Make Black Friday Dog Friendly
Dogs love shopping too!
The Thanksgiving holiday is just a few procrastination filled work days away, time to start dreaming of yummy Turkey, buttery stuffing, and if you’re like 63% of Americans, candied yams. Oh the dinner, the family drama, and the dog begging for table scraps… precious holiday memories. Not to worry though, soon your mind will turn from second helping remorse to savings, savings, savings! That's right, Black Friday is back. The day we excuse ourselves from civility in pursuit of the bargain.
But what about the dog? Consumer Reports says the average consumer will spend 13 hours holiday shopping this year. Long hours perusing the best deals means time away from the home and time away from the dog. Sad. What if there was a way to spend as much time as you wanted shopping, without having to worry about your dog being home alone, tied up outside the store, or racking up an expensive doggie daycare tab??? 1,000 points if you guessed the solution was Fido Factor. That's right, Fido Factor has made dog friendly shopping easy. Browse our 330 dog friendly retailers on our website or on the go with our free iPhone app and shop the day away with your best friend. Fido Factor details each stores' leash policy, permitted dog sizes, breakables, if other dogs will be there, treats, water bowls, and more. You will also want to be sure your dog is comfortable around large crowds. If Fido is skittish in groups, this Friday might not be the best day for a first jaunt around the city. Even if your dog is a crowd veteran we encourage all owners to review the following safety tips before venturing out with the dog - City Dog Basics
If all this info wasn't enough, take a look below at some of our favorite dog friendly stores offering special bargains this Friday. We've highlighted the dog policies for each and the Black Friday hours and sales, the only thing you need to worry about it is shaking off the Thanksgiving food comma. So grab the dog and spend some money, apparently we're in some sort of recession.
Best Buy Dog Policy: http://www.fidofactor.com/location/14843/best-buy
Special Hours: Doors open at 5am, tickets handed out as early at 3am – WOW.
Sales: Too many to list, check the link http://www.bestbuy.com/doorbusters2009
Nordstrom Dog Policy: http://www.fidofactor.com/location/2883/nordstrom
Special Hours: Doors open from 8am-9pm.
Sales: All clothing 33% off, Ladies shoes and boots 33% off
Pottery Barn Dog Policy: http://www.fidofactor.com/location/224/pottery-barn
Special Hours: 10am-9pm
Sales: Pottery Barn is keeping quiet about particulars, all sales announced Friday morning.
DSW Shoes Warehouse Dog Policy: http://www.fidofactor.com/location/562/dsw-shoe-warehouse
Special Hours: 8:30am-9pm
Sales: All Gucci products on sale
*All dog related information based on locations listed and subject to change. Please verify individual property policies before visiting.
Dog Friendly Tech News
And the winner is… Fido Factor. We are very happy to report that Fido Factor recently walked away with two big technology wins. In late October we demoed the website and free iPhone application at the technology summit FailCon and were awarded with the audience choice selection for best overall company. Then, this past week Fido Factor was chosen from 60 competing submissions to demo the iPhone application at the Under the Radar conference on Microsoft's Silicon Valley Campus. Recognition from the technology community is critical to the success of Fido Factor and winning awards like these assures we are able to continue offering this great service for free to the dog community. We couldn't have achieved this without you, thank you!
Now that we've buttered you up we want to share how you can personally keep the momentum going by helping us to a third win. To participate all you need to do is follow this link to submit Fido Factor as the best "bootstrapped" or privately financed Startup Company for the TechCrunch awards - "The Crunchies". No need to download, research, or write anything, just click "nominate" and you're done. Entries can be cast daily through 12/6/09 so vote early and vote often.
And lastly because we never get tired of talking about ourselves, we'll leave you with a brief update of some recent and upcoming Fido Factor media coverage. Due in a large part to your early adoption and interaction with the site, Fido Factor was recently covered in social media outlet Mashable and Fido Factor CEO Justin O'Neill was featured in two video interviews, one on bnetTV.com and one on Nerdstalker.com. Additional upcoming coverage includes a feature story on ABC Bay Area at 6 PM PT the day after Thanksgiving on Friday, November 27, and a San Francisco Chronicle Article scheduled to run during the first week of December. Keep an eye out and give yourself a pat on the back helping us achieve this success.
Dog Friendly iPhone App
At Fido Factor we believe that life with your dog is all about getting out and exploring. Before we started Fido Factor we purchased a number of great dog friendly guide books. Those books were full of useful information but also weighed about as much as a college textbook. We decided to build a dog friendly iPhone app and mobile site that would replace all those heavy guide books once and for all.
We recently launched the second version of our dog friendly iPhone app and thought it was about time to go over all the reasons you should download it. The first version of our app focused on a few key categories in San Francisco. With version two of our app we are officially supporting national coverage. Our plan is to focus on providing great coverage one city at a time while supporting any place we have passionate users. So if you're not in one of our current cities just add a few locations and we'll jump in to help you out.
This new version also makes it easier to add information. In addition to being able to add reviews from the phone you can also add photos and new locations. So if you're out and about and you find a new dog friendly place please take a minute to add it or update the listing with a photo. Our goal is to have photos of all the key dog friendly attributes like outside tables, dog park features, or hotel amenities.
Version two of the application also includes a number of other improvements such as Facebook Connect integration, improvements to the Pooch Pics, and all of our new categories (dog friendly hotels, campgrounds, services, pet stores, vets, etc).
In addition to building out our geographic coverage, we're already planning v3 of the iPhone app. There a couple minor bugs that need fixing and while we're at it we might as well add some new features. Look out for the new version in a couple of months and in the meantime please keep adding all your dog friendly locations and reviews.
You can check out this YouTube video of the app, some screen shots, or just go right to iTunes to download it.