1 May 2024
The buzz around Creature Comforts has been building since news first emerged of a “pet tech” start-up with eye-catching plans to revolutionise the way veterinary care works for vets, pets and clients. So, when the first clinic opened in central London last month, <em>VBJ</em> caught up with founder Russell Welsh to see if this ambitious venture looks like it’s living up to the hype…
Creature Comforts, Westbourne Grove, Notting Hill.
Staff: full-time vets 3 • registered veterinary nurses 3 • practice administrators 5
Fees: £20 per month membership fee • £75 one-off consult fee
When Village Vet co-founder Russell Welsh announced his intention to raise £10 million to create a new “city-centric” practice group, it was always going to pique interest across the sector.
Some of that interest stemmed from the fact Russell has such an impressive track record, having been part of the ownership team that built Village Vet into a 33-site group before its sale to Linnaeus in 2017.
But what really grabbed people’s attention was his announcement on securing seed capital that he was “on a mission to radically improve working life for vets and to give pet owners fast access to unlimited care”.
That is not the sort of statement to be taken lightly – especially coming as it did against the backdrop of a Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) review of the sector that has raised questions around whether pet owners are getting a fair deal from the veterinary sector.
It would also be fair to say that a lot of vets and nurses don’t think they’re getting a fair deal either. High burnout and retention issues are symptomatic of the strain created by a chronic labour shortage and a big spike in pet ownership, while the profession now finds itself under even more pressure due to the ongoing scrutiny and often ill-considered pronouncements of the CMA.
It has become the perfect storm, but are Russell and co-founder Daniel Attia really riding to the rescue of a beleaguered profession with a bold new vision for the future? Or will Creature Comforts be just another trendy urban practice group that will be expertly grown to scale before being sold on to a corporate group in a few years’ time?
According to Russell, that couldn’t be further from the truth. He said: “This is about doing something because we love the industry and we think we have a model here that works for everyone and lets us fix some of the stuff that we all know is broken.
“If you start with the clients – including a lot of new pet owners since COVID – we found that many of those trying to access veterinary care were having really bad experiences.
“That wasn’t due to the level of care they were getting from veterinary teams – it was everything else; booking appointments; getting the right information, accessibility and cost, and we think we have tackled all those things with our membership model and by being totally transparent with our pricing (all standard prices are on the Creature Comforts website).
“But it’s also not working for a lot of vets and nurses, and we knew we could improve that by leveraging technology to allow more flexibility in the workplace or by capping membership numbers so our vets and nurses have the time and space to do their jobs properly.
“We want to do well with this project, of course, but that means everyone doing well – our clients, their pets and our people.”
And it is obvious that the boat has been pushed out when it comes to the location of the first Creature Comforts practice, which sits in a part of town where property is notoriously expensive and always scarce. Russell was not prepared to disclose how much had been spent on the first practice, but it doesn’t take a real estate expert to figure out that a significant investment has been made in acquiring and refurbishing this imposing four-storey Georgian property in Notting Hill’s leafy Westbourne Grove.
A great deal of investment has also gone into branding and raising awareness among the local pet-owning public that Creature Comforts plans to do things a little differently.
For starters, as clients approach the building – formerly a private human health clinic – slogans on the windows promise “a better vet experience” and it is fair to say, when it comes to first impressions at least, this new practice delivers.
Entering the ground floor reception space, or “members’ area”, feels more like stepping into an exclusive spa than it does a first opinion veterinary practice.
Everything has an exclusive, high-end feel, with plenty of nice touches including exposed stone and wood finishes, porcelain floor tiles and a custom-built waiting area, which has books for clients to read and a treat station providing four-legged visitors with free access to vet-approved titbits and toys.
A small amount of the Creature Comforts range of in-house products is subtly placed – all of it bearing the same purple and lilac brand colours prominent throughout the customer-facing and clinical areas of the practice.
Elsewhere on the ground floor are three consult rooms, with the engine room of the clinical operation located in the basement of the building, which has a large prep area, operating theatre, digital x-ray suite and sizeable dog ward featuring walk-in Casco Pet kennelling.
A fourth consult room, primarily for cat patients, can be found on the first floor of the 3,000 sq ft building with the cat ward and a large dental suite and lab on the level above.
More office space is provided on the top floor, along with shower and toilet facilities, while “the best room in the house” has been transformed into a staff area where the team can kick back on breaks and enjoy excellent views across west London.
