why i picked dog groomers (a niche i knew nothing about)

people keep asking why a web dev from manchester is building software for dog groomers. honest answer: my mum's dog. she was 20 minutes late picking him up and the groomer had already rung her four times, texted twice and was about to put him in the "naughty crate". the groomer showed me her booking system. it was a paper diary, a whatsapp group and alot of tippex.

that was the spark but a spark isnt a business, so before writing any code i did the boring bit. heres what i actually did, in order, because i wish someone had written this down for me 2 years ago when i built a "notion for bakers" that nobody bought.

1. talk to 15 of them before writing a line

i drove to groomers within 30 miles and asked if i could buy them a coffee for 15 minutes. 11 said yes, 4 told me to go away (fair). i didnt pitch anything. i asked three questions:

• walk me through yesterday, from first dog to last dog
• what went wrong last week
• what do you pay for right now, software or otherwise

the third question matters most. "would you pay for X" gets you polite lies. "what do you pay for now" gets you a number. most of them were paying £0 for software but losing way more than that on no shows. one groomer reckoned 3 no shows a week at £45 a dog, thats over £500 a month walking out the door.

2. look for the workaround, not the complaint

everyone complains. complaints are cheap. what i was looking for was people who had built their own janky fix, because that means the pain is real enough to spend time on. 7 of the 11 had some workaround: a phone alarm for every booking, a printed list they texted from manually every evening, and one had a teenage son who did the reminders for £20 a week. the son was the competition lol

3. sell it before it exists

i made a one page mock in figma showing a calendar and an automatic text reminder the day before. went back to the 7 with workarounds and asked for £29 for the first month, payable now, full refund if i didnt ship within 6 weeks. 3 paid. thats not a lot but it was 3 more than my bakery app ever got, and it told me the price wasnt crazy.

4. pick something you can reach

this is the bit people skip. a niche is only good if you can find the customers cheaply. groomers are on google maps, they have facebook groups, they go to the same trade shows and they all know each other. one groomer recommending you to another groomer is worth more than any ad i could afford.

what i got wrong

i assumed theyd want online booking first. they didnt, not really. most of their customers are regulars who book the next appointment while paying for this one. what they wanted was the reminders and a way to see the week on their phone with wet hands. so v1 is basically a calendar with very big buttons and an SMS reminder. its not impressive. it doesnt need to be.

if youre hunting for an idea, my unsolicited advice: go find people doing something tedious with paper and a phone and watch them for an hour. the boring niches are boring right up until you see a diary with 40 crossed out appointments in it.