From Pet Allergies to Amazon Growth: The Allerpet Story
- Harvest Growth
- Feb 10
- 11 min read
Updated: Feb 24
In this episode of the Harvest Growth Podcast, Jon LaClare sits down with John Fry, VP of Marketing and Sales at Allerpet, to unpack how a simple, problem-solving product built lasting success through trust, emotional connection, and smart channel strategy.
John explains how Allerpet helps reduce pet dander at the source—allowing people with pet allergies to stay close to the animals they love—by mechanically removing allergens rather than masking symptoms. The conversation dives into what pet dander really is, why traditional solutions like shampoos fall short, and how consistent, safe use of Allerpet can make a life-changing difference for allergy sufferers.
Beyond the product, John shares the story behind Allerpet’s growth since being acquired in 2014, including its major shift to Amazon as a primary sales channel. He breaks down the key inflection point that drove rapid Amazon growth: better merchandising, smarter bundling, and optimized product presentation—paired with the unexpected power of authentic influencer storytelling on platforms like TikTok.
This episode also explores why genuine customer stories outperform paid promotion, how emotional connection fuels word-of-mouth marketing, and why products that truly solve a painful problem naturally earn trust and advocacy.
In today’s episode of the Harvest Growth Podcast, we’ll cover:
What pet dander actually is and why it causes allergic reactions
How Allerpet works differently than shampoos or medications
How often allergy sufferers should use Allerpet safely
The emotional connection between pet owners and problem-solving products
Allerpet’s biggest Amazon growth inflection point
Why better merchandising drove rapid sales acceleration
How unpaid influencer content sparked massive awareness
You can listen to the full interview on your desktop or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
Or, click to watch the full video interview here!
If you’re building a product that solves a real problem—and want to understand how trust, emotion, and smart channel strategy drive long-term growth—this is an episode you won’t want to miss.
To learn more about Allerpet, visit Allerpet.com or search for Allerpet on Amazon.
To be a guest on our next podcast, contact us today!
Do you have a brand that you’d like to launch or grow? Do you want help from a partner that has successfully launched hundreds of brands that now total over $2 billion in revenue? Set up a free consultation with us today!
Transcript:
[Jon LaClare]
Welcome to the Harvest Growth Podcast. I'm Jon LaClare, founder of Harvest Growth and author of The Perfect Launch System. Over the past 20 years, our team has helped launch and grow hundreds of consumer products, generating more than $2 billion in revenue for our clients.
On this show, we break down what actually works in product marketing, real stories, real strategies, and lessons you can put to work in your business right away. Whether you're getting ready to launch or looking to scale what's already working, you're in the right place.
[Announcer]
Are you looking for new ways to make your sales grow? You've tried other podcasts, but they don't seem to know. Harvest the growth potential of your product or service as we share stories and strategies that'll make your competitors nervous.
Now, here's the host of the Harvest Growth Podcast, Jon LaClare.
[Jon LaClare]
John, I want to welcome you to the show. Thanks so much for taking the time today. I know you're extremely busy running this business.
We were chatting a little bit before we hit record on this about how a big portion of your business is international, which I know can be some late nights sometimes talking to distributors on their time zones versus yours. And of course, you're running a very successful business. So I really appreciate the time.
Thanks for joining today. Yes, my pleasure. Glad to be here with you.
And by way of introduction for our audience, so John Fry is the VP of Marketing and Sales for Allerpet. We're going to talk about what the product is. You'll get to know it a little bit better.
They've been really successful, especially on Amazon, and then also internationally as well. And we'll talk about what drove some of that. But first I want to dive in a little bit to the product for those in our audience that may not know what Allerpet is.
John, can you describe it? What do the Allerpet products do for people?
[John Fry]
And for most people who are very allergic to pet dander, there's really very little they can do. They can take long acting and non-stating antihistamines. They can get desensitized by allergy shots, which is not pleasant.
Or they can wipe their pet down with a damp microfiber cloth or a washcloth, wipe the pet down with Allerpet that removes the dander that's on the fur. And so there's less dander to get airborne for you to breathe. That's the premise behind Allerpet.
But that's not our only product. We also manufacture and sell a product called D-Mite laundry additive. That's for people with dust mite allergies, but both products are mechanical in nature.
