For Cindy Socha, 20-something years in the corporate world was enough. “It wasn”™t fun anymore,” she said. At about the same time that Socha”™s enthusiasm waned, her friend Lisa Gay”™s career as a dog groomer abruptly ended after surgery. The two decided to strike off in a new direction and turned their mutual love of animals ”“ both were involved in animal rescue groups in Bridgeport and Trumbull ”“ into a business. This past January, the entrepreneurs opened a pet supply store in Shelton they call H3 Pet Supply, for happy, healthy and humane.
They chose Shelton because that”™s where they live and because the city has 15,000 homes and no pet stores, Socha said. “If the national average of 60 percent of homes owns a pet, there”™s nobody serving that market here in Shelton,” she said. Until now, that is. The 1,700-square-foot store specializes in medium- to high-end products for dogs and cats. “We carry only natural and organic food, the type of stuff you can”™t find in the discount or food stores,” she said.
The pair has sunk more than $22,000 into the store”™s inventory, Gay said, and the inventory “is expanding as people come in and request something.” As they were developing their business plan, they became involved in the Greater Valley Chamber of Commerce in Shelton and attended a Women in Networking group wine tasting. They learned that the group offers a small grant each year to entrepreneurs, applied for one and were awarded a $500 grant they”™ll use for advertising.
“It”™s one thing to have a dream and want to do it all on your own,” Gay said. “But to have others that believe in you makes you more confident that you”™ll achieve your goal. Women in Networking gave us that boost.”
Two-month wait
Gay was born in New Jersey where she graduated from high school in 1982, then tried college. “I did one semester, but college wasn”™t for me,” she said. “I didn”™t like anything that went along with it, either.”
She moved to Connecticut and took a job in customer sales and service with Executone Information Systems in Darien “around 1991 or so,” then began attending the New York School of Dog Grooming in Manhattan, taking a 300-hour course on Saturdays for a year. “It was something I wanted to do, to see if it was a career thing,” she said. It turned out dog grooming was a career path.
“It was something that came very naturally to me.”
She worked at a dog grooming shop in Stamford for about a month, then joined the Oronoque Kennel in Derby, where she worked for 11 years, building a reputation that resulted in a two-month wait for a grooming appointment. All that ended when she developed severe shoulder pain that resulted in surgery last August. “Once I had the surgery, I knew I couldn”™t go back to grooming,” she said.
“Cindy and I had been discussing for a while the idea of opening a pet store, so we just got the ball rolling for the store.”
Finding homes
Socha was born and raised in Trumbull, graduating from Trumbull High School in 1983 and Central Connecticut State University in 1987 with a bachelor”™s degree in accounting. She attended UConn at night after work, receiving a master”™s degree in finance in 1998.
She began her corporate career with U.S. Surgical in Norwalk doing “accounting type work for about six years, then went to work for Brink”™s Armored Car for about five years,” she said. When it looked like Brink”™s would moved out of the state, she left the company, worked for a year with another, then joined Kodak-Polychrome Graphics in Norwalk in 1990.
“At this point, I had switched gears and went into finance,” she said. “Accounting is more keeping the books, finance is more about working with products, pricing the products and doing a lot of investment analysis.” When she left in 2006, she was director of corporate finance. She joined ATMI in Danbury as “manager of corporate finance, something like that,” but by then the luster had worn off her career “and I decided to leave the corporate world.”
For some time Socha”™s growing passion for rescuing animals was taking more and more of her attention and time. She had helped found the Trumbull Animal Group with Gay and a half dozen other animal lovers. “We”™d go to the Trumbull animal shelter, play with the dogs and take them for walks, and provide medical care for the animals,” she said. The group would work with the animal control staff to help find homes for the dogs, which were primarily strays off the street, placing about 50 dogs a year in homes, she said.
The Trumbull animal shelter only took in dogs, so Socha and some of her friends turned their attention to Bridgeport, starting a cat rescue volunteer group at that city”™s animal shelter. “We organized a network of foster homes for cats,” Socha said. “I managed the foster homes. If somebody has to give up a cat, they”™ll call us and I”™ll call the foster homes until we can find a permanent home.”
Last year, she said, 225 cats were place into permanent homes.
From the heart
“Cindy and I have both been involved in rescuing cats and kittens for the last six years,” Gay said. The housemates currently own four cats and are fostering another half dozen. And a few of those rescued animals make their daytime home at H3 Pet Supply. Bailey, a 14-year-old mixed breed dog that”™s deaf and blind sleeps behind the store”™s cash register, befriended by a 14-year-old cat rescued as a kitten off the streets of Bridgeport.
Gay uses her expertise in customer service and animal care developed while a dog groomer to deal with H3 customers, while Socha concentrates on the books.
The two used some of that $500 grant, by the way, to put a grand opening advertisement in The Shelton Weekly the last Friday in February, and “considering that our sales tripled the next day, I would say it was successful,” Socha said. “The only way I can describe it is that it was hectic. I was surprised by the number of people who already feed the high quality food. I thought it would be a harder sell, that we”™d spend more time convincing people of the benefits of high-end food.”
To build business, Socha and Gay have been counting on word of mouth and fliers handed out to friends in the corporate world, an offer to deliver orders within a 10-mile radius of the store for a modest charge, their experience and ability to match up homeless animals with customers, and a Web site (www.h3petsupply.com) with content that was developed by Socha”™s “playing around on the Internet looking for links,” she said. Socha wrote the content for the site. “When it comes from the heart, it”™s easier to write,” she said.
