From birthdays to funerals, there's business potential when it comes to man's best friend, writes Steven Lee It's birthday party time for Bell and two of her "friends." As they whirl excitedly around the room, other guests arrive one by one.
But Bell isn't receiving the gifts. Instead, that honor is reserved for her owner, and tonight's party host, Yan Ng. With a personal menagerie of 12 dogs and two cats, it's a miracle that Yan can remember all their birthdays.
"Tonight, it's my dog Bell's second birthday, and two of my other dogs have birthdays coming up soon. So, I've invited 20 other pet owners and their pets to join the party.
"We've spent HK$2,000 or HK$3,000 on cakes and dishes for both the pets and the owners," Yan says.
From birthdays to funerals, when people like Yan want to celebrate their dogs' rites of passage they turn to Dog One Life.
Opened in 2004, it's a six-story pet- pampering palace in Causeway Bay.
When the pets finish eating at the dog cafe, their owners can shop at the products and accessories store, and bring their pets to the grooming section, photo studio, obedience center, and top it off with a stop at the rooftop open- air playground and swimming pool.
"This kind of one-stop service has become quite popular in Japan, so when I found this place with ample space and relatively cheap rent, I decided to give it a try," says Howard Cheung, director of Dog One Life.
The cafe on the second floor of the building serves dishes for dog
s with a decidedly human spin - pasta, burgers and energy drinks. Party service and buffet service are also available."Of course, if the pet owners want to dine as well, we can help them order takeaway or they can bring in any kind of food they want," Cheung says.
Of course, the operator of a dog cafe has to think about things that would never occur to conventional restaurateurs - like the diapers used to prevent the guests from soiling the premises.
Cheung says his business can generate more than HK$1 million in revenues per month.
Cross-selling is his key to success.
"On our grooming floor, we give out coupons so that our customers can have a free drink at our cafe. We don't want our customers to come just once. We want them to drop by often."
Insurance companies have also cottoned on to the business potential of pet ownership.
Apex Insurance Brokers launched "Pet Care Insurance" last year.
"We found that some owners would simply abandon their pets when they were seriously injured because they couldn't afford the surgery fees," says Andrew Chow, director of Apex.
"Pet insurance has been quite popular overseas for almost 10 years, so we decided to have a try in the Hong Kong market."
The company's cats-and-dogs coverage runs the gamut from medical expenses and third-party liability to funeral services.
And if your pet is stolen or lost, don't worry. You can get 100 percent compensation for the advertising expenses.
Premiums vary, depending on the age of the animal.
The only coverage exclusions are a few dangerous breeds of dog.
It's impossible to know how many cats and dogs there are in Hong Kong, but Chow reckons the number is at least in the hundreds of thousands.
Though he has issued only about 100 policies to date, he's satisfied with his progress.
"If we can insure 3 to 5 percent of the pets, that will be enough. I believe it will take us a few years to build up our credibility among pet owners," he says.
If your dog passes away in the Year of the Dog - well, there's a specialist for that, too.
"We will collect your pet's corpse, put it in our freezer and then arrange for cremation. We put the ashes in a cremation urn that the owner can keep," says Jacky Shum, marketing officer of Professional Pets Funeral Service.
Before such services became available in Hong Kong, many owners simply disposed of their pets' remains illegally.
"They would throw the corpse onto the refuse heap or bury it somewhere. They didn't know that it was illegal."
Pet memorials can be rented, too, for five years. Shum says the owners often go on a pilgrimage to the site, bearing their pet's favorite food or toys.
Professional Pets Funeral Service started four years ago, and business was slow until he managed to build up a network of contacts in veterinary clinics and pet shops and advertised in pet- related magazines and Web sites.
Shum says the company offers a round-the-clock standby service and handles two or three pet funerals a day.
Service charges range from HK$1,000 to HK$3,000, depending on the size of the corpse.
"We don't only collect dogs and cats," Shum says.
"We've collected pigs, arowana [a feng shui fish], parrots, almost everything you can think of. I think the market in Hong Kong is maturing.
"Some owners really can't bear to lose their pets. Very often, we have to listen to them and comfort them.
"This business is about more than just cremation urns. What we do is more like healing the pet owners' souls."
