Petland Shop, Servicing, Website and Staff History

Petland was originally called "Phillip Pet Supplies" during the 1980's and was changed to "Petland" in 1988 with new owners from Melbourne and incorporated as a company. The new name brought with it a dedicated fish room and dog grooming service shortly after, looking more like a traditional pet shop than it had before. Like most ownership changes, the shop took on both a new look and direction.

In November 1998 the current owners, Rod and Vicki, bought a 50% share of the business. Petland was then incorporated as a new company with dual owners. In mid 2002 Rod and Vicki bought out the other co-owners and have owned the business themselves ever since. They ran the shopfront business with their daughter Sarah and Megan, a devoted and the longest serving employee; and other great staff members.

In early 2003 the fish room was completely rebuilt from the ground up; the next major change came during the first half of 2005 when the entire shop was rebuilt and refurbished. The current business emphasis is on supplies for fish, dogs, cats and small animals. Some of the livestock were deleted during the 2005 rebuild; namely rats, mice, rabbits guinea pigs and birds.

The business investigated a new direction in mid to late 2005 through the demand for fish tank and pond servicing. As Sarah joined the business from school, this allowed Vicki to run this new side of Petland, servicing both corporate and private fish tanks and maintaining and installing filtration systems into ponds.This service has continued to grow to the extent that it was subsequently promoted and advertised.

During early 2006 a basic web-site was established and upgraded to the current buy online version in November 2006. This new web-site allowed us to persue another avenue in selling products on line.

With the growing website, tank maintenance and pond servicing sides of the business, there was a reduction in the dog grooming section in September 2007 to allow for the increased demand of the other business activities. New hutches were built in the original grooming parlour and this then became part of the shop per se.

The grooming section was further greatly reduced at the end of October 2010 when Sarah left the business after 5.5 years valuable service to start a full-time apprenticeship. Sarah's full time departure resulted in the dog grooming being further reduced to enable Megan to assist in the shop.

At the end of July, 2011, Megan left Petland after 11.5 years faithful service. The dog grooming service (which had been a part of the business since 1989/90) was cancelled. Both Sarah and Megan's full time positions were not refilled -  Petland then ran via Rod and Vicki with some part time weekend help.

The fish tank and pond servicing & maintenance side of the business, as well as the online website, continued to grow especially in the second half of 2011. Combined with increased competition and a slowing economy, the shop Phillip itself started an alarming downturn in trade later in 2011 that could be traced back to 2009. The decision was made to concentrate on those sides of the business that were growing and relocate the traditional retail shop that was starting to be more and more unviable. The last day of retail trading at the Phillip premises was Saturday 28th January 2012; after a few days cleanup we left the premises for the last time on Friday 3rd February.

We then set up the much smaller premises in Hume and continue to operate out of there on a greatly reduced scale; retail sales are now a low priority for us as they only make up a small portion of our business. Petland continues on mainly through the aquarium servicing, pond maintenance and the supporting website sales facility.

We had been at Phillip for just over 13 years and the shop itself had been in the same position for almost 30 years. Rod and Vicki thank all those people, both employees and customers, who made the experince worthwhile and enjoyable. We had a ball!