Dean Richmond bought the business from his parents for £600,000.
It’s a weekday afternoon in March and there are several customers in Pets Corner’s Crowborough store in East Sussex, one of over 160 outlets across England. Yet a busy, but smiling shop floor employee still finds time to offer a cup of tea as I wait for Dean Richmond, owner of the family-run, £90m business he took over as a 25-year-old in 1998.
Richmond spends no more than £100,000 on advertising but £1.5m annually on staff training in what he calls “our secret sauce”. I may not be here with a pet enquiry but it’s obvious where customer service and staff knowledge rank in the business.
“This is our advertising,” says Richmond. “If a customer comes in and speaks to someone who knows what they are doing, people would rather speak to a human over ChatGPT. I have been very protective over staff training and our eight academies.”
Sussex-born Richmond is also adamant that Pets Corner remains a family business. His parents, Mark and Sandra, opened the first pet shop in 1968, not far away in Haywards Heath, with £2,000.
“I think family-run businesses make more long-term decisions and are prepared to invest,” he says. “Accountants have asked me over the years, ‘Why have you spent this much on this?’ and it’s because I’ve wanted to do it properly, do it with care and build to last.”
There have been several business near-misses in Pets Corner’s rise to become the second-biggest pet retailer in the UK, behind Pets at Home (PETS.L), but Richmond has eyed detail and growth ever since his first job as a sales advisor earning £200 per week.
Having started to make quality bird feeders and rabbit runs, which he sold to shops and local garden centres, he had every intention of forging a business with his teenage craftsmanship, before studying business at Crawley College and dropping out after six months.
He describes his dad “as a bit Basil Fawlty” – with a no-smoking sign in the shop window, he would be lighting up inside – and Richmond moved to its Hove store under manager Sue Sayers, who still works for the firm today in the buying team.
Dean Richmond is CEO and owner of the second-biggest pet retailer in the UK.
The pair focused on customers, refused to close for lunch and sales rose 25% before Richmond’s father asked him to boost revenue at the original Haywards Heath store. Its then-assistant manager, Steve Holland, has just retired from Pets Corner as retail director.
A third store, run by a 19-year-old Richmond, was opened in Brighton at a time when nutritional, better-quality brands were entering the market. He was promoted to regional manager and wrote company training manuals at night.
By 1998, father and son were far from aligned and “fought every day in business”. Richmond subsequently purchased the business for £600,000, which by then had four stores in garden centres and three on the high street.
Building their biggest flagship store in Croydon in 1999, it opened to minimal fanfare and Richmond soon realised that the area didn’t have enough dog owners from its initial research. Pets Corner faced bankruptcy but the facility was set up in a separate company, and they freed themselves after six months.
The site was later taken over by Maplin and, when the electronics retailer went bust, the image used by the Financial Times was the Croydon store originally built by Pets Corner. “Talk about a curse,” smiles Richmond.
Since then, Richmond, who took business inspiration from the late Anita Roddick’s Body Shop success, has never set out with a five-year strategy, given the Croydon mishap.
In 2000, a meeting with garden centre entrepreneur Nicholas Marshall, who built up Country Gardens until it was bought by Wyevale in a hostile takeover, initially helped to grow its garden centre concessions. The first classroom training for staff began the following year.
Pets Corner’s products include its own brand McAdams, the only dry pet food sourced from RSPCA Assured Farms.
Pets Corner, which has outlets from Poole to Ripon, opened its first standalone store in West Hove in 2007, with parking and road frontage signifying a turning point for the business.
Facilities had become hard to acquire before the 2008 banking crisis saw more two-storey sites become available. Richmond learned to quell landlords who thought there would just be “smelly pet shops”.
The business has also been astute in acquiring vets practices and retail rivals such as PamPurredPets, for £6m in 2015. It also added dog grooming services to its standalone sites such as Crowborough.
“We’ve turned this site from a mess [reputedly a crack den] to contributing to the local economy and community,” he says on the landing of the store’s first floor. “We’ve turned a knackered building into something that functions, employs lots of people and is selling food that will make pets healthier. That excites me the most.”
When COVID hit, Richmond says the business would have hit hurdles without its distribution set up, having opened a £7m centre near its Crawley headquarters shortly before the pandemic.
The firm, which also sells toys and beds and designs over 2,500 products, was allowed to trade as an essential retailer and later propelled into double digit growth.
Richmond has also dealt with hurdles such as energy bills rising from £700,000 to £2.7m in 2023. Since October 2025, the firm has grown 3%, while latest revenues recorded £92.7m.
“It has been an adventure with the amount of times it’s nearly gone to the wall,” says Richmond.
“We are now trying to make the digital piece work, but we are back in growth in stores and there is still life in the old retail dog yet.”
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