HI all,
After sitting in on the meeting today with the pet store owners trying to determine if a compromise was possible versus a complete ban on the sale of animals, here's my impressions (for what they are worth):
> The owner of the Animal Company is essentially not really willing to compromise. He and his friend, Claudia from The Basic Bird in Berkeley, are both very antagonistic, looking for confrontation and eager to distort facts and statements to their favor. While they say they agree to "education' they are not really willing to do anything different, since they already feel like they know it all and don't want rescues "telling them what to do". They feel that putting up a flyer in their store about a rescue group is doing enough.
Recommendation: If possible isolate them. Position them as hardliners vs. other more workable stores. These two are the "leaders" and the people who are causing the majority of ill will and creating PR opportunities for themselves as the victims.
> Personally, I think it's a big mistake to focus so much time and energy on trying to placate the very few stores that DO sell animals. The majority of stores in SF do not sell animals. This very important point is being lost in the mind of the public and the media as it seems like a large number of small businesses are being penalized somehow and that's simply not true.
Kat, is it possible to get some statistics on the number of stores that do or do not sell animals?
While a workable compromise with education would be nice, I do not think that will happen without some sort of oversight---based on the lack of current educational info being given out by these stores. Just because someone has been in business for 30 years, it doesn't equate to knowing updated or proper care for the animals.
In summary, I think a strong strategy would be to approach the majority of stores that do NOT sell animals to get them to help back a ban. Being able to demonstrate that it's possible to be profitable as a pet store without selling animals is key and is an excellent discussion to use in PR. Nothing would be more powerful than having the backing of a significant number of pet store owners in SF.
Thanks again everyone for being such a great advocate for the animals,