Subscription box services are becoming increasingly popular among startups these days. Companies like BlissyBox, Preloot and Signature Snack curate and deliver everything from personal care products to cosmetics all the way to snacks, right to your doorstep. One such startup is offering a similar service but with a unique products.
New website on the block Pets My Heart is a Malaysia-based startup that provides monthly subscription box service for one particular group of people—pet owners.
Supporting An Uncatered Group
Founded in June this year, currently the Pets My Heart team consists of five people, including the founder himself, Woon Cherk Lam. Speaking about the idea behind Pets My Heart, Woon Cherk said, “Being a pet lover myself and my other founders too, starting a pet-related e-commerce store was just a very natural choice—i.e. combining my specialisation with my interest—what better idea could I get?”
Moreover the idea was inspired by similar concepts in the U.S. such as BarkBox. While the team from Pets My Heart was doing their research on the subscription box industry, the team decided to give the pet gift box idea a try after seeing that there weren’t any similar concepts to support pet lovers in Malaysia.
How Pets My Heart Works
Pets My Heart handpicks fun toys and best treats for cats and dogs. The team will pack the gift box according to the criteria that you have selected: dog or cat, the size of your pet, and your desired subscription plan.
“While we can’t offer the exact number, the figure is very promising. And we are able to achieve month-to-month growth after 3 months into the business,” Woon Cherk shared with Vulcan Post when asked about the amount of gift boxes delivered. At RM69 for a one-month plan, the gift box will get delivered right to your doorstep.
Apart from that, Woon Cherk told us that some subscribers are not pet owners and yet they subscribe to the gift box service because they want to send it as a present to their family and friends. So as they check their purchase out from the website, they enter a gift message for the pet owner they’re gifting it to.
The Pets My Heart Goodie Box
Each gift box consists of a combination of 4 to 6 toys and treats. Sometimes they will also include healthcare products that the team think will be useful. However subscriber will not be able to handpick what goes into their package.
The products are sourced from overseas and local suppliers. Sometimes they will also offer off-the-market products which are their very own home-made products. For instance home-made pet cookies and mooncakes which the team produces at their in-house kitchen. Woon Cherk shared, “We tend to come out with new home-made products every now and then, as we like our customers to be surprised.”
What if my pet has allergies?
According to Purina, a company that produces pet products and food, food allergies in cats and dogs are caused by the immune system’s hypersensitivity to a protein in a food.
With that being said, pet owners out there, if your pet has allergies, remember to enter special requests to let the team know. Woon Cherk explained, “There are 2 things that you can customise during the buying process—allergy and gift notes. For “allergy” notes, we will replace it with another item.
Verdict: 3/5
The subscription box business model is not an easy one to maintain, there are startups like BellaBox which had to learn that it is not easy to sustain a model in certain countries (they eventually pulled out from Singapore and Malaysia). So in the U.S., the pet subscription box could thrive but it’s hard to tell at this point if the same model would thrive in Malaysia.
The biggest con of Pets My Heart is that users are not given the option to decide what brands go into the box although they are given the option to state about their pet’s allergies. For some subscription services, it doesn’t matter, because we appreciate the element of surprise; but when it comes to pets, some pet owners might be more sensitive about what type of food their pets consume. Some pets are not even interested in toys, or are more picky about the kind of toys they’d prefer. Therefore, having unknown items getting selected for the box is a bit of a risk.
For pet lovers who are not picky about the type of pet treats and if they have pets who love toys, then this subscription service is the perfect fit.
Instead of paying RM69 for a box of unknown pet treats and toys, some pet owners tend to stick to brands that their furkids are comfortable with to avoid the possibility that their furkids might not like the items in it.
Perhaps users should be given two choices—choose your own products from a list of suppliers, or be surprised each month with items handpicked by Pets My Heart.
All images are credited to Pets My Heart’s website and Facebook page.