What Should You Spend on Advertising?
from BusinessWeek
As a rule, emerging companies focus most of their time and talents on meeting the needs of customers, as well they should. If they don't take care of the customers they already have, everything else will be academic. Strangely, however, many neglect the function of winning customers in the first place. Others naively assume that if they simply provide excellent products or services, their reputation will precede them. More

Survey: U.S. Consumers’ Mood Falls Sharply in February
from Reuters via Forbes
U.S. consumers' confidence fell to its lowest in three months in February as sentiment grew increasingly gloomy over an economic downturn that most expected to last five more years, a recent survey showed. The Reuters/University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers said its index reading of confidence for February tumbled to 56.2 from 61.2 in January. That was the lowest since November, when U.S. stocks hit 11-year lows during one of the worst periods of the current financial crisis. A separate reading in the report showed consumer expectations fell to their lowest since May 1980. More

The Best Way to Manage Customer Relationships
from Forbes
Just as your seventh-grade English teacher told you to "keep it simple, stupid," so should you apply the same K.I.S.S. principle to managing customer relationships. Not that you'd know it by all the customer relationship management, or CRM, software being peddled in this tough economy. What a waste for small companies. More

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Sergeant’s Pet Care Buying Chomp
from MSNBC
Sergeant's Pet Care Products Inc., is adding to its 400-plus products by buying the maker of Yip Yap Breath Treats and Pit'r Pat Tasty Treats. The Omaha-based Sergeant's said in a news release Thursday that it had reached a deal to acquire Chomp, Inc., which is based in Weymouth, Mass. Terms were not disclosed. Sergeant's President and CEO Bob Scharf says buying Chomp will give his company a greater market share in pet treats and pet dental care products. More

Phibro Animal Health Corp. Agrees to Acquire Baltzell Agri Products
from MSNBC
Phibro Animal Health announced today that its subsidiary Prince Agri Products Inc., has agreed to acquire the Baltzell Agri Products trace minerals business. Dean Warras, President of Prince Agri, commented: "BAP is well known in the industry for its strong customer relationships, quality manufacturing operations, and excellent workforce.” More

Cargill Moving Ahead with New Feed Mill in Arizona
from Reliable Plant
Cargill is moving forward on building a new 120,000-tons-per-year manufacturing plant in Casa Grande, Ariz., that will produce feed for dairy, beef, farm-store, birdseed and show-animal customers. In late 2006, Cargill acquired Eagle Milling’s Casa Grande-based feed mill, pet and animal wholesale products business and committed to constructing a new mill as the enterprise grew. Construction of the new mill began this past fall, with feed production scheduled to commence in early 2010. More

Fido’s Recession
from The Daily Beast
With each year of uninterrupted growth, industry boosters sounded increasingly confident that their business was immune from the laws of gravity. Pet spending didn’t take a hit when the Internet bubble burst at the beginning of the decade. The logic: When times are tough, people pull close to family. The definition of family in recent decades has come to include the pooch who once dozed in the backyard. That bond - and the healthy food and proper training and aggressive vet care that four-legged ersatz children require - is hard to reverse. And yet it was hard not to worry. More

Symbol	Name	Last	Change
ALO	ALPHARMA, Inc.	36.94	0.00%
CENT	Central Garden and Pet Co	6.50	0.48%
CHD	Church & Dwight Co., Inc.	52.57	0.79%
CLX	Clorox Company	53.82	0.25%
CL	Colgate-Palmolive Company	64.15	1.51%
DLM	Del Monte Foods Company	6.80	0.04%
IAX	International Absorbents, Inc.	2.50	0.00%
JAKK	Jakks Pacific, Inc.	17.93	0.04%
KFT	Kraft Foods, Inc.	25.88	0.46%
ODC	Oil-Dri Corporation of America	15.73	0.67%
OPCO	OurPet's Company	0.22	0.0%
PECD	Pet Ecology Brands, Inc.	0.09	0.0%
PETS	PetMed Express, Inc.	15.01	0.07%
PETM	Petsmart, Inc.	20.45	0.15%
PFE	Pfizer, Inc.	14.71	0.13%
PG	Proctor & Gamble Company	52.94	1.06%
SGP	Schering-Plough Corporation	20.09	0.34%
SPC	Spectrum Brands, Inc.	0.00	0.00%
WOOF	VCA Antech, Inc.	20.39	0.03%

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