Hicat® Partner Notes

The following notes have been complied from various emails, phone calls & meetings with interested parties that have got in touch with me to ask why we don’t manufacturer or have partners outside of the UK, & in most cases specifically why not in the United States

Intro

We have had lots of different people get in touch over the last 10 years to enquire about partnering in North America including a PM for the Hubble Telescope, patent attorneys, haulage firms, housewives & artisans, pet stores & retailers, physicians & a film scenery company amongst others, most of whom are probably devoted cat lovers at heart, but for some reason things never get off the ground. 

Obviously all of these potential partners will have very different credentials & acumen for starting a business but the common thread was that all of them loved my products (& cats) despite the obvious gaps in terms of resourcing, skill sets, financial situation, commitments etc. 

You’ll probably know that we have a chap in Australia called Mirko who has rolled his sleeves up & has been making Hicat® units there since 2019 so where there’s a will there’s a way.  

My market is definitely bespoke cat furniture as opposed to low cost off the shelf retail pieces & I hope this shows in the workmanship & design of my pieces. £1000-2000 for a hand made bespoke piece of furniture 2.4m tall would not be considered by most interior designers or consumers but when it’s marketed & sold as “cat furniture” most people will turn up their noses.

Summary

Hicat® was basically a hobby that got out of control after I started making furniture for my cats & this has definitely influenced by business model, that’s if I have one. I’ve been very fortunate that I was in a position where my other business was basically able to fund Hicat® so was able to take things at my pace & spend lots of time refining & thinking about cats rather than money. 

I make everything myself in my London studio & then ship worldwide, apart from Mirko’s orders in Australasia. 

I work to a 50% margin so there’s not really the opportunity to sell retail or wholesale here, not that I would want to as I think this would compromise the Hicat® brand & values, without wanting to sound smug – the bottom line is it’s taken me over a decade to turn a profit & I’ve loved & continue to love every minute. 

As you will probably be aware the big turn off for most North American based customers is the shipping. Because of the size of the units additional handling charges take a typical 8’ Tomcat or Fatcat delivery supplement to hundreds of pounds. The Polecat sized units are even more of a shock because the delivery supplement can sometimes be nearly the cost of the unit. 

I’m just about to post a Blog on the import taxes & charges for USA customers as we’ve recently confirmed that my pieces do not attract any custom charges - I’m not sure that all of our readers are aware of this!  

Because of the bespoke natural of my products (profit margin) there are limited avenues for re-selling but here are the partnering models that I’ve already worked through with other potential partners through the years.
 

In House Fabrication 

I have produced a 1000 page fabrication guide on how to make my units & this has been used by Mirko to start production in Australia – see example attached. Some of the guide is now out of date & needs updating but could still be used to fabricate the units noting that I am not a maker by trade but have become a half decent maker so it can be done. 

Duplicating the Hicat® website was the easy bit so the test for Mirko was finding a supplier of the fibre board tubes & coir carpet locally so this might be a good start point for you to see if the artisan route is doable - this is obviously the model that would maintain the ethos & customer service experience closest to how Hicat® operates here.
 

Outsourced Fabrication

As an alternative to in house fabrication other interested parties have looked at a third party production again in line with Fabrication Guide standards & then selling the products direct to customers or wholesale/retail if made against a stocking programme model.  

When this model gets discussed Mexico keeps getting proposed as the obvious place to manufacture - the reservation I’ve had with this route previously is not knowing if manufacturing in places like Mexico is open to exploitation, in which case this would be a no-no for me. 

Stocking Programme

The made-to-measure & bespoke nature of my floor-to-ceiling products means that stocking these products isn’t a runner but the Freestanding & Wall Mounted units, including my new SixToo™ could be stockpiled. 

This would give me the opportunity to send stock by sea & the savings on courier costs would set up a decent selling margin to customers in the US & Canada but obviously the product offering would be limited to non-bespoke but could include Scraaatch™, Catapilla™ & Cat Wall™  as well plus accessories. 

This model is probably the easiest & most doable as the savings in shipping would generate enough revenue for the partner to make a profit after they've organised warehousing & onward delivery.

Exclusivity Agreement

When I started in 2008 I signed an exclusivity agreement with a French company called Contemporary Pets who wanted to market my products across France & Switzerland – the arrangement was based around them adding a margin to the UK pricing so they were selling my products at nearly twice the UK cost with orders being placed on them & I fulfilled them directly from the UK. 

It worked for them as their marketing was aimed at an affluent customer base that didn’t speak English so the language barrier played a part in having a captive audience but part of the agreement was also that if a French or Swiss person contacted me directly I could deal with them from here & process the order at UK pricing as Contemporary Pets were not involved, which I think was fair. 

FYI the current shipping price for a Freestanding Fatcat is around £700, which is a few of hundred of pounds more than it was before COVID.