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A Pet ID Tag That Stores All Your Pet’s Information?! | PetHub

A Pet ID Tag That Stores All Your Pet’s Information?! | PetHub

ANIMAL INNOVATIONS SHOW - EPISODE 39 - PETHUB

A Pet ID Tag That Stores All Your Pet’s Information?! | PetHub

Picture this: your usually shy pet bolted out of their litter box and into the world outside your garage, not even bothering to look back nor think twice as they went their merry way to wherever pets’ version of Disneyland is.

Out of shock, you watched them go, and it was only when they turned the corner, and you could no longer see them, that you realized you had no idea how to get them back home.

Sounds familiar?

One of the co-founders of PetHub, Inc., Tom Arnold, went through the same experience almost a decade ago.

And as shared by co-founder and currently Chief Operating Officer, Lorien Clemens, it was Tom’s experience that sparked the establishment of the company back in 2010.

According to Lorien,

“It (the company) grew out of a need that he (Tom) saw as a pet parent himself, as a modern pet parent, of not having tools that he needed to really manage his pet’s life, and particularly, his pet’s data when it came to communicating with pet sitters, and different service providers, and then with lost pets.”

Realizing that there was no one place that he could go to find the information that pet parents like him needed whenever an emergency situation arises, Tom approached Lorien about the idea of creating a hub where all pets’ information can be placed. This then inspired the name “PetHub”.

But even though Lorien and the PetHub team started the business off with the lost pet problem, they came up with a lot of innovations, features, and functionalities along the way before they finally got their first digital ID tags out on the market by 2011.

“I’ll never forget it. It was like—I think it was December 23rd. And we got a phone call from somebody outside of Memphis, and they had found a dog—someone had a dog with her that didn’t have on a caller, but a dog named Bella with our tag, they had scanned it, called, and said, ‘All right, what am I supposed to do to get this at home?’ And then, we were facilitating that pet home. Well, since then, we’ve helped over 25,000 pets get home,”

Lorien shared, reminiscing.

According to Lorien, the key to what makes PetHub’s digital ID tags more powerful than the standard, old-fashioned ID tag is that PetHub’s version links to a free online profile that holds unlimited emergency contacts.

In effect, the company’s digital ID tag allows you to have a safety circle of people you can contact in case your pet goes missing. Conversely, if a stranger finds your pet when they go missing, they can also reach out to your family, your neighbors, your veterinarians, or even your local pet sitters, as long as you listed their contact information on your pet’s online profile.

On the other hand, in case your pet ends up in a shelter, the shelter will immediately know they’re good to go since you can also include all sorts of records—your pets’ vaccination records, dietary information, and medical details—on their online PetHub account.

A Pet ID Tag That Stores All Your Pet’s Information?! | PetHub

Lorien added,

“So with this very powerful profile that links to this digital ID tag, it’s been wildly successful for us. Approximately 96% of pets that are recovered with PetHub tags get home in 24 hours or less, which, when you consider the national return-to-home rates, takes anywhere between three to 10 days to get a pet home. And you read stories all the time about pets found after seven years with their microchips… Who wants to wait seven years? I wait seven minutes, I’m bereft. So, I’m very proud about that.”

As for how pet parents can get a hold of PetHub’s digital ID tags, Lorien said that you can buy them directly from the company when you go to their website. However, the PetHub team primarily uses pet licenses or rabies tags as a method of communicating and interacting with pet parents.

As a hub that aims to be a useful tool for pet guardians to safely manage and share information about their pets, PetHub is now working on building relationships with trusted pet partners, such as your pet sitter, veterinarian, pet groomer, or even an insurance company.

The goal is to make all the information about your pet stay succinct and up-to-date regardless of any situation.

Apart from that, Lorien and the rest of the PetHub staff also aim to help pet parents find the latest animal innovations that can help the latter raise their pets the way that they really want to, using the best practices.

Closing the podcast, she shared,

“I have to say, it’s literally the most fulfilling thing I’ve ever done… We take it very seriously when we say we’re going to curate our partners. We’re making sure that we’re really putting out there something that we, as pet parents, would want to use as well. So, we help build those connections for pet parents…to be able to have a place where all your pet’s identification is right there… So, that’s what we’re building now, and we’re really excited about it.”

 

Interested to know more about PetHub?

