SitStay owner Darcie Krueger poses with her dog, Gibbs, in the company’s Lincoln headquarters. Photo by Kate Ellingson.
Editor’s Note: To learn more about the backstory of SitStay, see our post yesterday highlighting a 2001 feature of SitStay in Inc. magazine: “10 years ago in Inc. magazine, tomorrow on Silicon Prairie News.”
When I arrived at SitStay’s warehouse to interview owner Darcie Krueger, she was finishing up the hiring process with her new customer-service employee. She told me that while I waited for them to wrap up I could play catch with her dog Gibbs (pictured above). As I was throwing the ball down the office hallway, I could tell that SitStay’s culture was laid back, pet-friendly and really fun.
BECOME A SPONSOR
Join us in championing the narrative of success, resilience, and ingenuity that defines Nebraska’s startup community. Learn more »
During our interview, Krueger confirmed what I had guessed about SitStay.
“There’s ultimate respect for each other,” Krueger said. “It just has to be like that, and when it’s like that and it’s working well, it’s this dream that not everybody gets to live. I love it, people wake up in the morning to come to work here and they’re happy to go to work and they leave at the end of the day knowing they worked really hard and they did the best that they could and they can go home with an easy heart.”
SitStay basically started by accident. Darcie and Kent Krueger had a passion for dogs and wanted to help other people share that passion. In 1995, they started an online listserv for people around the world to share information and photos of their dogs. At the time, Kent was working in information technology for Lincoln Electric System and Darcie was working in the City of Lincoln’s finance department. By September of 1996, the website got so big that the local provider couldn’t handle the traffic – they would have to upgrade and pay for a dot-com website.
The Kruegers decided to sell T-shirts to help raise money, and the T-shirts were such a hit that they started introducing more products for sale. The Kruegers eventually quit their jobs to concentrate on SitStay.
“We bootstrapped and did all the work ourselves,” Darcie Krueger said. “In the beginning we were both working 24 hours. He would sleep, I would pack. He would pack, I would sleep. Our first Christmas was amazing. For years, we doubled size every year.”
The company was started on a shoestring budget, with less than $20,000 of the Kruegers’ own money. They still haven’t taken any outside capital funding.
“SitStay.com was just a hobby that went crazy,” Krueger said.
SitStay.com sells over 4,000 products, and all of them are tested by dogs. Darcie says she won’t carry anything that doesn’t have her personal stamp of approval on it. Screenshot of SitStay, taken March 9, 2011
The hobby is now a legitimate business and growing at a rapid pace, but I wanted to know how they survived the dot-com bubble. Krueger said that SitStay’s superb customer service is one of the reasons they survived.
“We have the most loyal customers in the world,” she said. “We still have our original customers from way back. The feeling that my customers have when they walk away from customer service or an order with my store is that this is their store. We’re here for them. This is what we do — we serve them, we serve our suppliers, we serve our customers, and we serve the dogs. We serve each other here at SitStay.com.”
Even though SitStay survived the dot-com bubble, it’s still had to overcome obstacles.
“There weren’t a lot of struggles in the beginning,” Krueger said. “The only struggle that we had for years was just being able to keep up — keeping the product in here and keep it going out and keeping enough people working. We’ve had upwards of 14 people working at times; the recession did touch us a little bit. We had to keep changing everything we were doing to just stay ahead of the game. And we did it, so here we’re going on 15 years and we’re still here.”
SitStay currently has 10 employees and was mildly affected by the recession.
“I’m running the company kind of slim right now,” Krueger said. “It’s turning around slowly. Things are looking good. The recession is not going to be here forever. Things come in cycles.”
The first SitStay retail location opened in October 2010 at 3100 Pine Lake Road in Lincoln to give customers another option for shopping. Krueger says customers have been really happy with the retail location. Photo courtesy of SitStay.com.
In late February of 2011, Darcie bought Kent out and now owns 100% of the company. In the future, she’d like to increase supplies in her service dog department. Darcie says her vision will remain the same, “to keep doing the good things.”
While Krueger’s company is forging ahead, she’ll be dealing with one setback this week. Gibbs will be leaving her for good to receive his advanced service dog training before he’s matched with his permanent owner. Krueger said she knew the time would come to let him go, but she’s happy he’ll be giving someone who needs his help, a better quality of life.
Check back in the coming week to hear Darcie’s advice for entrepreneurs and view a photo tour of SitStay’s Lincoln warehouse.
