Training Pages
The Dog Journal Training Page: Bird Dogs Written by: George Hickox The Dog Journal April/May 2023 Ever picture a beautiful pointer locked in a point
Interview: MAtt Snader
The Dog Journal: Our interview for this issue of TDJ is with Matt Snader, the founder of Lancaster Puppies. Most of us recognize Matt as an adventurous hunter/father/writer primarily living in Alaska, but in his early days Matt traveled the country as a traveling dog salesman. I’m as excited as anyone to get started, so let’s jump right in!
Matt, thank you for joining us. Again, I envision you as the crazy adventurer up in Alaska, and it’s taking some effort to remember that where you are now may have been a result of your experiences as a traveling dog salesman. Can you get into your early days for us, and tell us a bit more about how Lancaster Puppies was born and what you did as a “traveling dog salesman.”
Matt: First, Ivan, thank you for your interest in what I do and LancasterPuppies.com, and I think your new magazine will be a good asset for the dog breeding community. People do sometimes seem to forget that I haven’t lived in Alaska all my life, and I was in fact, born and raised in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Ironically, I remember in second grade my parents bought me a typewriter (at a yard sale) because I loved writing so much.
Growing up we always had a dog or two at home, and we would sell an occasional litter of puppies. I always enjoyed fiddling around with computers and website programming, and found marketing fascinating as well.
During my high school years, I worked for Ware Unlimited, in Salunga, Pa, doing computer repair and networking. There I was also introduced to website programming and selling items online.
My wife, Marlene, and I married in 2003, and soon after I opened a computer shop in Leola, Pa. Despite the computer business, I still found time to sell car parts, knives, coffee, and who knows what online. I also did some video editing for Ryan Bomgardner, the Ryan and Friends Ventriloquist. If you ever saw a video clip of his dummy, Jeffrey, laying rubber in a yellow Mustang, that was a bit of my engineering.
TDJ: Interesting! So, I’m excited to hear how all of this translated and turned you into a “traveling dog salesman”!
MS: My son, Shane, was born in 2004, which brings LancasterPuppies.com into the picture. One of Marlene’s friends (an old classmate, I believe) came over to see the new baby, and mentioned they had a litter of English Bulldogs. Would I have any interest in advertising them? I have always loved trying new things and new ideas, and I readily agreed. I registered the domain name LancasterPuppies.com, put together a website, and listed the puppies.
I was surprised how quickly they seemed to sell. They told their friends, who told other friends, and after a while I was busy driving around taking pictures of puppies. Soon all these puppies started causing problems for me, as I was still trying to do computer repair and networking.
On more than one occasion I found myself at a client’s office, late at night, trying to list puppies while I waited on a computer server to update. Needless to say, that didn’t work out very well. So, I sold LancasterPuppies.com! I put an ad in the local shopper paper, and a fellow named Brian Witmer bought it.
TDJ: That’s too bad, was that the end of your involvement with the company then?
MS: Fast forward a few years. I had stayed in touch with Brian, helping him with occasional website issues, or offering advice on marketing and various topics. While Brian was busy advertising puppies, I was busy with computers. But wow, did I get burned out. I found myself working 80hour weeks, some nights even skipping sleep all together.
As I puzzled what to do about this, two things happened in the same month, maybe even the same week. It would be difficult for me to call what happened a coincidence. First, Matt Landis from Landis Computer offered to buy my computer service. Second, Brian called and said he was “just too busy advertising puppies” and wanted to sell the business back to me. It seemed Brian was also burnt out, so we worked out a deal.
Myself and another investor bought LancasterPuppies.com. I think that was back in 2008. Knowing that I wasn’t very good at taking puppy pictures, I hired my brother, Josh, to take photos. My mom, Esther, also started helping us at the same time, by answering the phone. Soon afterwards we hired a young lady named Erica Sauder to help with the photos, and she worked with us for several years. My wife, Marlene, also did a good bit of customer service. It would be interesting to know how many of our customers remember these people.
Most of my work was done on the computer (website maintenance, marketing, etc.), and I quickly realized this could be done anywhere I had an Internet connection. Marlene would often do customer service over the phone. With a cell phone and a computer, we could go anywhere! My first experiment in remote working was to go to Florida.
We found someone that would rent us a shed in Sarasota for $10 a day. Our only vehicle at the time was a Crown Victoria (that we had How it began. purchased for $300) and it took us the whole way there, burning five quarts of oil on the way. Traveling in those early days was tricky, because Marlene and I still did a lot of the customer service.
It worked best to drive at night, while the office was closed, as driving generated a lot of background noise. Cell phones were also not as reliable back then, and you ran a high risk of getting disconnected while driving.
Marlene and I took a real liking to traveling, and soon we were driving all over the place. We went to Florida multiple times, Texas, and even hauled a trailer load of food to an orphanage in Mexico. Along the way we added photographers and more staff people. Eventually we had to setup a “real” office, and buy vehicles that didn’t break down every week.
TDJ: Do I remember correctly that you drove an old limousine with your company name printed on the side for a while?
MS: Oh, yes, the camouflage limo! Actually, I have had several limos. My first limo was an old white limo that broke down at a friend’s place. I had lettered it up with “Lancaster Puppies” in huge letters across the side of it. My friend lived on a farm next to the PA turnpike, so we got the bright idea to drag it out beside the highway, where it became a billboard. It sat there for probably a year, until one night someone smashed all the windows out of it, and so that was the end of that.
