I'm Michael Seitz, CEO and Chairman of EarthWise Pet. My job, simply, is to turn independent operators into franchisors of repeatable, defensible, mission-aligned systems — and to acquire the brands that complement them.
EarthWise Pet won Pet Business' Retailer of the Year in 2021. We didn't get there by being the biggest. We got there by treating every store as a craft business and every system as a product. That's the philosophy I bring to every franchise engagement: operator-first, systems-second, capital-last.
The story
I came up through independent retail at a time when the big-box chains were supposed to crush every neighborhood store in the country. They didn't — because customers wanted something the chains couldn't ship: a person who knew their name. My early years were spent learning that lesson the hard way, then turning it into a model others could run.
In 2011, I made a deliberate shift from retail expertise toservice expertise — expanding into professional grooming and other high-touch, recurring-revenue service concepts that build deeper customer relationships and stronger unit economics. That pivot became the foundation of a multi-brand franchise platform. Today, EarthWise Pet operates as the parent of a family of portfolio brands across the United States — combining full-service neighborhood retail with the GROOMBAR grooming franchise concept (salon and mobile), along with Nature's Pet, Dee-O-Gee, Bentley's Pet Stuff, and Loyal Biscuit.
What I work on now
Three things, in roughly this order: operating the EarthWise Pet platform; advising founders on franchise scaling and M&A across industries; and serving on the board of the Pet Sustainability Coalition, where I was appointed to the board of directors in 2026.
How I think about leadership
The independents who win the next decade are the ones who stop running stores and start building systems. The franchisors who win are the ones who stop selling territories and start delivering operating leverage. The investors who win are the ones who stop chasing trends and start backing operators with the business in their bones.
That's the work. If any of it sounds like something you want help with, come find me.
