Anneke van den Broek was six years old when she had her first taste of entrepreneurship. From her home on Sydney’s lower north shore, the young pet lover bred mice and sold them to a local pet store for 20c a pop.
Although her career path took her on a journey incorporating fashion, marketing, consumer brands and management, it was van den Broek’s love of animals that inspired her to start Rufus and Coco, Australia’s most awarded pet brand.
“Rufus and Coco is a premium branded pet business,” she explains. “We sell a range of products for all sorts of domestic pets in a range of categories including grooming, cleaning, vitamins, litter – everything apart from food.”
It is the range of categories that makes Rufus and Coco different to their competitors. “Most of our competitors only operate in one category so they might do grooming, but wouldn’t do accessories,” says van den Broek.
But van den Broek believes that working across a number of categories is a better business model. “We have a strong belief that consumers do buy brands and once they know and trust a brand it is much easier for our retail partners to get the next sale,” she explains.
Although the Rufus and Coco website was launched in 2008, van den Broek had already invested a solid eighteen months work to get the business ready.
“A lot of our products had to be registered with the Australian pesticides veterinary medicines authority and that is a very lengthy process. Would you believe that standards for veterinary products in this country are more rigorous than they are for humans?” she laughs.
Although van den Broek started working on Rufus and Coco in the same year that she had her first child, she says the biggest challenge at that stage was finding the right suppliers.
“Suppliers want it to be easy, they want a big order up front. But when you are starting out you need to find suppliers that can partner with you to grow the business,” she explains.
Like many other entrepreneurs, van den Broek puts a huge amount of time into running her business and says that she never really switches off. “I love what I do, so I am fine with doing a lot of work!” she says
Although it can be hard to balance her working hours with having young children, van den Broek also says that running her own business has big advantages “I don’t miss school concerts, I’m always there on poetry reading day. I work hard, but I have flexibility.”
Rufus and Coco has enjoyed much success since launching in 2008, but their big break came when van den Broek secured a deal with supermarket giants Coles and Woolworths. It is not a feat that she takes lightly; in fact she says that it took years to achieve it.
“In Coles and Woolworths alone we’re a $12million dollar brand. We’ve driven significant growth for them as a business. It has worked in their favour, but trying to get the opportunity to show them that we could do that took a lot of persistence,” she explains.
It is that persistence, along with a healthy dose of resilience, that van den Broek says has gotten her to the position she is in today. But she still believes there is a long way to go until they realise her vision of becoming a trusted global brand. “We’re on that journey. We’re on the first maker of many markers to come,” she says.
In the meantime, Rufus and Coco support over 70 not for profit animal organisations and have just launched a pet toy that that gives 5% back to the world animal network (formally the royal society for the protection of animals). “Having the business enables us to do that. Being commercially viable enables us to give back,” van den Broek enthuses.
In addition to her obvious love of animals, van den Broek also has a genuine affinity to her customers, so much so that she asks her staff to copy her into every single feedback email they receive.
“We get all this spontaneous feedback from our customers on email and social media. I wish they could know how much it means to all of us,” she says.
“They really give a damn and we really give a damn about them.”