Check out their website at https://www.pethub.com/.

Have suggestions for who we should interview next?

Send us a message at [email protected]!

Lorien: Hi, I’m Lorien Clemens, and you’re tuned in to The Animal Innovations Show.

Chris: Great introduction, Lorien. So, welcome. Tell us who you are and how you’re innovating and helping animals.

Lorien: I am a co-founder and the Chief Operating Officer of Pet Hub. We’ve done a lot over the last 10 years or so that we’ve been in business to innovate for animals.

My co-founder, Tom Arnold, founded the company in 2010, and it grew out of a need that he saw, as a pet parent himself, as a modern pet parent, of not having tools that he needed to really manage his pet’s life, and particularly, his pet’s data, when it came to communicating with pet sitters, and different service providers, and then with lost pets.

He realized that there was no one place that he could go to find the information that he needed. Whenever he had a situation, he was totally scrambling, having to pull all this information together, and then it all kind of came to a head one day, when his cat, Tess, bolted out of the garage—their litter box was in the garage, and, you know, come and go.

They never had once tried to even get outside. They look outside. They’re like, “Oh, there’s a big, scary room. We’re not interested in going out there.” They have never been outside. But for whatever reason, on the day that he had the door open, she got spooked, and she bolted, and he saw her go, saw her turn a corner, had no idea where she went.

And then he found himself in this scramble mode of: “I don’t know if I have a picture of her. And if I have a picture of her, is it digitalized so that I can put it onto a pet poster? And what’s supposed to be on a pet poster? Who am I supposed to call?”

And he just moved to a new town in the Seattle area. He’s like, “Wait, where is the shelter?” And all of these different panic things, and then he realized, “I don’t even know who her microchip is with. And is it updated?

And I got that microchip when I lived someplace else, I don’t even know what the phone number was. So, if they’re trying to call me, it’s not even the same cell phone number.”

And all these different things that happen. And he says, “This is ridiculous.” And he came to me, and he said, “Hey, I got this idea.” I was like, “Okay.”

He’s like, “I want to create something where all the pet’s information can be in one place. And then you can use it to talk with the pet sitter or talk through all these things. And if your pet gets lost, you can use that information to quickly get out the information to shelters and things and help you get that pet home, like something, and bringing everything together.”

And I said, “Oh, it’s kind of like a hub for your pet.” He’s like, “Oh, my God. That’s the name I was thinking about.” So, that was kind of the—that spark of “Yeah, got to do this.”

So, he started the company. I came along officially about a year later, but I was helping along the way. We started off with that lost pet problem because it was really, like, the core that we knew immediately that we could help people and do something right away. 

And so, while he was in the process of developing, “How am I going to build this system for helping people manage their pet’s data?”, he found out about a technology that came out of Japan, called “Quick Response” or “Quick Read” (QR). And it was actually invented by Toyota.

And they did an open-source, and so anybody could use it. And it was just starting to kind of bubble up in 2009, 2010, and he found out about it. And he said, “What if I took this and put it onto a dog tag and then connected it to all this information? That’s brilliant!”

So, he filed a patent for it. But then, a couple of weeks had a prototype, and that’s really how the Pet Hub Digital ID tag started. We had a lot of innovations along the way, with the way we dealt with the digital ID tag linked into the online profile—free online profile. And had a lot of features that we started added benefits, that we started to add to that functionality.

And then, lo and behold, by the end of 2011, we had our first tags out there on pets. And since then, we have helped over 25,000 pets get home. And the key to what makes Pet Hub Digital ID tags so much more powerful than your standard, old-fashioned ID tag that has just your phone number on it is that it links to this free online profile that holds unlimited emergency contacts.

So, you have a safety circle of your family, your neighbor, your veterinarian, your pet sitter. You name it, it can be on your safety circle list, including places like your local pet shop, maybe, where they know your dog very well. It has vaccination records, rabies, you name it, so that in the case that the dog or cat does go to a shelter, the shelter knows, “Oh, this dog is up-to-date on their vaccinations. They’re good to go.”

And then they can avoid some of that intake quarantining that they have to do with lost pets. And then all sorts of other information—behavior information, dietary information—you can have all sorts of records attached to the account. It’s been wildly successful for us:

96% of pets that are recovered with Pet Hub tags get home in 24 hours or less. And now, we’re working on “share and nurture”, and we’re building out relationships with trusted partners where you’ll be able to safely share your information with a trusted pet partner, like a pet sitter or a veterinarian or groomer.

