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

Early 1980s The veterinary practice expands to five clinic locations in northern Wisconsin.

1983 The doctors collect names from ads in trade journals, compiling a mailing list for 1,600 catalogs to sell pet vaccines primarily to kennel owners and other pet industry professionals. They fulfill the products from a 12-by-12-foot room behind one of their clinics.