CSI: dog doo
Then one day Chesleigh Fields, the labs 35-year-old chief scientist with a masters degree in forensic DNA and serology, had an idea: Why not use DNA to figure out which dogs (and dog owners) left pet poop unscooped? She could use her background in forensics to bring awareness to a problem recognized globally as a health hazard. “You take an unknown, and you match it to a known,” she says. Dog feces attract rats. She could create the CSI of dog doo!
Boyd liked the idea and told his team to research the potential market. They discovered 40 percent of dog owners do not pick up after their pets. “For several years its been ranked as the number one problem the [property] manager has,” says Boyd. “If you live in a high rise in New York, youve got 200 dogs. Forty percent dont pick up,” says Boyd. “Thats 80 dogs. They go twice a day. Thats 160 [poops].”
He did the math in a country of 70 million dogs and decided, “We have a big, big market here, now lets go all out for it.” They would call their product PooPrints, a name Boyds friend came up with while drinking beers on his back porch.
Tom Boyd estimates he spent a couple of million dollars getting PooPrints up and running, and he started landing sales at apartment and condo complexes in 2011. First year revenues were only about $160,000. “I gave them a mandate in the early days that they had to get me one account in 30 states, and I was willing to lose $1 million to do that,” says Boyd. The company actually landed deals in 48 states the first year.
The PooPrints system is now in over 3,000 complexes.
This trend picked up about 20 years ago, Drew Hamrick, senior vice president of government affairs for the Apartment Association of Metro Denver, said.
Not picking up dog poop might seem innocuous, but when waste is left behind, it can harm the environment.
Many apartment complexes across the metro area require residents to submit DNA samples of their dogs before moving in. They then contract out collection and testing services that will show who the offending parties are if animal waste is found on the property.
Besides PooPrints, there are a handful of other companies doing the same kind of work — five or six by Retinger’s estimation.
The company came of age in the thick of the recession. The multi-family residential industry wasn’t hit as hard by the economic downturn and benefited from people having to rent versus owning homes, Retinger said. That, and an unaffected pet industry, created a favorable business environment for PooPrints.
Mr Dog Poop® offers the most comprehensive and affordable dog poop DNA program available in the United States. Working with communities to bring forensic science to their doorstep and catch those pesky poopetrators that are leaving dog poop everywhere. If the FBI can use DNA technology to enforce the law, why cant HOAs, COAs and Property managers? Well, up until now, it was just too expensive, but Mr Dog Poop has changed all that with $4.95 collection kits and an additional $30.00 for processing the DNA in our lab. A very small price to pay to end the dog poop problems.