Scales And Tails Utah is celebrating 20 years of educating the public, and they have quite the tale to tell.
“Scales and Tails started in about 2004 by my husband Shane Richins, " says Co-Owner Rindy Richins. "We met, we started dating and I said hey you’ve got a cool product here. We should get you, you know, get your name out there. Let’s do some advertising."
With her background is business management it might have been the perfect partnership.
"I convinced him to spend some money on some advertising and it didn’t work. And I was like, oh shoot. Sorry honey - I didn’t mean to spend all that money!"
But the next month it did work. And all of a sudden they were nearly inundated with business.
"We started doing probably double the shows he was doing. He was doing about 6 shows a month. Then it was 30! Then it doub led, and doubled again. Now 20 years alter, in the summertime, we’re doing over 100 shows a month.”
With Rindy taking care of business in the back, the party in the front could continue with Shane.
“He’s got a really good handle on the experience side of it, making sure people are understanding; they’re learning, they’re being educated. He just didn’t have the background on how do you market this, and how do you set up appointments. All the back-end stuff."
Now that they have Scales And Tails Utah up and running, they have multiple ways for you to spend some time with the birds, reptiles, and creepy crawlies that they feature both indoors and out.
“We have our zoological facility in Kearns, where you can come in, you can take guided tours, You’re going to be able to touch and hold some of these cool animals and get right close and personal with them. We can tell you all sorts of fun facts and stories."
“Maybe you can’t bring the whole crew here, but we can come out to you, and bring a little pop-up zoo, and do a little set up where you can walk through it, and you can see all the animals, and we’ll be interacting with you and answering your questions, and that’s kinda fun, too."
