Spending his afternoons as a young boy at his local aquarium shop in Artarmon ignited a love and passion for aquarium fish that Frank Williams has managed to turn into his career.
As Managing Director of Pet Pacific, Williams has established the company as a pioneer in searching out the best products around the world and distributing to retailers across Australia for more than 40 years. Pet Pacific carries and distributes more than 8,000 lines of product and has been appointed the exclusive agent for Australia for many of the world’s leading manufacturers.
It was more than 50 years ago that Williams began importing pet products into Australia, while operating an aquarium shop, Reef Aquariums, in Hornsby NSW.
It was very early days, and the only real wholesalers at that time were Toy Fisheries (later Masterpet) and Kra-Mar Pet Supplies.
In that first decade, what was then known as Aquarium Products (now Pet Pacific), was a wholesaler in aquarium products as its main selling lines. But rapid growth that exhausted all that was aquarium, saw the business expand into cat, dog, small animal, bird, and reptile products.
Today, Pet Pacific represents many of the world’s most popular and well known pet brands, being Australian agent for the Hagen Corporation as well as Ferplast of Italy – the world’s two largest makers of pet products for the independent trade.
Then there is the worldwide winner of the ‘Brand of the Century’ in aquariums – Juwel of Germany, the world’s two leading reptile brands Exo Terra and Zoomed, among dozens of other import international brands.
Pet Pacific was the first to introduce the bow fronted glass aquarium under the Jebo brand in 1980, and in the past decade has created its own branding in quality pet products at the economy end of market – Furkidz (dog/cat), Veggie Patch (small animal), Eco Tech (reptile), Bioscape (aquarium).
Williams is still the boss and looking forward to the next decade of growth for Pet Pacific, as Australia’s number one supplier to the independent trade.
“My goal is to continue to offer the best products the world has to offer to our Australian customers,” he says.
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