For over 50 years, DoggyMan has been keeping
people and their four-legged friends happy
It all started with a dog named Sally.
When Sally became ill and refused
to eat, owner Akio Hayashi wondered what he could do to make his
beloved canine companion feel better.
Akio later gave her a piece of meat he
bought for dinner, which the pooch happily devoured. That was the beginning of
“Healthy Jerky”, a high-quality jerky for
those who want only the best for their furry friends. But Akio didn’t stop there; in
1963, he founded Hayashi Seisakusho in
Osaka and began to manufacture and sell
high-quality pet products worldwide. The
company later changed its name to
DoggyMan H.A Co., Ltd., becoming one
of Japan’s most popular manufacturers of
pet food and supplies.
Akio’s son Yuichi Hayashi currently
serves as DoggyMan’s chief operating
officer and the duo are experts when it
comes to keeping man’s best friend happy. Thanks to the company’s dedication
to making the very best pet products,
DoggyMan expanded its network overseas. Along with the Kansai Logistics
Center (fittingly shaped like a giant
dachshund), the company established
offices in China, Taiwan, Vietnam and
most recently Korea.
“We’ve been exporting our products to
Korea since 1985, but we came to the
country to gather and analyze the shifts in
the industry because Korea is up to date
with the latest trends,” says
Yuichi. “We
also wanted to spread awareness about
our company in Korea because the pet-related industry is growing very quickly here.”
Last September, DoggyMan moved
into the Invest Korea Plaza (IKP),
Korea’s first business incubation center
for foreign-invested companies. Thanks
to KOTRA’s foreign investment promotion agency Invest KOREA, the company
was able to quickly do business in the
country. “Although it hasn’t been that
long since we moved here, we’re really
satisfied because the IKP building is
incredibly clean and it’s
great that we
have access to information about Korea at
any time,” he says.
As Yuichi notes, Korea’s pet-related industry is flourishing, with the economic slowdown having little impact on this sector. Thanks to the rising number of pet lovers, the domestic pet industry is valued at about KRW 1.81 trillion (USD 1.6 billion) as of 2015. This market is expected to hit almost KRW 6 trillion by 2020. Korea’s premium pet food market is also enjoying significant
growth—the sales of high-quality pet treats alone rose by 56
percent from 2013 to 2015, according to
Korean e-commerce firm Gmarket. In
addition, more people are looking to buy
pet food made from natural and organic
ingredients.
When asked what he thought about the
future of Korea’s pet industry, Yuichi
says that the domestic market really started growing in 2010. “It’s not just the
manufacturing, distribution and sales of
pet supplies that have seen exponential
growth; now, various pet services are also
expanding in scope,” he says. “People in
Korea see pets as
part of their family and
we’re making sure that we continue to
make safe, high-quality products for our
local customers.”
Along with companies like DoggyMan,
the Korean government is doing its part to
nurture the industry and address the growing number of pet owners. The provincial
government in Gyeonggi-do, for example,
plans to establish a pet theme park in the
city of Yeoju and invest KRW 35 billion into this project.
It also announced that it will build a
pet adoption facility and even
a training school for pet handlers. Ulsan
City is also jumping on this bandwagon,
having finished the construction design in
April to build a pet cultural center in the
region.
So what’s next for DoggyMan? For starters, the company is planning to
work closely with promising Korean companies to develop new products that will be loved by hounds and humans alike. But most of all, DoggyMan’s main plan is to continue carrying out its mission—creating a
world where pets and people can
happily live together. And we all have Sally to thank for that.