UK Pet Retailer of the Year

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A pet shop in Hayle has been crowned UK Pet Retailer of the Year, at the PetQuip Awards.

Katy Peck founded The Natural Cornish Pet Shop with Jordan Coombe in 2014, alongside their Doggy Day Care Cornwall business.

Peck explained: “We started off looking after dogs in our doggy day care. We would look after up to 80 dogs a day and, through the relationships we built, we worked closely with owners to help support their dog’s digestion.”

She saw first-hand that those with natural diets had a better digestive system and wellbeing, which led to her coming across products that they wanted to share with others.

“Being so far down in Cornwall, it’s hard for people to find out about new trends and have access to the latest things. Therefore, we started building a portfolio of products that were tried, tested and approved.” This was when The Natural Cornish Pet Shop was born.

Peck added: “For me, the main thing is that natural shouldn’t mean more expensive. Our ethics are about products being simple, straightforward, and transparent. That’s when we found Earth Animal, as the brand fitted so well with our ethos.”

All the products are tried by Katy’s own dogs, and she strongly believes if she wouldn’t feed it to her dogs, she wouldn’t feed it to someone else’s.

She says everyone at The Natural Cornish Pet Shop is “obsessed” with the next best thing.

“We want to make natural feeding the norm. Daily, we see how much it improves dogs’ lives; therefore, we want to build our community and get the word out.

“It’s a daily occurrence for us that people visit the store from all over the country, letting us know they were visiting Cornwall and wanted to visit the store. As a result, we want to be the centre of excellence.

“Cornwall wouldn’t function without the tourism: however, back in March 2020, we realised we needed to stay open and were relieved to be able to help so many people in our local community.”

Many of Peck’s core following are paramedics, nurses, and teachers, so they played an essential part in looking after their pups whilst they were hard at work.

Katy said: “The shop became busier, so we set up a click and collect service online. This saw online sales shoot up, particularly because of the shortages on the high street.”