Web Bonus: Interview with A.J. Khubani

Telebrands has had a string of best selling products. In this continuation of New York Enterprise Report’s editor-in-chief Robert Levin’s interview with A.J. Khubani, Khubani discusses the genesis and development of Doggie Steps, one of the company’s current hit products, how the Internet is changing the company’s business, how Chapter 11 strengthened his management team and more. 

AK: One of our best sellers right now is a product called the Doggie Steps. I have a 14 year old Bichon Frise. When I come home from work, I sit on the sofa and watch TV, and the dog likes to sit up and jump in my lap. The dog’s getting old now. I thought, “I should come up with something so the dog can get up on the sofa without me picking it up.”

I found an old set of encyclopedias at home no one was using and I built a little set of steps for the dog. I thought there must be something like this on the market. So I did a little research on the Internet. Sure enough, there are dog steps on the market, but they sell for $100, and they’re wooden, bulky and hard to ship. So I looked around at our customers, Wal-Mart, Target, Walgreens, CVS. I even went to Petco and to Pet Smart. There were no dog steps. They had ramps, which were $150 to $200, and are good for your car, but they’re really not good for the sofa. So I realized there was a void in the marketplace for this thing.

Then I did more research on trends in the pet market. It turns out the hot trend right now is that people are buying small dogs. Products to spoil your dogs have also increased dramatically, like premium dog foods, dog vitamins and clothing for dogs. People want to spend money on their dogs. The growth in the pet industry has been dramatic. Every major retailer has given pet items more and more space. With all that research, I said, OK, let’s see if there’s a market for pet steps.        

RL: What is that process of testing like?

AK: I had the idea, and then I did the research to validate the idea. If I had gone to a Wal-Mart and seen half a dozen sets of dog steps there that cost between $20 and $50, I would have walked away from the idea. I’m not going to jump into a crowded marketplace. We thought there was a void for a device like this at a reasonable price, and we figured something under $30 was a reasonable price.

The next step was to test the idea. We built a prototype, shot a TV commercial, and put it on the air to see how many people called in. The response was great.