“I and love and you,” a Boulder, Colo.-based premium brand of natural pet care for dogs and cats, has been named the New Vendor of the Year for 2013 by Sprouts Farmers Market.
The award was presented to the ILY executive team at the second annual Sprouts Farmers Market Grocery Summit in Irvine, Calif., on Sept. 12. At the summit, vendors helped Sprouts celebrate its business partnerships, learn about new and existing products and share best practices. Sprouts is a retailer of fresh, natural and organic foods with 167 stores in eight states. The summit was attended by more than 162 Sprouts brands.
“From our first meeting, ‘I and love and you’ understood what we at Sprouts wanted to do with the pet category,” said John Soukup, category manager for Sprouts. “They went out of their way to partner with both our grocery and marketing departments and are now reaping the reward of their hard work. They have quickly become our No. 2 pet food company, only five months after their introduction. We have high hopes for ‘I and love and you’ and the future of our partnership.”
Chris Bentley, co-founder and “top dog” of sales and sustainability for “I and love and you,” added, “As a young company, we are excited to receive this award so early into our partnership with Sprouts. We have worked hard to build a premium pet care brand that the natural consumer can identify with and that the Sprouts team is proud to have on their shelves.”
