Fresh Dog Food Company, Ollie, Announces Acquisition of AI-Powered Diagnostic Company, DIG Labs, and Rollout of New Foodback Loop™ to Continue Elevating Health Services

News provided by

Oct 03, 2024, 11:05 ET

Ollie Will Harness New Data for Various Industry Enhancements – Defined As The Foodback Loop™ – Including Recipe Refinement and Development, Advanced Health Screenings, Weight Management, and More

NEW YORK, Oct. 3, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Ollie, an industry-leading subscription fresh dog food company dedicated to helping dogs thrive, announces the acquisition of DIG Labs, an AI-powered diagnostic company providing real-time image-based pet health screenings across stool, weight management, skin and coat, dental care, and more. In tandem, Ollie introduces the rollout of its new Foodback Loop™, a revolutionary, closed-loop, and proprietary process that leverages over 20 million first-party data points–and counting–to improve product development, recipe formulation, and feeding algorithms, ultimately leading to healthier dogs. As part of the acquisition, DIG Labs co-founder Tara Zedayko joins the Ollie team serving as Chief Scientific Officer where she will lead the Foodback Loop initiative, specifically science, research, product development, and Ollie's proprietary portioning and recommendation algorithms.

Ollie, an industry-leading subscription fresh dog food company dedicated to helping dogs thrive, announces the acquisition of DIG Labs, an AI-powered diagnostic company providing real-time image-based pet health screenings across stool, weight management, skin and coat, dental care, and more.

Last fall, Ollie partnered with DIG Labs to launch free app-enabled Health Screenings, which prompted members to submit photos to receive expert analysis and guidance within 24 hours about their dog's digestion, weight, skin and coat, and oral health. These screenings, having been enormously well-received by the Ollie community, prompted interest in the acquisition of DIG Labs and have become an integral part of the Ollie member experience. Since introducing additional Health Screening benefits over the last year, 89% of members strongly agree that screenings are valuable features in their Ollie membership, while 86% of members strongly agree that Ollie health screenings give them more confidence in their decision to feed Ollie.^¹ With this core technology in-house, Ollie is building world-class machine learning models and AI applications to deliver a lasting impact for dogs across health screenings, food R&D, recipe improvements, and evolutions to Ollie's portion-feeding algorithms.

Leveraging millions of data points, Ollie is capturing the most real-time pet-level data and using it to design and improve its recipes for maximum effectiveness, turning unique learnings into personalized experiences that recommend the right food and portions for each dog, better serving Ollie members individually and collectively. Through direct relationships with Ollie members, their pet-level data, and Ollie's proprietary Foodback Loop research and development process, Ollie empowers parents to confidently feed their dogs the right food and exact portions, giving dogs a much-needed voice in their healthcare. The Ollie consumer will see improvements to their membership experience like portion control, diet transition screenings, and recipe development and refinement, and will be introduced to new initiatives including weight programs, customized experiences for puppies, recipe optimization for ideal stool health, and more.

Initial learnings from Ollie's Foodback Loop have yielded significant findings. Of note, only 58% of dogs have healthy stool before joining Ollie, however, according to Ollie Digestion Screening results, 75% of dogs attain healthy stool just 1-2 weeks after feeding Ollie. In regards to weight, Ollie has determined that dog parents tend to underestimate their dog's need for weight management support. Ollie Weight Screening results have shown that dogs are 18% more likely to be overweight than dog parents think and 28% less likely to be underweight than dog parents think. Overall results from the program show that all five of Ollie's Fresh Plans increase healthy weight scores for dogs by 10-12% within the first few weeks of feeding Ollie. Insights like these have already helped Ollie prioritize its product roadmap, including digitizing healthy weight programs to help dogs achieve and maintain ideal weight and identifying the biggest opportunities to iterate upon its food recipes to create the optimal experience for dogs.

"Pet parent demographics are shifting to younger generations, and with the acquisition of DIG Labs, we are meeting their demand for tech-enabled and personalized products to improve the quality of life for their pets and themselves," explains Nick Stafford, Ollie CEO. We are the only pet food company creating a direct data-led link between what we are feeding our dogs and their health outcomes through individual pet data on stool, weight, skin and coat, and teeth and gums".

Since Ollie's pioneering start in 2016, the business has been determined to help pet parents see the benefits of healthy, human-grade fresh pet food so that every dog can receive the nutrition and care they deserve. Ollie's vet professionals have helped more than 25,000 dogs with health screenings while utilizing AI classification models trained with over 100,000 images to quickly evaluate a dog's health based on its skin, coat, stool, dental, and weight. The global pet industry is poised to grow at a healthy rate, and Ollie is growing at a rate 10x the industry average.^² Following the acquisition of DIG Labs and its new data-driven capabilities, Ollie will continue expanding upon its brand mission by helping members provide the individualized love and care each dog deserves.

"We are thrilled to join Ollie to help carry our shared vision forward, stewarding new applications of our technology to empower people with greater insights about their pets' health," said DIG Labs co-founder and Ollie Chief Scientific Officer, Tara Zedayko. "We look forward to applying these technologies to improve pet health and improve their quality of life, which is so significantly impacted by their diet."

About Ollie
Ollie believes our pups deserve better than the poor quality, one-size-fits-all pet food pet parents have been unknowingly feeding their pups for years. That's why we made it our mission to provide the highest quality, human-grade food in personalized portions that lead to lean, healthy, happy pups and longer, more active lives. Our recipes are developed by experts in pets, food science, and vet nutritionists - and Ollie uses pet parent feedback and diagnostic data from hundreds of thousands of their dogs to continuously improve our formulations and deliver the healthiest outcomes.
Follow Ollie on Instagram @ollie or visit www.myollie.com.

About Ollie Health Screenings

About DIG Labs
DIG Labs is an AI-enabled technology startup co-founded by Tara Zedayko and Jessica Chu to bring world-class image-based machine learning models and AI applications to caregivers in pet care and human health. DIG Labs enables real-time insights across research, clinical, operational, and consumer use cases. Most recently, DIG Labs partnered with some of the world's leading pet care and baby care brands to provide its patented real-time image analysis tools for real-time health insights and action plans.

Media Contact: [email protected]

^¹ Survey statistics are from April 2024. Ollie distributes membership satisfaction surveys on an ongoing basis every three months.

^² https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/pet-care-market-104749

SOURCE Ollie