Heavenly Pets Crematorium makes saying goodbye that little bit easier, giving clients’ pets the fond farewell they deserve. Based in Thornaby, the small, independent, family-run service makes it their mission to handle every single pet with affection, dignity and respect.
With a range of backgrounds – from military and homeless support to health & leisure and academia – personal tragedy convinced the Heavenly Pets team to take the headaches out of the heartache of laying a pet to rest.
TEDCO sat down for a chat with the team behind Heavenly Pets Crematorium – Peter, Vicki, Andrea and Morgan – to talk more about how the business is doing, how it started, and what the future looks like for this compassionate pet service.
Hi all. You’ve got a diverse range of career backgrounds. What made you all want to launch Heavenly Pets Crematorium?
It all started with our own pet, Merlin Bear, our Newfoundland. He was eleven and he was struggling with arthritis. We’d been back and forth with him to the vets, and we knew our time with him was limited.
Prior to that, we’d had a Great Dane, Willow, and a Boxer, Lennox. We always felt that we’d let them down in the way that we said goodbye to them. You spend all this time with something constant in your life, then suddenly they pass away and it doesn’t feel like a suitable send-off.
There isn’t a lot of advice or direction available when putting down a pet. With Lennox, we couldn’t even register what was happening, or what we were paying for, and we didn’t want it to be like that with Merlin. In a nutshell, we wanted to arrange his funeral.
When we knew it was coming, we started looking online to see if we could make the end more personal to him. We wanted something that would represent how much he meant to us. Vets work incredibly hard, but they aren’t a crematorium, and they don’t necessarily have the resources to provide a service that reflects how important that animal is to you.
We decided that what happened with Lennox and Willow wouldn’t happen with Merlin, and that’s where the idea came from to open our own crematorium. Our mission is to provide the service we wanted ourselves as pet owners – to keep them close from the beginning until the end.
How did you find the process of setting up the business?
The motivation has always been to make sure pets are being handled with love, affection and care – and to ensure that pet owners are provided with support and guidance throughout. We began the process of exploring business loans, creating business plans, and having serious conversations about it.
Merlin, unfortunately, passed away before we could open the business. Heavenly Pets is based on everything we would have liked to have done for our own pets. Our Farewell Room has been built to accommodate the largest breed of dog to the smallest, and other animals too.
Were there any challenges involved in opening the business?
We’ve set up the business in the midst of various crises – the energy crisis, the cost of living crisis and more. Reports say oil and gas prices have doubled, food prices have risen, interest rates are up. People are trying to cut back, and on top of that, most vets already have long-standing relationships and agreements in place with larger, corporate crematorium businesses.
Finding a premises was another challenge. We struggled with our gas supply and with the necessary planning permission.
But against all this, we know we’re creating a business that has an important role to play – and that there are people out there who will value our service. We know that there is a market for what we do, because people will always want to give their pets a dignified goodbye.
At the moment, we’re simply trying to become more established, and for that we need people to know about us, to recommend our services to friends and family that need them, to ask their vets about Heavenly Pets.
What services do you provide for people saying goodbye to a beloved pet?
We have a range of services and support available, because we know that every owner and pet is different. We have a Farewell Room, full services to say goodbye, and we also provide nose prints, paw prints and more. We create cremation packages for clients to take home – a way for them to remember their lost family member.
We speak to the animals and give owners all the time they need to properly say farewell. We’re all currently taking courses in pet bereavement so we can provide the very best service for people, and we also point people to further counselling where necessary, as some people understandably take it very hard.
How did you first come across TEDCO Business Support?
We first started speaking to TEDCO two years ago, when the Covid pandemic was still at its height. Despite this, Mark (Johnston pictured right with the team) was in contact every few weeks with continuous support. He was as enthusiastic as we were about getting the premises, the plans and everything else. If we had a problem, or something we couldn’t answer, we could speak to him anytime on the phone. He made sure we had the tools we needed.
And, of course, Mark was the one who helped us apply for the start-up loan we needed in order to properly set up the business.
What has the loan helped you do as a company?
The support from TEDCO and the Start-Up Loans Company has got us where we are today. With a business like ours, the machinery alone is hugely expensive. In fact, a loan was an absolute necessity! Having a loan in place allowed us to invest in the equipment we needed so that we could start offering our services to people in distress.
In short, it has made our business possible.
Do you have any plans for where you’d like your business to be in 3-5 years?
Obviously, we’d love the business to expand. We’d love to be better known locally, so we can reach more people. At the moment, we’re putting in 16-hour days, seven days a week to ensure the business keeps growing.
We’d love to be at a point where lots of people know we’re here, so that we’re a well-known option when local pet owners are deciding on a crematorium. We want people to know that they have another option rather than just the default vet’s service.
It’s less about finances, and more about helping people give their animals a proper goodbye. We want people to remember us, to keep us in mind, and return to us whenever they need our services.
It is our privilege to provide a service that is dedicated to animal lovers, their families and, of course, their pets.
And what an important service it is. Thank you.
Contact Heavenly Pets today by calling 07513 886 247 or emailing heavenlypetscrematorium@gmail.com.
And if you’re looking to start your own business, the team at TEDCO Business Support is here to help. Give us a call on 0191 516 61 02 or drop us an email at hello@tedco.org.