Dr. Harvey’s Fine Health Foods for Companion Animals

Correct. We’ve been around for over 35 years and it’s still a family-run business, like Roastar. Our mission is to create the best pet products available for animals that have health conditions, all while using the best ingredients that will provide nutrition for those animals.

We’re always trying to offer solutions to a varied group of customers, depending on the issue they are facing. Sometimes in that process we’re making products that start off pretty small, they don’t have a huge audience size, and we’re ok with that. In traditional packaging -especially when it comes to bags- you could be looking at a minimum run of 10,000 bags. Sometimes it’s 20,000, depending on what kind of bag.

Exactly. This is where digital was the natural fit for us. We can come up with product formulas and ideas that we want to try in a market, see if it’s going to be a good fit, be able to make adjustments on the fly, and to just be able to bring products to market more quickly. With the short runs we don’t have the fear of things like investing in plates, because you realize that once you launch it you may want to make some changes to some ingredients, but you’ve bought these expensive plates with a packaging company and then you need to redo all of them, in addition to having tons of inventory to get through. So from our perspective this is a huge benefit to a small business, having that flexibility.

Definitely. Every product we come up with that has a new design or new packaging, we’re going to start small in terms of that initial opening order, and to have that flexibility is key. Once we’re comfortable, we just ramp up from there. Our initial runs may be in the hundreds before we eventually get to the thousands. The flexibility that Roastar offers matches our nimble production line.

Before we even went to digitally printed bags we were using digitally printed labels -

Haha, ok. We were loving digitally printing labels for the same reasons: plate charges, dye charges, all of those kinds of things. We loved being able to be flexible with our labels. So it was as simple as Googling and finding a flexible packaging partner. We had worked with some other digital printers but when we got our first initial print-offs from Roastar we were all sitting around saying, “Whoah! This quality and sharpness of the text, the graphics are registering perfectly,” and so on. We were just thrilled about those aspects and not having to worry about those things.

Well, in terms of Roastar’s website, it’s awesome. Everything is guided step-by-step, so you can’t really get lost. If you want to make any changes, it’s all there. In particular, Hali is awesome. She answers all of my printing questions, and very quickly. Overall it’s a great experience to go from a digital, flat image to a printed, final product is seamless and smooth. Roastar makes it easier for the designer because they do supply dielines, they tell you where to put certain layers, for example, a clear panel, and so on. Overall it’s a super smooth experience.

What’s really helpful is when Roastar gives us a timeframe when the bags are coming out, and we know they will stick to that date. This allows us to plan internally for when we are going to receive the product. With a lot of other companies you’re just hoping for the best, and waiting until the last minute to get a response. Not with Roastar. It makes our job a lot easier to have that information, and we appreciate the quick turnaround. It’s really nice for us to be able to put in orders on the website and do everything online, including seeing the prices.

We always get a huge number of compliments on our packaging. People are always commenting on the design and the quality, which is important to our business because it makes us stand out. We invest a lot of time, effort, and money into it, and we know it makes a difference in our sales.

Thanks to the guys for taking the time to talk Roastar and packaging. We look forward to seeing Dr. Harvey’s continue to grow and help our favorite companions!