State Line celebrates 30 years
Nov. 3—PLAISTOW — State Line Pet Supply is celebrating 30 years as a family-owned business.
It has survived big named stores moving down the road and discount internet services to continue to be one of the largest independent pet specialty stores in the area.
Owner Dana Post has seen his business grow since its days operating out of an old stone, sheep barn across town.
Back in 1989, the store was strictly mail orders from a catalog until opening its retail store front at the same location in 1992.
"When I started this, there were five pet supply stores in Plaistow," Post said. "In theory, there was a lot of competition. In time, that competition disappeared and I'm still here."
The store moved into its current 10,000 square-foot building at 137 Plaistow Road in 2006.
The building is outfitted floor to ceiling with over 10,000 products for domestic pet's need — and for wild birds.
The store's roots were grown from his father's successful State Line Tack business. He adapted that equine mail-order concept into a new one.
Post worked for the mail-order tack shop since high school. During a dinner meeting with distributors in 1989, which Post attended, it was suggested his father get into the domestic pet industry. Ready to retire, he wasn't interested — but Post was.
His father began the business because he couldn't find proper horse-riding equipment. Post decide to shift the business' focus and apply the same catalog-ordering technique, but to pet supplies.
"This was right at the cusp of big pet supply stores," Post said. "Locally, it was just small competitors."
The store has evolved since that dinner conversation and adapted over the last three decades to be able to stay competitive with name-brand retailers and offer the low prices possible to its loyal customers.
Competing with internet wholesalers has been one of the largest challenges he's encountered in 30 years.
Post has added services like same-day delivery to rival those companies and what they offer.
The store first planned out its competing delivery service in March 2020 — purely coincidental with the COVID-19 pandemic hitting.
The service has helped State Line Pet Supply answer competitors since home delivery is a viable business practice resulting from the pandemic.
Post said he's also had to adjust his discounts in recent years based on premium dog food companies' bottom-line pricing which has come with the evolution and expansion of products available.
Through it all, the store outlasted other locally-owned stores of the same nature while Petco and PetSmart opened stores a few miles away on Route 125.
Post said there's one thing that has never changed since first opening and believes it's the reason the store still thrives.
"I kept the same concepts as my father: discount pricing and customer service," Post said. "Keep the prices right for the customer and hope they come — and they did."
"You could buy dog food in the grocery store and you find it anywhere, but we had premium, quality products and offered a discounted price," Post said. "We found a niche and ran with it."
