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

It’s hard to define each man’s job, however, because they don’t use recognized titles. “We hire people and empower them to make decisions,” says Smith. “If we didn’t do that, employees would spend a lot of time running around trying to find out what to do in a given situation. If they make a mistake, they’ll learn from it. We have a very relaxed, unstructured culture here, and that has helped us to grow.”