After carefully analyzing increased costs, we are writing to inform you of a necessary forthcoming price increase.
Grooming Pit Stop will be increasing prices, effective 1 January 2024. Click on the links below for the updated price list.
Please be assured that Grooming Pit Stop has made every effort to keep this increase to a minimum and will continue to honor current price structures up to 31 December 2023.
It’s the time of the year again to book CNY 2024 grooming slots for your fur baby! So here’s what we’re going to do for the upcoming peak season for grooming.
The surcharge for CNY 2024 is as follows:
15 to 28 Jan – $10 surcharge per appointment
29 Jan to 8 Feb – $15 surcharge per appointment
Every Tues & Thurs, grooming will be done at our humble abode. Two-way transport available at an additional $25. Pickup will be around 11 am and drop off around 7 pm. Timing is based on estimation and subject to traffic conditions. For pickup before 11 am, depending on your location, ERP fees will be charged.
Our CNY Break will be from 9th to 18th Feb.
Services resume on 19th Feb.
Early this year, we adopted two kittens who needed a home. We’ve zero experienced in having cats and we needed to learn and get the necessities ready before their arrival. Everything happened fast and we welcomed them to our humble abode less than two weeks when we first met at the fosterer’s place.
We managed to get some temporary cat scratching pole as the ones we ordered online was still shipping over. Visited some pet stores to stock up on some kitten canned food as we were told getting wet food is better for cats. Choosing the right food can be challenging as we needed to be sure that they’re complete diet for them.
Let us introduce you to our new supawvisors in training! They’re domestic shorthair, we’re not very familiar with cat breeds, so let us know if we got it wrong. They’re both boys and we were told they’re siblings.
White Ginger is Coder.
Ginger is Chunker.
They’re around 7 months old as of this post.
Having them in our pawmily brings lots of chaos, mess, happiness, frustration, and sometimes panic. No, we’re not complaining but more happy that we could give them a home. They made the home livelier since we have two seniors at home who aren’t as active as before.
It’s a whole lot of learning as we embark on the journey as cat pawrents. We’ll update more if we ever remember to.
We’ve been busy trying to settle our new schedules, including daycare and pawcation. Yes, we’ve been busy being the Fun Nanny to the fur kids since early this year and we’re still trying to manage our appointments. It’s not easy to be honest as we’ve decided to slowly transition to being Fun Nanny. We’re still doing grooming till our body says no to physical work.
We’ve been doing grooming for the past 8 years. As most pawrents have noticed we’re slowing down recently as we’ve been listening to our body. Some days we needed a break as grooming sometimes takes a toll on our bodies. We needed the recharge to be physically ready for the next couple of days of grooming appointments. As our fellow groomers always remind one another, please take a break!
As we fall into our new routine, hopefully soon, we’ll update more on our adventures on our social media as well as our website. So stay tuned for more updates! *hopefully*
2022 flew past just like that and it’s the time of the year again to give thanks to our lovely GPS Pawmily. Thank you for being there for us and being understanding as we changed and transition our business direction.
It’s a roller coaster ride indefinitely. We know that we’re unable to do grooming as a long-term career as we get older, so we decided it’s about time to introduce our new service and transition into doggy daycare. It was a difficult decision considering grooming has always been our main service since we started Grooming Pit Stop. Fret not, we’ll still be taking in grooming appointments, but scaling down a little.
As we exit 2022 with a big bang, we’ll be looking forward to a awesome 2023 with GPS Pawmily.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
We haven’t been updating our adventures here on our website. We were swamped by both grooming and daycare, occasional pawcation, appointments. And we just had a short break in July going on a cruise. It was a nice break and we came back refreshed.
Now we’re back and yes, we had a little shuffle and we’re moving towards a new strategic direction. Everything is in a mess so bear with us as we transit towards the new direction.
We’ll be missing again for another long break. We’ve got our own place and we’re moving! So with all the moving and minor touch up at our new humble abode, we won’t be taking in much appointments. Hopefully we get everything done asap so we can get back to work as soon as we can.
Till then, do check on our website or social media for more updates.
We’ve stopped taking in appointments around late November for CNY 2022. Most of our regulars had booked an appointment by then and our schedules were quite packed.
Our busy period started in early January after our short break in welcoming the year 2022. As usual, it started off slow with a few appointments to start the busy peak period. We didn’t take in any new customers for the month of January, by then our February slots are almost taken up as well. It was scary to us on how fast our following month’s appointments are filling up. We didn’t expect the overwhelming support given to us by our awesome pawrents.
This year’s peak period was a little different as we did continue with our weekly daycare fur kids. And thankfully we did as we’re able to schedule them in for their CNY grooming. With the daycare, it allows us to have a little breather from the traveling in between appointments. So it’s more of a pros and cons of continuing daycare during this period.
Our main shaver, not the tiny one for paw pads, decided to retire amid our busy period. It started to not work when we were grooming our last fur kid on the 17th January. Thinking maybe it’s the wiring issue, we decided to check it out after we end our last grooming session.
Once home, we decided to test it out again. To our horror, it started to smoke, then it died on us completely. Feeling anxious, we didn’t know what to do and was feeling frustrated as it happened at the wrong timing!
After calming down, we texted our fellow groomers to see who have a spare shaver to lend us till we get our replacement. We had to thank 7 Paws for helping us during this busy and difficult time. (If you prefer grooming salon instead of house-call, you may check them out)
We had to admit that we didn’t plan well for this year’s CNY appointments. We ended up having to travel from east to west and west to east. Travelling like this was time consuming to be honest. With such poor planning, we had to minimise our appointments.
Though Singapore is relatively small compared to our neighbouring countries, but travelling does takes up most of our time. Not to mention the occasional bad traffic. And with the ongoing construction work at SLE towards BKE from our place, the traffic was slow as drivers had to slowly merge from a 3 Lane traffic into 2 Lane.
