by Francis Chan

IT LOOKED like a dog's life for Ng Whye Hoe and his older brother David: While their school pals were out enjoying themselves on weekends and during holidays, they had to help out at their dad's pet food store.

Zip forward 30 years and the brothers look like the cats which got the cream, having transformed what their dad called a 'hobby business' into a multimillion- dollar business employing more than 220 people.

There are now 24 Pet Lovers Centre outlets in Singapore, two branches in Kuala Lumpur and plans to expand to the Philippines, Indonesia and China once a franchise programme is completed.

Given the chain's success today, it is hard to believe that Pet Lovers Centre almost never made it beyond its first store.

The late Mr Robert Ng, father of the two brothers, was working for Wall's ice cream in the 1970s when he saw a potential market for pet food here.

Most dog owners at the time fed their pooches leftovers but Mr Ng, who had 10 mutts as pets then, reckoned he could change that.

In 1973, he set up the first Pet Lovers Centre at Shaw Centre on Scotts Road even though his idea was ridiculed at home.

'My father told us that when he broached his idea to our grandmother, she thought he was mad,' recounted Whye Hoe, 36, now the firm's managing director.

'She told him there were many people who could not even feed themselves, much less buy expensive pet food for their dogs.'

But trade was brisk from the start, yet the shop remained a 'hobby business' for his father, who would attend to the store only on weekends and holidays when he was not working at Wall's.

'Dad was happy running it the way it was, like a 'hobby business', and we joined him at the store whenever we didn't have school,' said Whye Hoe.

'But when he was unwell, the business of course suffered.'

His father's poor health sparked a chain of events that saw the younger brother getting involved in the business.

On a weekend in 1988, his dad suffered a stroke and collapsed while working at the store.

'My father was only 50 when he passed away,' said Whye Hoe. 'And because my brothers and I were still in school, one of our uncles had to help take over the shop.'

But seven years later, he received that one important call from his mother, who was a teacher then.

'It was 1995. My mum called and told me she was going to wind up the business,' said Whye Hoe, who was only 23 at the time. 'She said no one wanted to run the store and it was making a loss.'

It was at that point that he made an emotional decision to 'just take over the business'.

'I could not bear to let my father's business just close down; he loved the business,' said Whye Hoe, who was already running his own ginseng trading firm while pursing a marketing diploma.

Although he did not finish his diploma, Whye Hoe managed to grow Pet Lovers Centre's revenue at a rate of 20 per cent each year after he took over.

And David, his elder brother and the firm's executive director, said they are on target to hit revenue of $29 million this year.

That would be the firm's best performance ever and a far cry from the day when Whye Hoe took over the reins and found he was mired in $150,000 worth of red ink.

'When I took over, the business was quite a mess because it was, after all, a 'hobby business' which no one really took seriously,' he said.

'And on the very first day I formally took over, I actually reversed the company van into a wall. Imagine how I felt at that point in time.'

That was not the last of the bad omens.

Shortly after, a major retailer closed, effectively shutting down his only channel to the lucrative supermarket crowd.

'I had two consignment outlets in Yaohan then and after they shut down their stores in Thomson and Bukit Timah, my sales channels were cut,' he said.

His suppliers also started to cut his credit terms, badly affecting cash flow and leaving him with insufficient funds to employ staff.

But he soldiered on, influenced by his father's hands-on approach to the business and driven by his teenage dream of owning a major retail brand.

'I bought a book entitled How To Own A Franchise when I was just 13, and for as long as I can remember, I wanted to own a chain store,' said Whye Hoe.

'So when I took over my father's business, that was what I hoped Pet Lovers Centre to be, perhaps a Watsons or a Guardian pharmacy type of business.'

With that vision in mind, he opened the second Pet Lovers Centre, at Parkway Parade, in 1997.

'Although the rent was higher, Parkway Parade would give me a presence in the eastern part of Singapore, where I believed many pet owners lived,' he said.

The gamble paid off, with stocks 'flying off the shelves' at the branch and that got the ball rolling for the young entrepreneur.

By 2004, Whye Hoe had set up two more Pet Lovers Centre branches as well as a Pet Safari at Eastpoint mall in Simei.

'Pet Safari was conceived when I was at a kopi-tiam one day,' he recounted. 'I realised that typically, the guy who owns the drinks stall is usually the one with the most customers.

'It was because he would lease the entire coffeeshop and sub-let to everybody else to sell other different types of food to attract more customers to his coffee shop.

'So I decided to lease a large retail space and introduced new services like a grooming centre and a veterinarian, together with other staple pet products. And Pet Safari became Singapore's first one-stop shop for pet-owners.'

The success of the Pet Safari concept prompted the regional managing director of Swedish furniture giant Ikea to ask Whye Hoe to set up a branch in Ikea's new store in Kuala Lumpur.

It was an opportunity he could not refuse but he knew he needed more help.

'My big brother David had a great job as an engineer, so it was a big risk for him to leave a salaried job to join me in this venture,' he said.

But David, 40, said: 'This was a family business calling, so there was no doubt I had to come in to help.'

'And after spending eight years as an engineer and a senior manager in multinationals like Seagate, I knew I could help take the business to another level with my corporate experience,' added the father of a six-year-old girl.

Their teamwork has proved hugely successful, with the brothers taking the company from just four stores to 26 within five years.

The Pet Lovers Centre network now includes a second Pet Safari in Singapore - at Vivocity - while their 28,000 sq ft Pet Safari outlet in Kuala Lumpur is the biggest pet store in Malaysia.

'Our priority now is to use the franchise model to expand and make the brand a regional chain store, that is the vision,' said Whye Hoe, who is expecting his first child - a boy - with his wife Jessie in November.

'And we believe that as long as we have a vision that is big enough, smaller things like the lack of manpower or low sales volume will not trouble us.'

This article was first published in The Straits Times on September 3, 2008.