The next limo came a few years later. I wanted to paint it camouflage, as that is my favorite color. However, I thought that didn’t go very well with our main LancasterPuppies.com website. Around the same time, we started a website for hunting dogs, called AmericanGunDogs.com. I thought hunting and camouflage went together very well, so the limo was painted camouflage and lettered up with AmericanGunDogs.com.
That was the limo we then drove to Alaska in 2013. After Marlene and I first came to Alaska back in 2013, we were presented with a new problem. There is a four-hour time difference between PA and Alaska. While I don’t answer the phones now anymore for customer service, I did on occasion when we first ventured into Alaska. Our office opened at 8 AM, Eastern Standard Time. This meant I would get up in time to start answering the phones by 4 AM.
That was a bit rough on me, as I am not really a morning person.
I also learned quickly to not mention I was in Alaska while answering the phone, or the discussion would last for an hour or more! That could be problematic when you had many people trying to get through!
TDJ: So, talk about Puppies Online a bit as a company, why should a breeder advertise on your site, and what are some really good things that are happening with the company right now?
MS: Ivan, I don’t like to brag, so I will attempt to answer your question without doing so. There are several things in the works that I feel are exciting and will be beneficial to people selling puppies. We have been working with several full-time programmers, for the past two years, on setting up a new website. This new website will be very fast, as one of the challenges of running a website that receives millions of visitors a year is keeping everything loading fast.
Currently we are in the testing stage, and we want to make sure all the bugs are out before launching it. I would expect the new website to be out soon. Not only will the new website be faster, it will make it easier for sellers to stay in touch with puppy customers, throughout the whole buying process. I do think our current website is good, but we reached a volume of traffic and listings where our programmers advised us it was time to upgrade the whole platform.
The new website is also expected to bring in even more puppy buyers through enhanced SEO, although our current website does really good at this too. Obviously, if we are needing to rebuild the website because of high traffic levels, then that also means a lot of people are coming on their looking to buy puppies-which is great for people selling puppies.
People that use our full-service option, and get us to come out and take pictures for them, get their pictures and ad printouts right away before the photographer even leaves their house. Also, your ad will typically go online and be seen buy buyers within an hour of the pictures being taken. These are not new features; we have been doing this for years already. A year or two ago we launched an updated LancasterPuppies.com smart phone app, which helps people list and look at puppies. If you are managing your account with a smart phone, that is a great and easy way to create and manage listings.
Another feature I want to make sure sellers are aware of, is that our website works with Consumer Safety Group, an escrow company located in Montana. CSG, as it is often called, takes the risk out of selling puppies for buyers and sellers. Puppy buyers send puppy sellers money through a link on LancasterPuppies.com, and CSG holds the funds until the buyer receives the puppy. Sellers don’t have to worry about getting a chargeback, and buyers have the peace of mind knowing that if they don’t receive the puppy they ordered, they can get their money back.
I should also mention that we also advertise stud dog services for people. This is not new, but if you have a stud dog or are looking for a stud dog, this is also a great resource. Currently there are 60 breeds (and many more listings) represented in the stud dog category.
TDJ: I feel like I’ve taken enough of your time, but I’d like to ask you before you go, what are some things you would like to see happen with Lancaster Puppies long term, and do you foresee yourself involved in making those goals a reality?
MS: You would be surprised at the amount of people asking us to advertise things like horses, pigs, and kittens, or pet supplies. One thing we are doing that I am particularly excited about is a new website we launched called PlainDirect. com. While this is a separate website than LancasterPuppies.com, it is operated and owned by the same people so I view it is merely an extension of the LancasterPuppies.com website. This website is geared towards homesteading and farming, and we are listing lots of different animals, equipment, and who knows what on there.
We are also in the process of adding a store, where people can list items, and buyers can purchase them directly on the website, just like on Ebay.
We will still carry the classifieds options too on PlainDirect.com, so you can choose which best suits your needs. What this means, in a nutshell, is that we can now offer people selling puppies ways to sell additional animals or products they might have. Do you sell dog food? We can help you get new customers for that too! Or maybe you sell pet collars, leashes, and so on. All you need is a fax machine, and we will send you the order when it comes in. The money will be direct deposited right into your bank account.
The items don’t have to be dog or pet related, we would gladly sell jams and jellies too, for example. I am really excited to be able to offer these expanded services to our customers. So, I would say the long-term goal is to doing more of what we do now, better, and on a broader scale. Thanks again Ivan for having me on, it was a pleasure to speak to you on behalf of The Dog Journal.
TDJ: You’re welcome, Matt, and thanks for taking the time for this! This has been a really fun interview, and I know our readers will love this one!
Email
Facebook
LinkedIn
Twitter
Print
Looking For More To Read?
What to Expect From Your Puppy Customer
Knowing what your puppy customer
expects you to ask them is a good way to
know how you should respond when they ask,
“Do you have any questions for our family?”
Adopters expect the breeder to thoroughly
interview them! Some websites demand a
family to find a different breeder if they are
not asked personal questions about their
puppy’s future home. Asking a customer the
right questions can not only prove you are an
ethical breeder but show the customer you
care about your puppy’s long-term success
within an adoption.
Unraveled: Orthopedic Foundation for Animals
TDJ: Dr Fran, Good day, and thanks for joining us for this interview. I’m very glad to have you here, and I, along with our readers, have a lot of questions we hope you can answer. Why don’t you start by giving us some history about yourself, the OFA organization, and your position within it.