How WMG helped ProtectaPet claw its way to international success
How WMG helped ProtectaPet claw its way to international success
ProtectaPet, founded by Eve and Simon Davies, is a Staffordshire-based company that designs and manufactures innovative cat fence barriers, enclosures and ‘catios’, helping cats safely enjoy being outside.
Driven by a mission to deliver world-class, revolutionary feline care, the company earned the King’s Award for Enterprise in Innovation in 2023, recognising their commitment to pet safety and product excellence.
Challenge: Simplifying the ordering process to smoothen the customer journey
As demand for ProtectaPet’s innovative products grew both locally in the UK and across the EU, the team realised their ordering process was too complicated.
For distributors and resellers to create full cat-proof solutions, rather than individual parts, a deep understanding of the different products and parts was needed.
While the system worked for ordering individual parts, it made configuring and purchasing a full kit confusing and time-consuming, potentially putting resellers off.
Eve knew they needed a simpler, self-service platform that would make it easy to design, configure, quote and order complete solutions, without needing to be a product expert. This would help ProtectaPet attract more partners, scale internationally and grow sales.
"Even for those who are technically minded, understanding how to combine our components isn’t always straightforward. The main barrier to selling our products was helping customers easily determine which parts they needed and where to place them. Every cat-proofing project is unique, so we needed a simple, accessible way to configure a garden for each individual space."
Eve Davies, Communications Director, ProtectaPet.
Solution: A streamlined self-service portal to help scale the business
To address these challenges, ProtectaPet collaborated with WMG’s SME Group through the Innovate UK Business Growth programme, to conduct a comprehensive review of their IT systems and business processes.
This included:
- Mapping the current system architecture.
- Defining business requirements.
- Evaluating critical processes and suggesting improvements.
WMG’s SME Group facilitated discussions with vendors to clarify potential system updates and provide recommendations. The insights revealed which processes could be automated with standard software, and which were unique and required a more tailored approach.
Led by Jack Davis, Innovation Manager at WMG, the project identified key process improvements, enabling ProtectaPet to streamline operations and simplify their use of business management systems.
Jack said “As businesses grow organically, their processes can become complex and time consuming for everyone involved. By providing an outside view, we were able to simplify standard processes to be easily automated by their ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system, so that ProtectaPet could focus their efforts on finding a solution for their truly unique processes around garden configuration.”
Impact: WMG’s support leads to £1.6m projected turnover increase
WMG’s expertise helped ProtectaPet simplify its IT architecture and define the requirements for a new distributor portal aimed at boosting EU sales and simplifying the ordering process for resellers, making their innovative products more accessible and appealing.
The collaboration enabled the company to integrate a new configurator seamlessly with their existing ERP system.
By partnering with WMG’s SME Group, ProtectaPet was able to:
- Increase projected turnover by £1.6m over three years, with exports rising from 10% to 35% of turnover.
- Reduce quotation times by 56%, from 16 minutes to just seven minutes.
- Strengthen their position as market leaders in the UK and EU cat fencing market.
- Save money by automating processes for both their customers and staff.
Eve said: "We’re in the early stages of implementing this project, and our current growth trajectory, already exceeding 35%, is surpassing even our most optimistic forecasts.”
"The expertise provided by WMG was instrumental in shaping and structuring the project for maximum impact. They brought a fresh perspective and drew on their experience working with hundreds of other businesses, enabling us to achieve the best possible outcome."
Eve Davies, Communications Director, ProtectaPet.
Jack Davis, Innovation Manager at WMG said: “Working with Eve and the team at ProtectaPet has been a great pleasure. Through this project, we’ve helped increase projected turnover, save the business time and money and solidify ProtectaPet’s position as a market leader.”
"ProtectaPet is a shining example of how digital transformation can drive real business impact, success and growth."
Jack Davis, Innovation Manager at WMG.
As part of the next phase of the project, ProtectaPet plans to analyse data and feedback from their distributor network to assess the effectiveness of the new portal and better understand purchasing habits. Using the data, they hope to build a second, more optimised configurator to meet the needs of their B2C customers who are purchasing ProtectaPet’s products for their own homes.
“We’re thrilled to have helped ProtectaPet secure a £20k match-funded grant through Made Smarter West Midlands. This grant will help develop the new configurator for B2C customers, helping the business ‘pounce’ on new growth opportunities.” - Jack Davis, Innovation Manager at WMG
To see how WMG can help you to nurture your manufacturing business, get in touch today.