April 19-21, 2012

Details heading to your email boxes.

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Pricing Structures and Special Fees Join us for a Webinar on January 16 Space is limited. Reserve your Webinar seat now at: https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/457804590 Danelle German will discuss pricing structures and special fees applicable to a cat grooming business. Topics include: setting up a pricing structure, base prices, add-ons, special fees, surcharges, averages, and how to grow your bottom line. Many of the principals used also apply to a dog grooming business. Title: Pricing Structures and Special Fees Date: Monday, January 16, 2012 Time: 8:00 PM – 9:00 PM EST After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar. System Requirements PC-based attendees Required: Windows® 7, Vista, XP or 2003 Server Macintosh®-based attendees Required: Mac OS® X 10.5 or newer

With a new year comes a fresh start. A chance to do things differently, make things better. I am excited about this new year because it gives us at the NCGIA an opportunity to do things bigger and better than ever before.

We are here for you!

What can we do to make you the best you can be and increase your profitability?

In essence, that is our mission.  It is why I started the NCGIA in the first place.

In the spring of 2006, I retired from a successful show career to focus on my “accidental” feline-grooming business that was built on a tremendous demand for my skills.  I had no idea such a need existed, and was later surprised to discover that the void was industry-wide. Someone had to change that!

In April of 2007, in the midst of a grooming forum discussion on the topic of certification, I decided that an association built specifically for the purposes of improving cat grooming was in order. And thus, the NCGIA was born. We have always been and will continue to be the first association for feline groomers and the author of the first set of cat grooming standards and accompanying certification program to ever exist within the industry.

I put a lot of money, time and planning into those first months of getting the association up and running. And I didn’t do it for fun or because I had nothing better to do. I did it to improve the industry that I was a vested partner in. The same industry that those of you reading this are vested partners in.

The mission statement, as written that spring of 2007 reads:

When I originally started this association, the main purpose was to make feline groomers the very best they could be and thus improve the grooming industry as a whole. That purpose has never changed. And it never will change.  We may change how we accomplish that mission and reach specific goals, but ultimately the mission of the National Cat Groomers Institute will remain what it was intended to be – a tool used for the betterment of the grooming industry and for YOU, an individual groomer that makes the industry exist in the first place.

So how do we help you be the best you can be?  Well, I’m asking you.  Let us know.  We want to hear from you – all of you.  Tell us what you need most of all.  We are listening.  How can we help you work smarter and become more successful?

I invite you to share with us your needs so we can better structure our programs and products to meet the needs that can and should be met.

At the NCGIA we are serious about quality and excellence. We will not willingly or intentionally compromise it.  Quality and excellence always require some degree of effort to achieve. So as we seek to meet your needs and help you be the best you can be as a feline groomer, we must always maintain the standards that have already been set.  To do anything less would be a disservice to you and to the pet grooming industry.

So with that at the forefront of our minds, let’s kick off a brand-new year with aspirations of being bigger and better than ever before. Let’s turn those aspirations into a profitable reality.