You name it—an insurance company—and then nurture, which is when we help you find the latest, greatest, best animal innovations to help you raise your pet the way that you really want to, the way modern parents want to raise their pets using the best practices and the newest, latest innovations to help them raise their pet in a modern way.

Chris: It sounds like you guys are really busy.

Lorien: A little bit.

Chris: So, it sounds like it’s really evolved from where you originally started. So, what other types of businesses now are you able to share information with? You mentioned groomers and vets— pretty much anybody that is a trusted pet provider?

Lorien: Yeah, pretty much anybody. This is the newest part of what we’re doing, so it’s super exciting. We’re in the pilot phase with a lot of companies. But we can use, like, a groomer.

For example: if you’re looking for a new local groomer, or you want to share your pet’s profile, in the near future—not quite yet— but in the near future, you’ll be able to say,

“I would like to share my pet’s profile, where it has all my vaccinations already ready to go, information about his coat, and everything that the groomer needs to know, so that I can share that information with the groomer right away and kind of get rid of the roadblocks that happen  with having to fill out yet another form and another application.”

You can just automatically send all that information there.

Chris: Nice. So, now, all I do is I buy a tag and scan it and fill it all out on the app?

Lorien: Yep. That’s basically—that’s all you need to do. And the important thing about what we do— there’s a lot of different options out there for the digitalization of, like, microchips, and there are other digital ID tags out there. A lot of them charge a yearly fee for your information or to make updates or things like that.

Our profile is 100% free. You can update it anytime, anywhere. We never charge you for storing that data and changing it whenever you need to. And the other thing that’s free about Pet Hub that is a unique part, too, is every one of our tags has printed on the tags at 24/7 Found Pet Call Center. We have human beings—not robots—human beings who are helping you get your lost pet home, should they be lost. And that’s free on every single tag.

And of course, it sounds like it works with dogs or cats. Or tortoises, or horses, or goats. And we’re in multiple countries. I can’t remember the countries now, but dozens of countries.

Chris: Where are you guys gonna take it from here? What’s next on the agenda?

Lorien: Building out, share and nurture, building out those trusted partnerships so that we are really able to give pet parents resources from industry partners that are great, that are really doing the best, most innovative things for our pets.

Chris: Yeah. That’s really cool to think about it because now you’ve got more information about the animal. And like you said, their breed and where they are. And I can imagine you could curate some really cool relationships.

Lorien: That is definitely the goal. And it’s been exciting, as we’ve been doing these pilot programs, where we’ve seen, like, what kinds of connections people are wanting, and then what connections we’re able to make.

Chris: So, I’m curious, Lorien. What have you learned about yourself along this journey?

Lorien: I never would have ever thought that I would be a startup entrepreneur person. I’m a Taurus. I like things to be solid. And, you know, predictable I have learned that I’m a lot more resilient and flexible than I ever thought I was.

I’ve really learned about myself that I am a “big picture” person who can dig down into details and then go back up and look at the big picture. I didn’t know that about myself before.

Chris: Lorien, this is super cool. I’m excited to see where you guys have come and where you’re going to next. Is there anything else you want to mention before we wrap things up?

Lorien: If you are listening, and you are a pet business, and you’re interested in working with us, please reach out to us.

The easiest way is to just reach out to [email protected], and it will get eventually to the right person.

And if you are a pet parent, and you’re wanting to come and check us out, please do. Just come to PETHUB.COM, and we’ve got a suite of pet identification products.

It’s not just about ID tags. There’s a suite of lost pet identification tools that you can use to help keep your pet safe.

And we would love to have you as part of our pack.

Chris: Well, as we wrap things up, let me remind our viewers and listeners that if you’ve got an idea like Lorien did for a crazy pet innovation, or if you know somebody that does, that I should have on the show just go to INNOVATIONS.SHOW, and let me know about it, and we’ll get them on the show and talk to them just like we did today.

So, thanks again, Lorien. It was great to reconnect with you and see everything that you’re doing.

Lorien: It really was, Chris. And I can’t wait to see you again in person.

Chris: I agree. We’ll do that soon. Thanks, Lorien.

Lorien: Perfect. Thank you.

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