Kamie Eckert started at Royal Canin by building the brand’s online presence. Now, as president of the Mars-owned company’s United States division, she leverages her pet food brands’ e-commerce capacity while maintaining a global physical footprint in veterinary and pet specialty retailer outlets.
“Having been in e-commerce, I would tell you that there has never been a brand that’s better built for the e-commerce space than Royal Canin, and it is because it is so precise and because we have so many SKUs in our portfolio,” Eckert said.
Maintaining Royal Canin’s sweet spot in e-commerce requires striking a balance between meeting pet owners’ demands while making sure that the company maintains connections with the prescribers that form the heart of the brand’s business, she said. Those relationships with veterinarians and others are key because those individuals make the dietary recommendations that most resonate with pet owners.
Nutrition and dietary advice doesn’t always come across online in the same way as it does when a pet owner is working with a veterinarian, breeder or even someone in a pet specialty store, she said.
“So we believe that e-commerce has a strong role to play and how we follow up on recommendations, but we’re absolutely committed to shoring up those relationships with the prescribers that we know are so critical to the selection process,” Eckert said.
Global presence of Royal Canin in veterinary and pet specialty retailers
Those veterinarians and other prescribers live around the globe and provide access to Royal Canin’s formulations to pet owners to both post-industrial pampered pooches and dogs in developing economies that may be getting their first taste of food formulated specifically for canines.
“One of the things that I love about Royal Canin is it is truly a global company,” Eckert said.
Royal Canin has business locations in approximately 60 countries worldwide, she said. Counting importing into additional countries, the brand reaches more than 100 countries. Additionally, Royal Canin has manufacturing facilities in 15 different locations globally.
“We try to manufacture as close to the source where the nutrition will be used as possible, and I think one of the things I love about it is we are constantly looking at where pets in the world have an opportunity to benefit from better nutrition,” she said. “And sometimes we’re forging new paths where many pets are not even being fed a manufactured diet. They’re eating table scraps or things like that and so we believe that there’s a lot of opportunity to serve those pets better, and so that’s a bit of how we think about the territories we go into.”