They tend to eliminate the allergens, and you just don't breathe them in anymore. That's the premise.
[Jon LaClare]
And I've heard the word pet dander for many years. I actually don't know what it is. I've never looked it up.
What actually is pet dander?
[John Fry]
Yes, pet dander is a combination of a number of things. It's dried skin scales that are very small. It's dried saliva and sebaceous gland secretions all those things make up, for example, for cat dander, that makes up Fel-D-1.
If you go to an allergist, they'll be talking about Fel-D-1, that's cat dander. And it's not just one thing, it's a combination of things. Same for dogs, except that it's called Can-F-1.
But it's also dried skin scales, dried saliva and sebaceous gland secretions.
[Jon LaClare]
And I know there's a lot of people that are allergic to pet dander, which is why this product is so helpful.
[John Fry]
Do you have any idea?
[Jon LaClare]
I was gonna ask you, perfect. You saw my question coming. So about 20% of pet owners or people, rather, are allergic to pet dander.
And what are the typical symptoms?
[John Fry]
Oh, generally, if you walk into a home and you don't have a pet at home and you're allergic, and you walk into a home, it's gonna hit you in the eyes first. They'll irritate your eyes, probably make you sneeze, cause your nose to run. But that can be round the clock trouble for people who do have pets and are allergic.
And often what happens is you have a pet and then you have a child and then the child is allergic.
[Jon LaClare]
Right, right. Yeah, or visitors. We have a good friend that their parents, they had to get rid of their dog or give it away.
There's a better way to say that. Find a new home for their dog is what they did because one of their parents had an extreme allergy. So even though they only come and visit a couple of times a year, you couldn't move the dog out of the home because the leftover dander and other elements would be in the home and cause severe allergies.
So it was life-changing for them. And I know you mentioned how it's wiped on with a microfiber cloth. So how does AllerPet work differently than like a cleaner?
Like shampooing your dog doesn't take care of pet dander. Why is that? Why does AllerPet work better than other solutions?
[John Fry]
Well, actually shampoo can help temporarily. The problem with shampoos, they tend to dry the skin after the shampoo is removed and the pet is rinsed off. And so that's a cause for more dander to be created as the skin dries out.
Whereas AllerPet, when you wipe it on your dog, for example, and some people use it in between shampoos, but when you wipe it on your dog, you're moistening the skin because it has skin moisteners in it. And so you're moistening the skin so that it produces a little less dander each time you use it. But we sell a lot more cat dander because as you can imagine, unless you're wearing chain mail, you probably don't wanna try to bathe your cat.
[Jon LaClare]
Right, exactly. I know, yeah, it's definitely a process for sure. And do most people, when they have the product, if they've got allergies in their home, how often do you use AllerPet?
[John Fry]
Generally once a week, but for serious sufferers, the worst sufferers, the most sensitive people, you can use it twice a week or as often as you like. It doesn't, there's no harm to using AllerPet. You can't overuse it, in other words.
[Jon LaClare]
Got it. I imagine you've heard some great stories. I mean, I love, one of the things I love about your product is it solves a huge problem that really nothing else does in the same way, at least.
Have you heard stories over the years from customers on how your product has helped change their lives?
[John Fry]
Oddly enough, we've heard those stories in writing for many years, but more recently by TikTok influencers, people who we didn't approach, but who found our product and then just had to tell the world about it. One of them had 16 million views after she published her video about AllerPet.
[Jon LaClare]
And did you, have you made contact with that person after the post or made any sort of connection with her?
[John Fry]
Yes, her name is Alyssa, and we did contact her afterwards. And our primary Amazon sellers sent her a case of free product because she was so kind to do that. And she's someone who is a paid influencer, but she didn't charge us anything.
She just had to tell people how wonderful this was now that she could stick her face right down in her cat's face and not react.
[Jon LaClare]
You know, we talk a lot about working with influencers and getting the word out, and there's a positive side to paid influencers, but when you've got a real connection like this, a real problem that you're solving, you can't fake that, right? That's very powerful in marketing. I think back to my early days with OxiClean, you know, 20 plus years ago, before social media existed, there were no quote unquote influencers.