It all feels and looks extremely impressive, and it needs to as the practice building and the tech that supports it have been created at great expense to serve the needs of urban pet owners used to having quick and friction-free access to goods and services at their fingertips.
This can be a demanding demographic, but one of the central pillars of the Creature Comforts approach has been to invest heavily in building bespoke technology to help fix what Russell has described as “a broken system” for many pet owners in this segment.
This meant development of the app was a key early priority for the business and although initially launched as a minimum viable product, clients are already able to book appointments, pay for treatments, and access both the asynchronous chat function and the Creature Comforts’ tele-health platform.
According to Russell, the app is flexible enough to evolve with the needs of the practice and its clients, who pay £20 a month to access membership benefits that include unlimited consults, all routine vaccinations and 10% off preventive and routine procedures.
However, unlike some other practices that operate a subscription model, Creature Comforts also accepts “pay as you go” clients – something it could be argued has the potential to interrupt the “seamless access” Creature Comforts aspires to provide for its signed-up members.
But Russell has faith in his model and believes that for a practice with an ethos rooted in improving access for all pet owners, turning away one-off clients doesn’t make much sense.
He added: “The subscription model means we have removed one of the biggest barriers to access, which is cost. That small monthly fee allows them to engage with us more regularly about their pet’s health, rather than going outside the veterinary ecosystem by asking friends for advice or going online.
“But we don’t want to turn our back on pet owners who, for whatever reason, don’t want to become a member and we see all our clients are members of the practice, however they access care.
“Like a lot of things with our model, this is flexible and we are not sure if we will end up with a 100% membership model or whether it will be 50-50 or 75-25; we are still learning.
“The plan is to iterate the model as we develop and as new practices come online in the coming months and years.”
It is still early days, but Creature Comforts already seems to be going down well among metropetsuals in this affluent part of town, with the clinical team at Creature Comforts carrying out more than 260 consults in the first two weeks of opening.
While some of these have been ad-hoc appointments, more hundreds of people have already signed up for a subscription – further proof of the growing popularity of membership models.
Russell has planned for membership of the Notting Hill practice to top out at around 6,000 members, which would see the business generate a guaranteed annual income of almost £1.5 million from membership fees alone.
A long way is still to go before the practice reaches those kind of client levels, of course, but the plan has clearly been to start as you mean to go on – especially when it came to staff levels at opening.
Many practices – often through necessity – make the decision to start small and grow the team once revenues have increased sufficiently to support the extra numbers.
But that has not been the approach here, with the Notting Hill practice boasting a full compliment of 11 team members, including 3 vets and 3 VNs, from day one.
Russell added: “We want our staff to get the balance of work and life from day one, as well as ensuring we are able to see every client who needs our services.”
The man responsible for running the day-to-day clinical operation is former Village Vet clinical director Sam Joseph – a man who knows Russell well.
Sam said: “I worked with Russell during our time with Linnaeus, so I know what he is all about, and I was just really excited by the prospect of joining an independent practice that was genuinely trying to make things work better for everyone.
“For me it is really important to build the right culture and for that you need the right people. We know recruitment is a challenge for everyone, but we genuinely think vets and nurses want to buy into this model – who wouldn’t?
“We can offer a clinical environment where our teams are given the time and space to manage their caseload, and we are removing a lot of those awkward conversations around cost through the membership model.
“It is so much more rewarding to work somewhere like this where so much thought has been put into putting the love back into being a vet or being a vet nurse, and our clients see that and respond to that positively as well.
“Of course it is challenging and there will be a few ups and downs, and we need people who want to change and develop with the practice, but who wouldn’t want to be part of something that is going to help transform the way veterinary practice works for everyone?”
As well as paying “highly competitive” salaries, Creature Comforts also offers a profit share scheme to all of its employees so that everyone can receive the financial benefits that come with success.
And while the first practice has only just opened, a further site in St John’s Wood is due to come online in a few weeks’ time – with another London opening planned later this year.
But Russell does not just have his sights set on London. With another funding round in the offing, the ownership team at Creature Comforts is not putting any limits on its ambitions at this stage.
He added: “We only started the business last year, but we’ve opened our first 3,000 sq ft site, with two more coming, and we’ve got our app and everything is working great so far.
“As I said earlier, we don’t have all the answers yet and we are learning as we go, but that is really exciting and who knows? If we get these first three, we’ll go for funding to open the next tranche.
“And if we get those right and prove the model then I really believe there could be a Creature Comforts in every town, as there is no reason this couldn’t be nationwide – and potentially even something bigger.”
