E-commerce pioneer Tanbir Grover unleashes new potential for Pet Valu’s digital operations
By Roma Ihnatowycz
When asked to outline his extensive experience in e-commerce, Tanbir Grover doesn’t mince words. “I’m really going to age myself,” he laughs, noting he was already doing e-commerce when “Amazon was just a bookstore.”
It’s hard to imagine a time when Amazon was simply an online bookseller, but this was the reality when Grover, now the chief marketing and digital officer at Pet Valu, started working in his field. It was in 2007 when he was hired by Sears to help build their catalogue business after having worked on special projects at Coca Cola and as a project manager at Bombardier Aerospace.
Sears marked Grover’s entry into the nascent world of e-commerce. “I was at Sears before the iPhone, before there was a big e-commerce push … so I really got to learn the online business at a very early stage and was able to leverage all the stuff I was learning about the catalogue business,” he says. “The online business was a modernization of the catalogue business.”
With his unique role at Sears, Grover had a front-row seat to the e-commerce explosion and was an active player in its development. After “learning his chops” there, he moved to yet another retail giant, the Hudson’s Bay Company. “I was able to parlay all I had learned [at Sears] to go to Hudson’s Bay to help them launch their e-commerce business in 2010,” says Grover.
Following that, Lowe’s came knocking on his door, asking Grover to take on the store’s entire portfolio of digital operations. He was responsible for all of Lowe’s Canada’s digital properties, including lowes.ca, rona.ca and renodepot.com. “I came in at the right time to build, scale, and really mature the business,” he shares. When Grover ended his stint at the big-box brand, he was vice president of e-commerce and omnichannel.
A purr-fect opportunity
In 2020 an entirely new retail opportunity presented itself: a chance to build up the e-commerce business and oversee marketing for Pet Valu. At the time, the brand’s e-commerce business was just a loose shopping concept possessing no inventory guarantee and requiring payments and pick-ups to be made in-store. Grover was brought onboard to ramp things up.
Building a proper e-commerce operation for Pet Valu wasn’t Grover’s first time working for a franchise brand, and he knew it would mean long hours crafting an operation essentially from scratch. After discussing it with his family, Grover was all in. Two years later, he got a dog—a big move for someone whose only previous foray into pet ownership had been fish, hamsters, and turtles. His kids were overjoyed, and Grover was well on his way to understanding the mindset of a pet-loving customer.
Grover’s biggest challenge in his new position was building a robust, centralized e-commerce operation for a large chain of individually-owned franchises. He needed to figure out how to get the franchisees on board. Unlike his prior work for big corporate brands, Grover had to think not only of the end-user—in this case the pet-owning customer—but also the franchisees, strategizing how to “take them along on the digital journey.”
Most importantly, it meant really working through the rationale of “why,” helping franchisees understand that online sales would drive their in-store traffic. “The digital component is a big part of the marketing component, which actually drives in-store traffic,” says Grover. “What we’ve proven and are able to share with our franchisees is that the best customer we have is a customer who shops both online and in-store versus somebody who just shops online or just shops in-store.”
The system as it’s set up today has a unique value proposition for the franchisee: stores get a cut of any online sale made by their loyalty members or customers living in their trade zone (determined by postal code). While Grover wouldn’t divulge the percentage from online sales directed to franchisees, he stressed it is a win-win arrangement that also drives more customers to the brick-and-mortar stores. Ultimately, stresses Grover, the move was about creating understanding for franchisees of how e-commerce benefits their individual business.
Fetching franchisee sales
Further steps the company has taken to drive customer traffic from their website to their stores include special promotions. In early May, for instance, Pet Valu held an auto-ship promotion where customers could get five per cent off of home deliveries but 10 per cent off of in-store pickups. “We incentivize people to do their first auto-ship pickup in-store,” says Grover. “We’re one of the few Canadian retailers that offer an in-store pickup on their auto-ship.”
Pet Valu has also expanded online sales to third party shopping platforms like Instacart, which it first tested last year in its British Columbia corporate stores before expanding the initiative to the Ottawa market and letting franchisees in the region opt in. Data showed it was an excellent way to appeal to new customers that Pet Valu was not reaching. “We want to grab that incrementality,” says Grover. “People understood the data to say, ‘Hey, I’m getting something that I wasn’t getting before.’”
The company is also keeping an eye on the broader trend of humanization and premiumization in all things pet related. Pet owners are becoming more invested in the wellbeing of their pets and consequently doing more research on the products they buy for them. This creates an opportunity for stronger connections between Pet Valu sales help and customers. The company is investing in educating their sales staff—who they call ‘animal care experts,’ or ACEs—and giving them more occasions to connect with their customers in a meaningful way. It’s not just about selling products, says Grover; it’s about helping customers make the right choices and find the right products.
These initiatives create a stronger sense of community in the stores, which is strengthened even further with the company’s many community-oriented promotions and campaigns. The brand’s Pet Appreciation Month in June raises money for over 500 animal shelters across the country, and the Pet Value Walk for Dog Guides is a national fundraising event that takes place each May.
Prospective franchisees, says Grover, need to be interested in building connections in their communities, passionate about the pet industry, and committed to offering an authentic service. “It’s about understanding how they will leverage the community they operate in and how they will act as an ambassador for the Pet Valu family of stores,” he explains.
For franchisees, the marketing power and digital savvy of the brand is an unbeatable benefit, with the sales opportunities presented by e-commerce well beyond what a new business owner starting from scratch would have access to.
For Grover, every day continues to present a new opportunity, and this is what he loves most about his work. He relishes the opportunity to develop a prosperous e-commerce business that supports the in-store business. “I truly enjoy working with all these cross-functional teams to make the online business and the in-store business really come to life as a true omnichannel business,” Grover says.
Finally, Grover loves the fact that when people shop for their pets, it’s usually a positive, pleasant task that spreads to everyone involved—the stores’ animal care experts, the franchisees, and the executive team at the head office. “We’re an emotional brand, we’re a fun brand, and we give [our staff and franchisees] the opportunity to lean into that,” says Grover. “Most people come to our store happy.”
Grover makes sure they leave the store happy as well. Happiness, after all, is contagious.
Learn more about franchising with Pet Valu
