Salty Dawg Pet Salon Co-founders John Kanski and Winn Claybaugh are no strangers to providing a client-first salon experience. Both have deep roots in Paul Mitchell School franchising and are veterans of the cosmetology industry. By Kelsi Trinidad
Salty Dawg Pet Salon Co-founders John Kanski and Winn Claybaugh are no strangers to providing a client-first salon experience. Both have deep roots in Paul Mitchell School franchising and are veterans of the cosmetology industry. They know good service when they see it. After Kanski had a stressful grooming experience with his dog, his wife, Jenni, a trained hairstylist, thought she’d give it a go. With thoughtful stress-management methods and salon-quality cutting techniques, Jenni was able to give their pup a stress-free and enjoyable groom. Kanski was in awe of his wife’s new take on grooming and knew it was an experience that all dog owners want their dog to have but rarely get.
Salty Dawg was founded in 2018 and opened its first location in Normal, Illinois. The co-founders built Salty Dawg as a franchise-first model. “We asked ourselves, ‘Alright, before we sell anything to anybody, what do we have to support them? How are we going to help them find employees? How are we going to teach managers to run the business?’ That’s where we put all our money and time while we were building up to, ‘Okay, let’s start selling stores.’ And that’s where we’re at now,” Kanski explained.
Kanski and Claybaugh used their first location as a testing ground, a kind of school to learn how to efficiently operate a client-first dog grooming business and build a curriculum for incoming groomers. While working out their business strategy, they found that many of the inefficiencies were due to a lack of uniform training among groomers. In a typical grooming setting, one groomer is assigned to one dog. At Salty Dawg, all groomers on staff are trained to provide the same salon experience to every dog, which allows groomers to take breaks with stressed dogs and move on to another client for a bit. At Salty Dawg, you don’t just get one groomer – you get an entire staff.
To ensure that the groomers have strong cutting techniques, Salty Dawg has fostered strong relationships with Paul Mitchell School and other cosmetology schools to create a funnel of trained graduates to employ at Salty Dawg’s national franchises. “You can go into any school and talk to the students about grooming because the skill sets that they’re learning in school can apply to it and get them a really well-paid job,” said Kanski. “This franchise has a solution for the labor market problem that a lot of businesses are having, and I think that gives us a pretty big competitive edge.”
Kanski identified another advantage of owning a Salty Dawg Pet Salon: The pet industry boom has made the grooming industry recession resistant. “During the pandemic, we saw people will give up their coffee and things that are extra but will indulge in their hair because it makes them feel good,” shared Kanski. “Because we humanize our pets, it’s safe to say that when people experience tough times, they’ll indulge in their pets because they’re really part of their family.”
Kelsi Trinidad