So we would hear people share stories on their elevator ride up, or talk to their neighbor in the grocery store, like, you know, kind of the old fashioned social media, you know, actual conversations. And they had such great experiences that they would share it with their friends and family because it solved the problem for them. And I think that's one of the great things about AllerPet is, you know, again, you're solving a problem for a lot of people that nothing else can.
So they want to share those stories. And when you can tap into real videos, real stories, real testimonials like that, that's extremely powerful.
[John Fry]
There's a real emotional connection. People, in the first place, people love their pets, and they love to be around their pets. But some of them are so sensitive, it's hard to do that.
And when they find a product that allows them to do that, there really is a heart connection there. And they want to share it with others.
[Jon LaClare]
And AllerPet is a business that's been around since 1988. Is that right? That's correct.
Good for you. A long time ago. And you guys, you and your team purchased the business several years ago.
What changed? I guess, talk about from the time maybe beforehand, and how is it an inflection point, or how have you guys grown the business since you purchased it? Well, let me give you a little background.
[John Fry]
I was the marketing director for a company called National Allergy Supply. And I started with them in 1991. That business started about the same time AllerPet did.
And I joined it a couple of years later, three years later. And I got to know all of our vendors. And AllerPet was one of our vendors.
They were around, and we were selling AllerPet when I arrived on the scene at National Allergy Supply. And it was just beyond a startup when I joined it. And we grew to where we were the largest retailer of hard to find allergy products in the world.
But during that time, Larry Calstone, who started AllerPet with his wife, Shirley, and they had been in the pet products business for many years, and had sold their primary pet products company to a company in New York. And they moved to New York, and he started AllerPet when he was in his mid 60s. And then added Demite in 1995.
And during the time that I was at National Allergy, Larry came to visit to do an in-service for our customer service reps. And he told me at the time that he wanted me to own AllerPet when he retired. The problem was he stayed in the business till he was 86 years old.
And so where I thought that this was an opportunity that was a few years off, turned into an opportunity that was 15 years off. And so I was ready to retire by the time he got ready to sell the business. But anyway, we did consummate the sale in 2014 on April 24th of that year.
And I took with me my partner at National Allergy Supply, who was the marketing manager at National Allergy, a gentleman by the name of Steve Hill. So Steve and I bought the company together in 2014. And then we've grown it since then mostly on Amazon because Amazon really cannibalized so many of the small businesses like National Allergy Supply that were selling on their own websites.
When it started selling every product under the sun, it was so much easier for most people to shop at one site than to go to multiple sites. And so instead of National Allergy Supply being our primary retailer, now Amazon is by far our primary retailer.
[Jon LaClare]
And what was the first inflection point that comes to mind when you take the business over, you're transitioning to really grow sales on Amazon, there's always a point when which the sales really start to take off or skyrocket. Can you think back to that? What do you think drove your first inflection point to really make Amazon into a successful channel?
[John Fry]
That's a great question because what happened in our situation was when we first started selling on Amazon they were selling our product in order to buy the market below what they paid us for, which is I found offensive. We had other Amazon retailers at the time and I didn't want them to cannibalize their sales. And so we took the product away from Amazon selling on Vendor Central and gave it to some people Steve met at a homeschool event who were professional Amazon sellers.
When they got hold of the product, they merchandised it better than anyone else had, not just with Amazon A plus pages, but in kidding it with other things, sprayers, microfiber mitt, application mitt. And they did such a wonderful job merchandising our product that sales soared. And that was our primary inflection point.
And then it's grown through TikTok influencers and both paid and unpaid since then.
[Jon LaClare]
Fantastic. And for our audience, if you've listened and this is a product you'd like to know more about the best place I think to go, you can certainly find it on Amazon, but John has a great website, Allerpet.com. As always, if you're driving, it's in the show notes, check it out.
You'll see it on any podcast platform you're on. Watch for it, but it's alarpet.com or search for it on Amazon. They do a great job of describing what the product is and what it does.
And you can certainly learn more about it. And if you wanna take the next step in growing your business, you can also visit harvestgrowth.com to connect with our team. There you can book a one-on-one conversation focused on your business.
Well, thanks for listening and we'll see you in the next episode.
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