Manufacturing & eCommerce Retailer in the Backyard Pet (Chickens and more) Product & Rental Verticals

ValleyBiggs^® presents a highly unique offering that mixes manufacturing, eCommerce, farming and pet vertials all into one bundled opportunity. We believe that this offering is one of our most exciting opportunities ever put to market. This business includes a rental business for Chickens, Chicks and Chicken Houses (coops) that are rented by Schools and Consumers for kids to learn from and play with. They are achieving a 30% repeat order rate and have proven themselves to be highly resilient and interesting during the Pandemic.

The business originally started up as a chicken coop rental business, but quickly added a hatching program, which has created joy and happiness for many kids and adults alike. There are currently two farms in place for the rental business, and the company is well positioned to begin exploding across the country with additional farms that rent chickens and chicken coops to local schools and families in their particular regions. Ownership believes that this “local farm” opportunity is something that could become a franchise to expand quickly across the nation. In addition, they are also testing the opportunity to rent additional pets, including hamsters, gerbils, guinea pigs, rabbits and more.

The other division of this incredible multifaceted brand is an eCommerce business that manufactures and sells products for pet chickens in both the B2B and D2C spaces, primarily on the Amazon.com platform. They are absolutely killing it on Amazon. The company offers consumer products to support the health and wellbeing of chicken pets and other “backyard animals” like rabbits, ferrets, hamsters and guinea pigs.

Company ownership started this business 8 years ago and remain highly interested in staying with the brand after the acquisition is complete, including the opportunity to retain board seats and equity in the transaction. One of the truly strong intangibles included in this transaction is the ability to bring on ownership to help with continued product launches and development. Because of the existence of the company’s farms, and because ownership knows the backyard pet business very well, product development and testing is done at a level very difficult to replicate … which is most likely why the products sold by this company do so well, from both an aesthetic and functional standpoint. When the manufacturing arm of the business was developed 6 years ago, the owners took all of the knowledge gained from renting backyard pets and homes and began creating easy to use, time-saving solutions for the underdeveloped pet supplies market, especially with chickens. Customer feedback is the driving force behind product development, along with the experience of keeping large volumes of hens and chicks year-round. This resulted in the creation of some of the most innovative and highest rated chicken feeder and waterer designs on the market today.

The Rental division works with schools, nursing homes and families to provide an educational experience in the form of renting egg laying chickens for 4 weeks at a time. These rentals include all necessary supplies, and customers usually get an egg on the first day of the rental. This rental is not only for customers that want the 4-week educational experience, but it is a way to “try before you buy” as half of the rental fee can be used towards the purchase price. The rental division also rents all the supplies for a chick hatching program.  This program includes: 2 baby chicks, 7 fertile eggs with an incubator, a brooder (where the chicks live) with a waterer and feeder along with all the feed and bedding the customer will need to complete the 4 week program. The program also includes educational materials that teachers and parents can use to help kids learn about chicken lifecycles.

While education continues to grow online, especially in the era of COVID-19, this business provides a real-world educational experience that children and adults remember for the rest of their lives and that no online experience could match. The business has also been testing out rabbit and guinea pig rentals for schools and families that have gone well. Renting these animals as a class pet have provided classrooms with the opportunity to experience different animals, and teachers the opportunity to release responsibility of a class pet.

The product manufacturing side of the business sells products under the company’s well-known brand name for backyard chicken owners and small animal owners. These products currently sell on Amazon.com, the branded website and to online and brick and mortar wholesalers. The company has a lot of room to expand with the proper procedures and employees in place.  Keeping inventory in stock will lead to an immediate 50% estimated increase in sales. The second largest opportunity is to sell to more brick and mortar wholesalers. The company has been contacted by many brick and mortar retailers, but this hasn’t gone anywhere due to a lack of stock and not having the proper systems in place. The company has not pursued outreach to some of the larger chains due to lack of processes, number of employees needed and lack of inventory. Another opportunity includes pursuing the development of a shippable chicken coop out of plastic that works well with our products, like waterers and feeders. The company can also begin selling chicken feed and putting a sample in every chicken feeder sold. Chicken feed is a recurring revenue stream much like the company’s chicken bedding currently is.

The two divisions work very well together. The well-loved rental business provides a great story behind the brand of products sold and allows the company access to baby chicks and full-grown chickens year round for real life product testing. The rental business has also received a nice bit of national attention from stories in the Washington Post, NY Times and on shows like CBS Sunday morning, which have contributed to brand recognition. If the rental business had multiple locations through a franchise network, all products developed and sold by the company could be sold to franchisees, including recurring revenue options like feed, bedding and more. These franchisees would be the brand ambassadors for the products while introducing their cities to chickens, they also introduce their customers to the company’s feed line, bedding line, feeders, waterers, coops, etc.

Keeping backyard chickens gained popularity in the early 2010’s as the “grow your own food”, “know where your food comes from” and “organic food” movements took hold. With coronavirus pushing many trends forward, it has also pushed the grow your own food movements with ‘keeping chickens’ being at the head of that movement. Keeping chickens has been part of America’s culture in the rural US for decades and has recently become very popular in the American suburbs on the coasts and outside of major cities in the past 10 years, especially as more and more major metropolitan cities open up to allowing chicken coops to be kept in urban back yards. COVID-19 has had a substantial impact, from not just a food shortage standpoint, but from a boredom cure for children and adults. Shortages at the grocery store and lockdowns are impacting the psyche of the American people, who want to secure their food supply with their own backyard gardens and chickens.

This company is growing rapidly year over year at 100% YOY Sales Growth and 376% YOY Profit Growth. The near and long term organic growth of this company are hard to argue, but adding new sales channels, expanding product lines developing a franchise network, and developing an overall growth strategy with the property capital backing will do wonders to take this company to levels far beyond even their current, massive successes. No knowledge of chickens or the marketing space is necessary. There are 12 staff members in place to help ease a transition and create continuity. Additionally, business ownership is willing to remain on, to roll equity or to take whatever steps necessary to ensure that the tradition they created in this unbelievable brand continues in the right hands. They will be picky about who they choose to pass the torch to, but once chosen, the new owner will be fully supported.

There is so much opportunity here – it’s hard to list everything. Please inquire within to learn more.