Focus on: Business Strategies Twenty years of steady growth and smart acquisitions have propelled Doctors Foster & Smith to the top spot among pet-supply catalogers.

By Reported Donna Loyle

The fish titles were particularly challenging to integrate, says Foster, mostly because the core customer demographic, men ages 20 to 35, is different from that of its main catalog title, women ages 35 to 50.

“Customers of fish titles are a demographic that places high demands on a call center and will deride your company online if they think you don’t know what you’re doing,” says Foster. “It was a culture shock for us. We had to train our contact center associates on fish knowledge and get them to understand the complexities of the questions people had regarding, for example, salt and freshwater fish, equipment, aquariums and such. It was extremely difficult.