Mitch Marrow’s kaleidoscopic career has taken him to the NFL, to the UBS European trading desk and to the directorship of a hedge fund. Now it’s for the dogs, and he couldn’t be happier.
Marrow, a former Carolina Panther defensive end and once the managing director of Brahman Capital, has followed his heart in his newest endeavor: luxury dog services.
The SPOT Experience, which Marrow founded in 2010, operates in the New York metropolitan area and at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport. It has 110 employees.
“This has always been my charity and my cause when it comes to philanthropy,” Marrow says. “I have always been a dog lover.”
Marrow, a New York City resident who owns a bull mastiff, Hank, and a St. Bernard, Reggie, realized how difficult it is to live and travel while owning large dogs—so he quit his hedge fund post and started SPOT.
“While living in Manhattan and working on Wall Street, I couldn’t find good care for my dogs,” Marrow says. “I tried doggy daycare, I tried hiring a dog walker, and I wasn’t really impressed with the level of care—and this is New York, where everything is so service oriented.”
Marrow currently serves as co-CEO of SPOT alongside Jeff Ginsberg, director of private equity firm Mistral Equity Partners and a stakeholder in SPOT.
While looking for providers for his dogs, Marrow realized how fragmented the pet services industry was.
“It was mostly a mom-and-pop industry,” Marrow says. “There was an opportunity to create a brand more in line with the other top luxury brands in the New York City area, so I took a leap of faith and did something entrepreneurial.”
Americans spent an estimated $60 billion on pet services and supplies in 2015, according to the American Pet Products Association, a number that is expected to grow over time.
“People will buy more pets,” Marrow says. “That never changes. Over time, our tendency to humanize our pets is leading to more dollars being spent on their care.”
Marrow started by buying out existing mom-and-pop pet care service providers and reorganizing their business.
“I raised some money and implemented standard operating procedures,” Marrow says. “We started hiring and training personnel, and we started to plan how we were going to build out stores and create a cageless environment, how we were going to get top groomers and trainers to come to us and provide one-stop-services.”
Now, SPOT has a total of nine locations, including six facilities in New York City and Connecticut, two locations at O'Hare International and a dog-boarding location servicing a rural clientele in Connecticut. Most of the locations centralize several pet care needs under one roof, including dog daycare, transportation, boarding, grooming, walking, training and retail. The staff is insured, licensed and bonded and workers are subjected to background checks.
SPOT also provides trained veterinary staff and on-site animal behaviorists to monitor the pets under its care. The company also screens the dogs it services to assess their behavior and temperment.
“We don’t crate the dogs, we have them grouped together by breed, size and temperament with highly-trained handlers,” Marrow says.
SPOT's general pet care services operate like a health club. A membership at SPOT costs $200 a year. Services for non-members are more expensive—just getting a dog's nails clipped, for example, costs $20. Without a membership, dog daycare costs $51 per day, but the membershop lowers the cost to $675 per month or less than $30 a day. Shuttle service for the dogs costs an additional $350 each month.
Pet owners can add additional services—walking can be added on at $16.20 for a half-hour group walk, and they'll feed your dog from a standard diet for $5 per feeding. Other additions include catering to the pet's special diet or medication needs or offering spa treatments and grooming.
Their most expensive package costs $850 a year, plus a $600 monthly fee, and includes unlimited daycare and regular bathing and grooming services.
Overnight kenneling at their rural location is $120. They also offer dog training camps at the location for $1,800 a week
Also, SPOT offers discounts to the residents of its partners' buildings.
Dogs and their owners are offered posh treatment – even the floors are specially designed to protect the pets’ joints, and owners can watch their pets play in daycare during business hours via a webcam. SPOT also offers cage-free overnight boarding and personalized walking services.
“It’s like sending your child to the highest end, most reputable preschool program or day camp, where they get access, experience and exposure to so many different opportunities,” Marrow says. ”Our personnel are well-trained, have backgrounds with animals and they give the dogs one-on-one attention throughout the day. It’s a safe, social, wonderful environment.”
To develop his business and to differentiate from other metropolitan pet care serviced providers, Marrow began partnering with real estate developers throughout New York, including Silverstein Properties, Building & Land Technology, LeFrak and Rockrose.
The company’s city locations are located in luxury apartment buildings and serve high-net-worth clients in the surrounding neighborhoods.
SPOT opened up one such location at Mercedes House, an 864-unit New York luxury residential building supervised by Two Trees Management, in February of 2015, citing the opportunities in the vicinity: 60 percent of the building’s residents are pet owners.
SPOT staff provide dog-walking and other services to the client’s doorstep, often partnering with property managers to offer the service to all of the residents of a building.
The managers view SPOT as a retail client and an amenity for residents, says Marrow, sometimes funding a portion of the pet care service’s property costs in hopes of attracting more occupants to their apartments.
At one time, Marrow says, it was rare for city apartment dwellers — even those with luxury needs — to demand pet-friendly buildings and services, but that’s changed since the financial crisis, which led many property developers and managers to loosen their restrictions on pet ownership and drove demand for more local pet services.
For city dwellers, SPOT’s price point is competitive, says Marrow.
“We have unlimited use of daycare for around $30 a day,” Marrow says. “A dog walker in New York was costing me $20 per walk, two walks per day. The prices are very competitive for this marketplace. It’s a better opportunity for the dogs, we offer them socialization, it’s important for dogs to be around other dogs and to be well-socialized in the city environment.”
SPOT has also found new areas for growth. For example, the company has opened SPOT Travel locations, which handle and board pets for United Airlines’ PetSafe travel program, at O’Hare and Newark Liberty International Airport.
The company has also opened a stand-alone location in Connecticut that allows its furry charges the run of a more bucolic setting.
Marrow is optimistic about SPOT’s growth potential.
“We’re looking at opportunities in other markets,” Marrow says. “We’re looking to all of the major NFL-type cities, D.C., Chicago, Miami and Los Angeles, any city where there’s large luxury buildings in an urban area.”