🐶 This Idea Needs a Round of A-Paws: Stealing The Show On Growing Dog Ownership 🥷

🤔 The Problem

Homes & lot sizes are getting smaller due to the increased price of home ownership, but dog ownership is on this rise. As we all know dogs need room to run and play, plus dog owners are more than willing to spend money on their furry friends, I would know! So here is the business idea, private subscription based dog park(s) on land that you purchase near a population center. This private park would allow dog owners to socialize their pets in a clean, safe area and would allow for a nice upsell option.

📈 Research

• According to Forbes between 2016 and 2022 the percent of homes that owned dogs increased to 44.5%.

• During this same time according to the National Association of Realtor’s lot sized decreased 18% down to almost 8,700 sq. ft.

• 1 in 7 dog owners report having their dog having been attacked in a public dog park. _{Source for this and below stats.}

• Santa Barbara Country Parks reports that their dog wash station machines bring in a collective 120K annual.

• 80% of dog park attendees claim to be willing to pay an annual fee for a higher quality dog park.

Now that we have the research to be comfortable with this decision lets dive into the pricing and setup for this private dog park.

🏗️ Setup

The ideal size for a urban dog park is at least 1 acre, an acre of land in PA might cost you 30K but an acre of land in TX could cost 7.5K so lets take an average here and say that for the raw land its going to cost you about 20K to find the ideal land is the right location for your new private dog park.

Once you have the land your going to high fence the land, this is going to cost you between 10 - 30K, you need to keep dogs in and unsubscribed people out.

Ensure that your gate has a RFID reader that is connected to the internet so that you can activate and deactivate FOB’s without having to be onsite.

Ensure to add some benches and have shade on site for dogs and humans to enjoy. You can go as crazy as you want here remember that your competing against free (not really b/c of taxes but in the average persons mind you are), so it has to be good.

🏃Operations

Now that you have things setup lets talk operations and pricing, based on my research you should have about 75K invested at this point, lets say that we want to fully return this capital over 12 months lets work backwards here to determine our monthly dog park costs, 75000 / 12 = 6250, and its my belief that we should be able to get about 100 customers subscribed to our premium dog park so you should be charging 62.50 a month + a temperament class during onboarding before access can be granted that will run 250.

🔥 Upsells

You have a few upsell options with this now that you have a running dog park

• Beverage/Snack Cart on-site

• Dog wash station, could have a premium subscription with this included

• Dog Sitting, where you watch the dog for the owner for a limited time

• Training classes

🎁 Wrap up

If you love dogs this could be the business idea for you, it also can be as low maintenance or as involved as you want to make it. The opportunity to scale this over time is also a pretty large factor in my mind and the land value appreciation could play a role here. Let me know if you decide to run with this idea.