Why I Joined Zoom Room

Great training transforms lives. It enhances individuals and families and produces happier, more confident, more social dogs. And nobody does it better than the team at Zoom Room.

That is the simple version. But the fuller answer draws on everything I have learned across three decades of building consumer brands — at PepsiCo, at HP, and at Petco — about what makes a business worth committing to.

What I Look For

I have spent my career inside large-scale consumer businesses. Thirteen years at PepsiCo, where I ran global marketing for brands like Pepsi, Gatorade, and Tropicana across every market outside the United States. More than a decade at HP, where I led the Personal Systems business to double-digit growth. And nearly six years as CEO and Chairman of Petco, where we transformed a traditional pet retailer into a pet health and wellness platform.

At Petco, the transformation was substantial. We grew the customer base by millions. We built the veterinary hospital network to over 270 locations, one of the fastest expansions in the industry's history. We removed all foods containing artificial ingredients and pulled shock collars from every store — because we believed positive reinforcement was the right approach to training, and we wanted the brand to reflect that conviction. The company went public successfully.

I share that background because it is the lens through which I evaluate every new opportunity. After running businesses at that scale, I look for a very specific combination: a brand with a clear, defensible position in a growing market; a model with structural unit economics that improve with scale; a team that is passionate and operationally capable; and a founder who understands both the product and the system.

Zoom Room has all of those. And it has something else I had not seen before.

The Insight

Dog training is one of the largest segments of the pet services industry, and it is the only one without a dominant national brand. Daycare, grooming, veterinary, retail — every other segment has scaled players. Training is still fragmented across thousands of independent operators and big-box retailers who treat it as an afterthought.

That is not because the demand is missing. The demand is enormous. The majority of American households now have dogs. Millennials and Gen Z treat their dogs as family members and invest in their wellbeing the way previous generations invested in their children's extracurriculars. The market is large, growing, and resilient even through economic downturns.

The reason no one has scaled dog training nationally is that the traditional model — one-on-one sessions with a skilled trainer — does not scale. It is labor-dependent, episodic, and inconsistent. You cannot build a franchise system around individual expertise.

Zoom Room solved that problem. The group class format, the standardized curriculum, the owner-in-the-room methodology, the positive reinforcement approach — together, these produce a consistent, high-quality experience that does not depend on finding expert trainers. New staff are classroom-ready in weeks. The curriculum does the heavy lifting. The owner does the learning. And the dog gets socialized in a community setting that no other format can replicate.

That is the clarity of the model: recurring visits, community-based socialization, and a training methodology that actually works. It is the only company I have seen that figured out how to make dog training both profitable and scalable.

The Economics

The unit economics confirmed what the model suggested. Customer acquisition is efficient, and the revenue generated in the early weeks of a new customer relationship more than recovers the cost to acquire them. Customer retention and willingness-to-recommend scores are at a level comparable to Apple and Amazon.

The top-performing stores deliver strong revenue with healthy margins. Same-store sales growth consistently outpaces the pet industry benchmark by a wide margin.

For a franchise concept at this stage, those metrics are mature. They reflect a model that has been refined over nearly two decades, not a concept still searching for product-market fit.

The Team

What makes this the right moment is the team. Mark Van Wye is a founder who has spent nearly two decades building and iterating on this model. He wrote the #1 bestselling dog training book in America. He understands the product at a granular level and the franchise architecture at a strategic level. That combination is rare.

Around him, the leadership bench has come together quickly and with unusual depth. Soumik Chatterjee, who I worked with closely at both HP and Petco, is the CFO — and his ability to bring financial rigor and strategic discipline to a scaling business is proven. Don Allen brings three decades of franchise operations from Orangetheory. Herb Heiserman designed experiential retail for Starbucks and Whole Foods at CBRE. Jackie Mendes has 25 years of franchise development across fitness and wellness. Anthony Polazzi, with over 50 acquisitions in private equity, is both a board member and a multi-unit franchisee. Alex Samios helped grow Dogtopia to nearly 300 locations and has been on the board since 2017.

That is an institutional-grade team assembled around a growing franchise system. It signals where this business is going.

The Mission

At Petco, we removed shock collars from every store because we believed in positive reinforcement training. That was not a small decision — it was a values statement that affected millions of customers. We did it because it was right.

Zoom Room was built on that same principle from day one. Every class uses positive reinforcement. Every owner is in the room, learning alongside their dog. The experience is designed to produce confidence — in the dog and in the owner — through practice, socialization, and repetition. Not through compliance. Not through punishment. Through a shared experience that strengthens the bond between a person and their dog.

The first-rate, passionate franchisees and the visionary management team wake up every day dedicated to improving the lives of pets and pet parents. That is something I could not resist being a part of.

Zoom Room is the clear leader in the dog training space, serving a rapidly growing and underserved market. I am here to support the team as they expand awareness, grow the franchise system, and continue building the standard for how dogs and people learn to live together.