The Hustle - 🐾 Fetching profits in a $2.4B niche

Happy Trends Tuesday!

My parents are visiting this month, and meeting my dog for the first time since I adopted him. 

• Good news: They immediately bonded with him, and started treating him like a grandson (awww). 
  
  
• Bad news: Despite my protests about his health and diet, they insist on feeding him scraps of human food every chance they get (nawww). 

It's easy to see our pets as family, but there's still a gap of knowledge on what's really good for them. And where there's a gap, there's an opportunity.

In today's email…

• The lucrative business of pet wellness
• Another cannabis battle story: how one woman made THC gummies a big deal
• What we’re surfin’, from a $7m Airbnb hustle to a “grandma board game”

Let's dive in! 

💰 PROFIT-PUSHING STRATEGIES

Here’s the My First Million roadmap to making more cash, featuring classic monetization strats like pricing optimization, cross-selling, and affiliate marketing. 

🚀 WHERE TO BUILD NEXT

The billion-dollar business of pet wellness

We’re pet people here at Trends, and we’ve sure covered the space a lot. But this recession-proof goldmine of business opportunities just keeps on giving.  

The secret sauce? Pet humanization — the more we treat’em like our family, the more we’ll spend on new solutions to better their lives. 

Unsurprisingly, the biggest growth area is health and wellness.

Source: Google Trends, six-month rolling average

The pet supplements market is worth ~$2.4B, and is forecasted to almost double by 2033. Last I checked, these two product categories are doing pretty damn well on Amazon: 

• Dog supplements: 74% growth in the past 5 years, with $2m+ revenue in the last month
• Dog probiotics: 115% growth, with $1m+ revenue 

This spike in dog supplements got us thinking: Will pet wellness go the same direction as human wellness?

The way younger generations view their pets — 30% of Millennials say they’d choose their pet over their significant other 🫠 — it appears the sky’s the limit.

Just the twins! Source: Bored Panda

Given that the global human health and wellness market reached $5.8T+ this year, we’d say you’re looking at some pretty sweet opportunities if the pet space goes even a fraction of that way.

Here are four established wellness trends that are great candidates for the pet space.

1. Personalized supplements & health plans

If interest in generic animal options like Zesty Paws is anything to go by, personalized pet supplements will be next. 

Trendster Alex Bakula-Davis, who runs a dog-focused newsletter (more on that in a bit), agrees this niche is likely to take off. 

“More people are doing DNA tests for their animals (83k monthly Google searches), which could be great fodder to create personalized health or diet plans,” Alex told us.

You could also work with vets to develop in-depth questionnaires that lead to personalized supplement regimens, or develop lines for popular breeds. Some pooch examples with growing fan clubs from Reddit:

• Greyhounds
• Cane corsos
• Border collies
• Australian cattle dogs
• Newfoundlands

Creating a “dog dashboard,” where you can enter your dog’s info and get proactive health information, recommendations, and reminders (“like mint.com, but for your dog”), is another opportunity Alex pointed out.

2. Pet mental health

Did you know that ~3m dogs in America are on anti-anxiety medication? 

Help anxious pets (and their owners) manage their mental health with:

• Animal behavioral apps that deal with issues like separation anxiety and help pawrents (yep, this word is still a thing) better meet their pets’ needs.
  
  
• Pet calming tech: This dog separation-anxiety music video has 53m+ views. Imagine a portable speaker, similar to white noise machines for babies, that helps owners to calm their pets when they’re out.
  
  
• Blogs/newsletters that break down research in pet mental health and how to implement it. Two Trendsters, Alex and Collin, launched a newsletter called Dogonomist: “Think The Hustle meets The Economist, but with pooches!” per Alex. What more could you want? 

3. Alternative therapies & pet spas

Give a dog a spa day. Source: Google Trends six-month rolling average.

If pet spas are popular, what’s next — pet masseuses? Luxury fur care product lines?

You have to admit, it’s not so far-fetched.

Learn from wildly popular human products and put a furry spin on options like luxury shampoo bars and science-backed hair care.

Train a team to become certified canine massage therapists for $1.2k each, then charge $35-$50 a massage. (Did we just find our dream job?)

