and is uncooked. And finally, a frozen pet food is completely new to the consumer market.Skills of the firmTyler Pet Foods is very experienced in the professional dog breeder market. It also has developed an obviously successful product with regard to the sales to the professional market in that the breeders trust it to keep their dogs healthy.Financial ResourcesThe management of Tyler Pet Foods has approved $300,000 to $500,000 to launch Show Circuit in the Boston Area. No other information has been given except that this will stretch the resources of the firm. It is reasonable to assume that the success or failure of this product launch will have such serious implications for the company that it will make or break Tyler Pet Foods. Of course success for the product will launch Tyler to another level as a consumer pet food supplier (with its associated competitive risks) but failure could well kill the company financially. It is critical to use this marketing budget very carefully. Distribution StructureCurrently, Tyler Pet Foods is selling to kennels via selected pet stores. Their sales channel has been established without advertising and is based on a generally professional market of breeders and, it would seem, perhaps some mass market people who have figured out what the product is and its quality. There are no sales to supermarkets as of yet.Problems and OpportunitiesEnvironmentThe markets huge size is both a blessing and a curse. Of course the very large market represents a large opportunity in terms of pure scale, and it would appear that there is no immediate competition, but the market size presents all kinds of new challenges that TPF has not had to deal with. Scaling production to a mass market while maintaining high quality presents new challenges to TPF. Customers in the mass market are sensitive to different things that TPF has little to no experience with: mass consumer packaging, which would have to be very d...
