Yes, this is a sad situation brought on by a small independent pet food company (Natura) selling out to Proctor and Gamble. This happened just before I opened my store, not quite 8 years ago. Lots of independent stores were dropping them because they felt it was the beginning of the end for the line. I decided that it was some of the best food around and I would give P&G the benefit of the doubt. I carried 3 of their 5 lines and it was my best selling food.
3 years later, they recalled a few skus and date codes for a bacteria problem (I think it was salmonella). A couple weeks later they recalled some more skus. A couple weeks after that they said send it all back. After about 4-6 weeks they said they had they problem fixed and started refilling shelves. No sooner than we had everything in stock....they recalled it all again. Every one of the recalls happened on a Friday around 5 pm....leaving us to have to get the food off the shelves on Sat. morning and, on the busiest day of the week, also have to help people find new foods. It was a nightmare. After the last recall I decided enough was enough and dropped them as did just about every other independent store. They also had a bunch of my money tied up for months because they sent auditors out to inventory the product which took weeks and then several more weeks to issue credits. In the meantime I had to increase inventory of the foods people were buying instead. So not only did they screw up the whole recall process, they also botched taking care of the retailers.
P&G then sold the lines to Mars, who immediately discontinued the entire Innova line and cut the California Natural and EVO lines in half. And change the formulas...negatively. That was probably 2 years ago. And now they've killed it all. This would make a really good case study for an MBA program on how to take a very successful product portfolio and kill it.