Keep reading to see one more idea that could take pet healthcare to a whole new level. 🩺

⚙️ OPERATOR WISDOM

How Nancy Whiteman Bootstrapped a $25M Cannabis Edibles Business

You can trace a direct line between today’s massive cannabis gummies market and Nancy Whiteman.

Nancy, an entrepreneur from Colorado, launched a bootstrapped company she took to calling Wana Brands in 2010 — it was sold 11 years later at $350m.

Source: Google Trends, six-month rolling average

In a decade, Nancy has spun a decentralized edibles market teeming with off-kilter experiments — like THC-infused pizzas and baklavas — into a juggernaut with $25m in annual revenue.

Her secret weapon: gummies. 

At Wana, “gummies” is a broad category. The company sells about 2 dozen different types of gummies, from medical to recreational, with a mix of THC ratios and flavors like mango sativa. (THC is the part of the plant that gets you high.)

Nancy helped propel the cannabis gummies market from a niche business into a huge one — the US edibles market is expected to reach ~$40B this year, and THC-infused gummies comprise ~74% of edibles sales in the US (~70% in Canada). 

Why gummies? 

In the early days, like every other cannabis business, Wana Brands experimented a lot: glazed nuts with infused sugar syrup, seven-layer bars, and even infused beef jerky.

But soon they realized that they needed easy-to-transport products with long shelf lives, and landed on confectionery products. 

Gummies, in particular. 

"Back then there just weren't a lot of numbers. I can't say that we were brilliant enough to know that gummies were going to be the thing. We were in the dark." Nancy said. 

Wana Brands entered Europe this year. Source: Coffee Shops Barcelona

There might not have been much data, but Nancy had great instincts. 

She got inspired by another brand that was spraying hash oil on store-bought gummies at the time. 

“It seemed to be taking off, and I thought, ‘We could do that better.’ We could make these from scratch, and infuse them in the cooking process so that the THC is homogenous,” she said.

Bootstrapped to profitable in 2 years 

Wana Brands started with a modest $50k from personal savings. 

The initial capital went towards equipment, and the company grew organically, making its first hires within six months. By the end of the first year, Wana had 10-12 employees.

Despite her lack of cooking experience, Nancy hired skilled chefs and eventually consulted food chemists to refine their recipes. 

This methodical approach has paid off — they started turning a profit two years into the business.

Her secret sauce? Extreme consistency. 

Wana Brands lab-tested all of their products right from the very first batch. Being known as a consistent edible gave them real ground to differentiate. 

Navigating the cannabis retail landscape

As a cannabis product manufacturer, Wana could only sell to dispensaries, not directly to consumers. So building relationships with dispensary owners has been crucial to their success. 

Initially, their sales team had to cold call all day and offer samples. Over time, the approach has become more strategic, with constant communication and collaboration with their largest customers.

Securing shelf space in dispensaries was highly competitive. 

"For a new brand, you really have to bring something to the table that's unique or different or better in some way,” Nancy said. 

Source: iStock

Challenges

Operating in the cannabis industry comes with unique challenges. 

🏦 Banking: Wana cycled through several banks before finding a stable solution. In the early days, this even meant paying employees in cash.

😷 The pandemic: While initially seeing a sales spike, the industry had settled at below-normal levels. Wana adapted by implementing strict safety measures and shifting some marketing focus from B2B to B2C.

🚛 Logistics: Because cannabis is federally illegal, it needs to be completely grown and produced and sold within the state. For every new state, Wana had to find partners to do the manufacturing, and sometimes also sales, marketing, and distribution. Many of these partners are also licensed for cultivation and own dispensaries. 

“It's a very relationship-focused industry. Networking and being visible in the industry and forming long-term relationships with people is the very best way to find partners,” Nancy said.

🗂️ OPEN TABS

🦈 FIN-ance: What Shark Tank teaches us about the US economy 

🔖 From X: Some sage life advice you can act on today

📈 Dope: How to go from broke to $7m with an Airbnb business

🀄️ Fun: How a grandma game became a Zillennial sensation (and side hustle)