10% of it.

Capacity Issue

Within a four month span, sales at Tails has doubled . This led to a bottle neck in their production ( remember the paper puppet activity?) , the machines they had were not able to package and seal fast enough to meet the demand of their customers.  They tried to overcome it by cooking more on and storing it  but they did not have enough storage capacity to meet this unanticipated demand. to overcome this Tails had to quickly invest in new machines that will be able to seal and package faster in order to meet the demand of their customers, gives more flexibility on variety and size, and to start distribution to supermarkets.

Tails are slowly keeping up with their demand however it has been stressful for them because they were not able to accurately forecast.

So i leave you with a thought : how do you forecast with no data? and which forecasting method should Tails use today in order to help them predict their future sales?

 

For more information please visit www.tails.co to get your free dog food sample today!

 

 

 

9 thoughts on “Tails: The Bahraini Pet Food Brand

  1. Thank you for this article as Tariq and I are planning to do a similar thing, this article opened my eyes to the obstacles that faced others in this business. I believe if you don’t have any data you either create your own by surveys or use the historical data of a similar business. The moving average would be suitable for such case. Also such business needs a strong project management with flexible operations in order to face any change in terms of decline or sudden growth.

    1. thanks mohammed, i believe it is important for them to be alert since it is a new type of business in the region it is very difficult to predict demand.

    2. Another thing to consider is the life cycle of the product/service. I wonder why to bother them self if they still in the growth stage. However, they should consider forecasting in early stage i.e. planning. I do agree that they should consider the moving average technique as well as creating their own survey from the local customers.

  2. Very interesting article Nada. First of all, I am very proud to have a Bahraini company that sells pets food. I will deeply think of this brand for my pets.

    I believe, Tails would do a great job in the future especially when it expands its operations. Using the best techniques for forecasting the customers’ demands and using smarts ways to attract customers, this will lead Tails to be an international brand. Since we have a lot of expats on the island that have pets and depending on the quality of the food those expats might bring the name of the brand to their countries. And eventually, some orders might come out of Bahrain that might lead the company to open branches abroad.

    1. Thanks ali, they are looking at this in the long run ! its a very unique brand and i am sure it will pick up.

  3. Great post Nada, by the way we at Tamkeen use “Tails” as an example of a successful Bahrain start-up business that met all that was studied well before being started, as they identified the market gap, the competitors and the feasibility of starting such a business. I hope one day we see this product exported not only to our neighbor countries, but even internationally.

  4. The idea itself is very innovative and we are very proud to have a Bahraini company pioneering at pet food industry.
    We can clearly see the relationship between forecasting and capacity and how it impacted Tails.
    I think Tails started a very challenging business and they did the right thing to forecast by collecting the data from available resources. They have also identified the bottleneck processes and came up with solutions.
    Monthly forecasting and yearly planning are important factors for business success.
    I wish Tails the best of luck and looking forward to hear new success stories.

  5. An amazing Article Nada ! I think at first Tails should use Qualitative forecasting techniques by meeting with all pet shops in Bahrain that sell dogs. Those shops will provide the company with some data such as how many dogs were sold during the month. This will provide the company with a rough estimation on the expected demand in the future..since the company has already started operation it can now use Quantitative approaches as the Naive approach that expects the demand to be the same as the previous month..after a couple of months the company can use the weighted moving average forecasting model in order to forecast the demand in the coming months.

    Nevertheless, data is very important therefore “Tails” should have an ongoing conversation with the airport customs offic in order to know how many dogs were imported to Bahrain. In addition to that, “Tails” should have a good relationship will all shops that sell dogs in order to get accurate information and data on a regular basis which will eventually help “Tails” in forcasting the demand more accurately.

  6. Great article because I feel that most companies lack the understanding of forecasting, or fail to do it well. Some of the best business advice given to me was to study how to write a great business plan which helps to bring focus to what is going to be accomplished and their completion throughout the next number of years. Likewise, the business plan has a forecast of all revenues and expenses, so that they entire year can be mapped. The best idea I have been told is to create the document that is honest and follows the theme of under-promise and over-exceed.

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