With this year’s bad planning, we’ve learnt our lesson. We will be making some changes and improvements for the following year. And hopefully, the operation will go on smoothly.
We managed to survive another peak period. And we’re thankful for everyone’s support and patience during CNY. Weirdly, this year’s peak period just went by without us knowing. It feels like time does pass fast.
Despite the hectic schedule, we’ve enjoyed every session with each fur kid that we groomed. Their warm happy welcome keeps us motivated to keep going. Despite the tiredness, seeing them gives us that burst of energy to get them groomed before the festive season.
Though we’re not looking forward to the annual peak period, but we’ll definitely see everyone again. Do book early when our CNY 2023 slots are open to avoid disappointment.
Happy Lunar New Year! We’ve come to an end to our peak month and we’re thankful for everyone’s support. For without you, we probably wouldn’t survive this period. The fur kids are always our motivation to push forward to strive for the better.
On this joyous occasion, we wished everybody good health to both the pawrents and fur kids. And may whatever we wish for do come true.
To be honest, this peak month is our annual dreaded month. It’s a stressful moment trying to fit everybody in to be on schedule to look awesome for the lunar new year. But there’s always a handful that we have to disappoint due to our packed schedule.
Every year, we would reflect on how we could do things better. Frankly speaking, there’s none. We’ve tried all sorts of methods and the results are the same. We just can’t fit everybody in our packed schedule and please everyone. This is where we seek everyone’s understanding during this busy period.
Despite everything, we will reflect and hope for the better in the following year. Till then, let us enjoy the year and worry about that later.
Last but not least, thank you everyone for sticking by us.
xoxo
Team Grooming Pit Stop
Happy New Year from team Grooming Pit Stop! May we accomplish what we would want to achieve this year. And of course, good health for all of us.
As we start the year with a busy schedule due to the annual Chinese New Year, we planned to slow down in our appointments starting from February. Our supawvisors are getting old with health conditions of their own, we wished to spend more time with them and care for them as best as we could.
Apart from taking care of our own fur kids, we would like to take the opportunity to take care of our own health too. With not being able to travel yet and not taking a break, we’re mentally and physically exhausted for the past two years. We experienced burnout and we think it’s time that we treat ourselves better too. Forgive us if our slots are limited from February onwards. We needed our break to keep ourselves charged up to serve the fur kids better.
We will still take in appointments for grooming and daycare while we schedule our off days (which have no fixed date/day) accordingly. Our Mini Pawmart will continue to function online and we’ll schedule the deliveries as best as we could.
2022 will be the year where we will slow down for some selfcare and to give our senior fur kids the care they really needed during their twilight years. We hope everyone will support us in this new arrangement and of course, book early to avoid disappointment.
Once again, Happy New Year! Stay safe during this trying time.
xoxo
Team Grooming Pit Stop
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
It’s the time of the year again! Thank you everyone for your continued support both in our grooming as well as retail. We’re grateful and appreciate every support and motivation you’ve given us to strive forward to serve you better.
On this joyous occasion, we wished everybody good health and be happy. Nothing beats staying positive during this trying time.
It’s the time of the year again where we would sit down and reminisce what we’ve been through for the year. The year 2021 is another year where we’re still stuck here due to the covid-19 pandemic, yet we’re embracing the new norm as we led our lives back to the usual as much as we could.
With the many changes to the rules and regulations from the government, we managed to make it through with everybody’s understanding and patience. It wasn’t a great year as we all hope, but we’re hoping that everybody is still as sane as ever. Covid-19 fatigue is real and that many are experiencing a mental breakdown. May you seek help if needed and stay strong! The world isn’t going to end just yet, so we got to encourage one another to move forward as we battle through and move towards the endemic.
To be honest, with two years of not taking a break, we do experience burnout from work. Though we did have a worrying break last year due to the circuit breaker, we weren’t well-rested. We tried our best to serve everybody as best as we could during the circuit breaker exit phase 1, but due to our groomer being the lone ranger, it’s difficult to schedule everybody while we’re on a tight schedule. The per-day restrictions set by the government weren’t helping either as we try to follow the rules as closely as we could.
But of course, we’re still figuring out how to keep ourselves sane during this trying time. Hope everyone will understand if we were to take a few days off to recharge for the sake of our mental health.
We do have a Carousell account since we started Grooming Pit Stop, however, we weren’t actively selling because our main priority in this small business is dog grooming. However, we had to start actively selling last year during the circuit breaker in the hope to bring us a little income to tide us over during the no grooming phase. Though there weren’t any orders coming in, and we were dejected, we decided to give retail another try.
In around September this year, we set up our Shopee page and started listing items that we have on hand to sell. We may have limited products available compared to those bigger players online, we’re contented to start things small and slow. We knew all along that retail isn’t as profitable and it’s difficult to get it all going, we decided to push forward. The first order that came in made us all thrilled and happy that the wait was worth it. And true enough, subsequent order came in. Although it was a small order, it did bring our morale up a little and have that tiny glimpse of hope for retail.
Then we decided to set up our own online store from scratch! To be honest, it wasn’t easy. Took us a while to understand how to use the interface and upload the products onto our online store. It was many trial and error as well as testing the page for transactions. We’ve decided on contactless payments, such as paynow, paylah and google pay instead of a credit card. Simply because most of our customers prefer that mode of payment online. And by paying us through google pay, you get to have rewards. Why not right?
Retail is our new venture which we hope it’ll grow and serve everybody’s needs other than just providing grooming services. We know it’s not easy, but we’ll hang in there. Do come and give us your support and grow with us!
Last but not least, thank you everyone for always being there for us.
xoxo
Team Grooming Pit Stop
