Carrollton business scooping up a success
November 17, 2009
Carrolton Community News and Voice
Matt "Red" Boswell's Carrollton-based Pet Butler calls itself No. 1 at No. 2.
"We really feel like we've met a special, unfulfilled need in the marketplace," he said.
Pet Butler was founded by Boswell in 1998 and has grown from a one-person company to a national company with 142 franchised locations in 28 states. Pet Butler provides professional pet waste cleanup and removal services for individual yards, parks, HOAs and multi-family communities. The company has been based in Carrollton for a year, after moving its headquarters from Frisco to Westgrove Drive.
"It's a great place to be," Boswell said about the Carrollton headquarters, which encompasses the company call center, billing, collections, franchise operations, customer sales and support, franchise training and graphic design.
Boswell, a marketing graduate from Stephen F. Austin State University, has started at least a dozen businesses, but it was the one picking up poop that stuck.
"I've always been attracted to unique concepts, and I love a challenge. This industry seemed like a home run of an opportunity," he said. "With well over 100 million cats and dogs in the United States, all of them doing their business multiple times a day and not one of the owners enjoying the disgusting task of cleaning up, it made sense."
Boswell remembers spending his childhood dodging the piles in the backyard. His family had pets, but said no one in his family ever cleaned up the waste.
"Rather than do the doo, we chose not to use the yard," Boswell said. "We let it keep us out of the yard."
Boswell began working on the franchise concept in 2003, taking his company nationwide in 2005.
"I feel called to help people achieve their dreams," he said. "This was an untapped market."
Boswell said the company is unique in the fact that they only ask franchisees to invest their time and money in marketing and scoop poop.
"We take care of all the administration headaches," he said. "We handle all the billing and collections. We do 80 percent of their job."
Last year, businessman Mark Hamel purchased the Dallas/Fort Worth area franchise territories of Pet Butler for $1.2 million.
"I thought it was a unique business opportunity, and I always wanted to work in the pet industry," said Hamel, whose family has two dogs, two longhorn, a rabbit and chinchilla. "It's also fun to say I pick up dog poop for a living."
Hamel had been in the corporate world for years, but was looking for a business he could grow. He never imagined his investigating business opportunities would lead to the discovery of Pet Butler.
"I thought the branding was well done," he said. "What really attracted me was the infrastructure."
Hamel was impressed with the company's unique franchise operations management system, known as ARF (administration, routing and franchising), which was developed by Boswell.
"It's an incredible small business tool," Hamel said.
Boswell said he eventually expects to have 1,000 Pet Butler franchises around the globe. He also said he is looking into other home-based service franchise concepts.
"Pet Butler is going to be a household name," he said.
Boswell said the most popular question he is asked by potential customers is "What do you do with all the poop?"
"We tell them we throw it in the neighbor's yard and leave a card," he said with a laugh.