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Pet supply company Drs. Foster & Smith cleaned up after its dot-com competitors went belly-up. And, in January, it will kick off an auto-replenishment program, a refocused e-mail newsletter program and Drs. Foster & Smith's own brand of dog and cat food.

This year, the Rhinelander, WI-based direct marketer expects to reach $156 million in sales. It had sales of $90 million in 2001, and has enjoyed double-digit growth for the last 10 years.

A traditional catalog company for 16 years before constructing its first Web site (www.drsfostersmith.com) in 1997, the mass-media presence of dot-com domestic animal purveyors such as Petstore.com and Pets.com was daunting — and beneficial.

“It was a little nerve-racking when they were around,” says Internet marketing manager Joe Voellinger. “But with Petopia [and others] spending millions in advertising, it convinced a lot of conventional retail customers to become direct or Internet customers.”

All of a sudden, the dot-coms folded. “They left a lot of people turned on to the convenience of shopping direct who found drsfostersmith.com just a click away,” Voellinger recalls.

So this cataloger, with a little Web site on the side, found itself taking in about 35% of its sales online.

“We think the majority of those orders are coming from pet owners who have received our catalog and decided to place their orders online,” Voellinger indicates.

This fall, the doctors (as staffers refer to the two veterinarians who founded the company) consolidated the Internet and catalog divisions. In January, catalog and Web site marketing will be integrated; the same products featured in the book will be highlighted online. The database, with 4 million active customers, is already integrated. This move laid the groundwork for the other initiatives.

As the company's 20th anniversary dawns in 2003, customers can sign up for the auto-replenishment program. If customers know they go through a bottle of joint-care product every six weeks, for instance, they can order it to arrive automatically. A few days before the product is shipped, the customer will receive an e-mail reminder.

The service, which will be marketed with plugs in the catalog and on the Web site, will be available for all products, but should work especially well for food, treats, nutritional supplements and puppy trainer pads, Voellinger points out. Auto-replenishment will be offered to catalog customers who order only by phone or mail.

An e-mail newsletter program that was discontinued will restart as well. Because the doctors want to be considered the source of good pet-care education (the catalog typically features 25 to 30 pages of how-to articles) the old e-newsletter ran four or five articles along with numerous other fun facts and tidbits of information. “We decided to take a break and bring it back when we could move it in-house,” Voellinger says.

Now with self-service e-mail software in place, the revamped January newsletter will focus on one theme per issue, draw on the catalog article archives and promote two or three specials. The 1 million customers in the e-mail database will soon receive an invitation asking them to subscribe.

The doctors recently added dog and cat food to their offerings. In January, the doctors' own recipe will be sold. Because of its heavy shipping weight and the space it took up in warehouses, this product helped sink other pet-care dot-coms. The doctors will use just-in-time shipping, ordering only what customers are likely to buy. They've also expanded their warehouse by 55,000 square feet to accommodate the food.