Falkirk shop named Pet Store of the Year
A Falkirk shop has been given the perfect excuse to go wild after being named Pet Store of the Year.
Racks 4 Reptiles came out on top at the Corporate Livewire Scotland Prestige Awards 2021 – just three years on from its inception.
Recognising small and medium-sized businesses that have proven to be the best in their market over the past 12 months, judges were impressed with the Cockburn Street business’ “personal touch, consistency of reviews and community feel”.
Owner and Falkirk man George Struthers, 31, said: “It’s quite exciting.
“It’s the first kind of award we’ve had. Someone had put the shop name forward and Corporate Livewire were in touch to say we’d been nominated and they were looking for more information so we gave them access to our reviews.
“We’ve had quite a lot of five-star reviews on Google. They looked into it and got back to us and said they were quite impressed with what we had.
“I’ve had the business for three years, but the shop has only been open for two years. It was online for a year beforehand as a specialist service.”
Having made a few tweaks and reverted to its original online-focused advice set-up at the onset of the pandemic, Racks 4 Reptiles is getting back to where it was.
The shop offers a range of animals, from snakes and lizards to turtles and scorpions, along with its sought-after information.
George, who has kept reptiles since he was 17, splits his time between running the business and working as a transport manager at Lightways Contractors.
He feels the scale of the support Racks 4 Reptiles offers is what separates it from other pet stores.
He explained: “It’s more specialist advice we give rather than a blanket, overall approach.
“We focus on the after sales service. Anybody who buys any pet from us, or even those who come in, they get advice all the way through for any animal they have.
“We focus on reptiles and amphibians – we don’t do mammals – and most were bred ourselves.
“Just pop in, have a look and see what we have available. Reptiles are a lot easier to look after and less scary than people think.”