Female Founders
Today there are 180 Camp Bow Wow
locations, 6 of them company-operated. In
2014, Camp Bow Wow was acquired by
VCA Inc., an animal healthcare company
with more than 600 animal hospitals in the
U.S. and Canada, which strengthened the
brand’s position and Ganahl’s resolve to
see it grow. “We have plans to open Camp
Bow Wow locations in some of these VCA
facilities,” she says.
Ganahl, who sees herself as a visionary
and strategist who loves constantly working on the brand and with franchisees to
make things even better for customers,
says one dominant thought has motivated
her business journey and success. “Find
something you are passionate about to
start a business around, create a great
plan, and find the best people you can to
help launch it. Keep your focus on your
dream, dream big, and go after it!”
Her current dream? 1,000 locations.
GETTING STARTED
What inspired you to start your business? I always was an entrepreneur and
thinking up crazy ideas, and my first husband was like that as well. We had two
big mutts we adored, and we abused our
friends and family because we had to come
up with different options for taking care of
them. So we came up with this idea based
on a brand-new thing out there in the big
cities called “doggy daycare.” We created
Camp Bow Wow and used the camp theme
and made it fun and cool and upscale. We
wrote the business plan in 1994 when we
were in our mid-20s and didn’t have a lot
of money. Six months later, my husband
died in a plane crash and the business plan
got shelved.
What is your background, and how
did it prepare you for starting your
business? I was in pharmaceutical sales
out of college, and I was pretty bored. I
made a good living, though—we called it
“the golden handcuffs.” My pharmaceutical
sales experience taught me how to connect with clients and how to effectively
communicate our brand. My advertising
experience has helped tremendously in
building our brand!
What’s the best and worst advice
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“Find something
you are
passionate
about to start a
business around,
create a great
plan, and find
the best people
you can to help
launch it. Keep
your focus on
your dream,
dream big, and
go after it!”
you got when starting out? Best: To
start a business you’re passionate about.
I was always passionate about the Camp
Bow Wow idea, but tabled it in pursuit of
a couple other endeavors that were more
“practical.” Worst: To invest in things we
weren’t quite ready for, and hiring too
many people too quickly when we were
just getting started.
Why did you choose franchising?
I love the visionary part of growing the
business and building the brand, but I
needed great people to do the operations
side. Franchising was the perfect model.
How did you get started in franchising? We started Camp Bow Wow in December 2000, and it did really well. We
started a second location near Boulder,
and that one did really well, too. One of
my clients there was in franchising with
Mrs. Fields Cookies, asked if I had ever
thought of franchising, and introduced
me to some great people who ended up
mentoring me and got us off the ground.
Did you have a partner/co-founder
when you started? How important
was that in building your company?
My little brother, Patrick, was the one
who convinced me to dust off the Camp
Bow Wow business plan and invest the
last of my settlement into the first camp.
We made a great team: I was good at the
marketing and strate