An Anaheim media firm is pushing into stores products by one of its pet-focused web platforms, a somewhat counterintuitive move, given current retail currents, which could also illustrate the financial limits of like-clicking marketing—namely, whether a company’s social-media community translates into revenue.
HomeLife Media owns multiple websites focused on pets and their owners. The sites sell treats, toys, supplements, and so on, as well as items for their caretakers—T-shirts, bracelets, beer steins and the like.
The three top sites at the moment are iHeartHorses, iHeartCats and iHeartDogs, the latter of which is getting the company’s attention first.
Co-founders Justin Palmer, chief executive, and Marshall Morris, chief operating officer, have built 100 Facebook groups across its animal lines. They directly employ 30 in Orange County, and 30 contractors run the groups.
The company’s social media followers number 20 million, half of whom are active participants, though just 1 million have bought products.
The company, founded in 2014, took in just under $18 million last year, and revenue-to-date is about $40 million.
Enter the stores. The math shows that the return on investment of social media followers isn’t as hard to quantify as sometimes claimed: It’s low.
But Morris says the “true fan” base is growing as customers interact online in the groups and gives their push into retail some credibility.
“Social is a murky environment,” he says. “But we’ve been in the market and built communities.”
The duo has experience in apparel, digital marketing and managing multiple websites, with a dab of nonprofit involvement—HomeLife’s websites contribute to charities from some sales.
About 95% of its revenue comes from product sales, the rest from site ads.
HomeLife creates its own products and hires contract manufacturers to produce them, Morris says, and now it’s signed 80 retailers to carry some.
The focus is on specialty pet stores in the U.S. with five to 50 locations and some one-offs, none so far in OC. They’re chains where owners talk to each other, Morris says.
Though “retail foot traffic is dying,” Morris and Palmer plan to take 100 chains that do one thing well: selling pet products.
“We said, let’s limit this and build it up” with hyper-local ads and other communication.
So far, Morris says, “We’re doing really well.”
