text: WOW I get to be creative WOO HOO! I would have all the toys closer to the front for both cats and dogs and of course have the toys clearly marked and divided. THEN I would have an aisle with nothing but fish aquariums and fishy stuff like the tunnels and the rocks and the food. Then on the other side of the fishy shelves I would have the stuff for the reptiles the aquariums the toys and food that you would have for the reptiles. The next aisle I would have birdy cages and birdy toys and on the other side of the shelf stock the birdy food and birdy treats. OF course have your departments clearly marked with a brightly colored sign with the name of the animal that the department is for and have a nice picture of that kind of animal on the sign all different breeds. Okay now next to the birdy stuff, you have stuff for the rodents, the bunnies and the mice and gerbils and one side you have the cages and accessories and the next side you have their food. \n\nNow for the kittycats.  One side you have their pillows and beds and their accessories such as collars and the next side, you will have the food and their litterboxes and the same with the doggies and on each endcap, you should have magazines and books about each animal. NOW if you want to have stuff for barnyard animals that should be a whole separate department. You should have that in the back of the store, it should be designed like the gardening dept at places like walmart target and so on. The reason I say that is I automatically associate that with outdoors and barnyard animals as a rule are outdoor pets. There you would have the feeding tubs and so on and so forth, their food their hay. \n\nOh Yes and the inside of the store. Divide your store in two by putting a kitty and doggy treat thing in the middle where you can sell kitty and doggy cookies bulk. It looks just like our bulk food. \n\nMost pet stores consist of happy colors. Red and blue are good colors. THe blue will mellow out the red and yellow adds a happy tone to it, but you don't want to use too much red or too much yellow. You want to even everything out. \n\nThe name of your store should be: Paws and Claws Pet Supply.  IT should be called Happy Tails Pet Supply\n\nYou can advertise with those lil mail flyers to start with and offer various promos such as buy any bag of cat/dog food and get any size free or something like that. \nOffer free pet toys on the first visit\nOf course if it is not too expensive, get your own little newspaper going and put it in the Sunday papers you know liek petsmart has their own. \n\nOh Yes and the thing that people eat up is when they are allowed to take their pets shopping with them and around Christmas time Santa gets to come into the store so the pets can visit him. \n\nGunther helped me out with this.