Hello everyone! My name is Ting, founder of Pawsome Groomers. I am from Taiwan. I came to Australia for a working holiday in 2012, starting my journey in Perth. At the time, I had 2.5 years of professional dog grooming experience. Before coming to Australia I had no idea what the industry is like, but luckily the demand for groomers was very high due to a lack of practical professional dog grooming training. This made my life quite easy as everywhere I settled, I was able to start working in a salon straight away. I first worked in a very busy salon in Perth for 8 months, then a salon in Sydney for 6 months. I then moved to Melbourne after Sydney, and worked in another busy salon for 1.5 years. 

During this time, I have noticed that it is not easy for shop owners to find qualified groomers, and there is a gap in grooming skills between local and overseas groomers. I’ve also noticed that many shop owners tend to hire more overseas groomers than local groomers. The shop owner from my last job asked me if I can try to find experienced groomers in Taiwan as the shop urgently needed a groomer to work over the busy summer period. So I created a fan page on Facebook, advertising in a dog groomers Facebook group in Taiwan, and was surprised to receive quite a lot of applications. I interviewed them online and assisted them with their visa application, as well as providing other information about living in Australia. 

This experience turned out really well both for my shop owner and the groomer, and so I started to think that maybe I could turn this into a business that can help local salon owners to find staff as well as encourage groomers in Taiwan to have life changing experiences by working overseas.