69´«Ã½

JUNEAU, Wis. — It was 2008 when a new company here hired Dan Wegener to fix some lights in an old building that had been used to make wooden pallets.

At first, Wegener, an electrician who owns his own company, was skeptical about the new tenant and figured the venture in the city's industrial park on a hill overlooking Dodgeland High School would last only a few months.

After all, who would spend more than $500 on a globe-shaped, self-cleaning robotic litter box for a cat?

Wegener, now the city's mayor, has a clear answer. And it has meant huge investments and hundreds of jobs in his Dodge 69´«Ã½ community of 2,658 people.

"It just baffles my mind. I don't think the community ever anticipated this" said Wegener, a life-long resident. "It's been nothing but a positive for the city of Juneau. I see a lot of people retiring here. This will be the last place they ever work." 

Over the last 16 years, that company, Whisker, has spent more than $14 million in improvements, expansions and additions for what is now more than 200,000-square-feet of manufacturing, warehouse and office space with a workforce here of more than 430 people. The company recently purchased an adjacent five acres for future expansion and is trying to build more parking for its employees. Hiring is a constant and the company is now on the fourth version of its Litter-Robot while also offering its customers litter, automatic feeders and even toys as part of its growing product mix that is sold direct via its website but also at major retailers like Best Buy, Walmart, Costco, Amazon, Target and PetSmart. 

The timing and the products by Whisker came on the heels of the 2008 recession, the rise of internet retailing and at a time of pet owners ramping up their ways in which to spoil their animals and themselves on new gadgets and trends. According to Bloomberg, the pet supply industry is expected to balloon from $320 billion to more than $500 billion by 2030. The sector includes toys, beds, organic foods, pharmaceuticals, specialized litter, clothing, daycare facilities, spas, grooming and veterinarian services in which pet owners routinely shell out thousands of dollars for kidney and cancer treatments, the repair of damaged ligaments and dental work.

A robotic, self-cleaning litter box that can be managed from a smart phone fits right in to the impassioned, heart-felt spending habits of modern cat owners.

"This is just a really cool product in terms of getting rid of a job that nobody likes to do," said Mike Lodl, senior director of operations for Whisker, but who has worked for GE Health Care and Trek Bicycle. "It allows you to be with your pets, enjoy your time together and not begrudge the job of scooping poop, which is not a fun thing to do."

The Litter-Robot uses a rotating globe to separate clean litter from dirty clumps and then deposits them in a waste drawer. The unit senses when a cat enters the globe and then, after the cat exits waits a few minutes for the litter to clump. That's when globe rotates to separate the clumps from the clean litter with the clumps falling into the waste drawer, which is tightly sealed and concealed beneath the litter box. The Litter-Robot rotates in the opposite direction to put fresh litter back into place.

The idea comes from Brad Baxter, a graduate of Wisconsin's Lodi High School, who went on to pursue a degree in mechanical engineering at University of Wisconsin-Madison and spent 10 years in the automotive industry in Michigan where he was exposed beginning in the late 1980s to the intersection of plastic parts and electronics. He also was a budding entrepreneur who had had two cats, which meant keeping up with their litter boxes. That's when, in 1999, Baxter formed Automated Petcare Products, the precursor to Whisker, and began experimenting with self-cleaning litter boxes. 

"I knew I really wanted to build a business around a great product idea. So that's how Litter-Robot came about because it was sort of an accidental discovery that this was the thing I was going to go after," said Baxter, 58. "I had a couple of cats and I was struggling with a litter box problem and just started thinking about how I could automate it and make it better."

Baxter ultimately began looking at other automated litter boxes, none of which met his needs, before he found a patent that appeared to do the job and would be the basis for today's Litter-Robot. Baxter reached out to the inventor, they got along and within a few months the two agreed to a licensing agreement with Baxter working in a basement in Pontiac, Michigan. In April 2000, Baxter was showing off his first product at a show in California but had no money for mass production. That's when he approached his parents in the town of Dane, Wisconsin, and they agreed to take a second mortgage out on their house and loan their son $35,000 in exchange for a 35% stake in the company.

"The first five years of being in business, we lost a lot of money," Baxter said. "At the five year mark I realized I really have to retool and get costs down and make a pivot and that's what I did."

Baxter moved the company in the early 2000s to Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, to be closer to Prairie Plastics, which manufactured plastic parts for the litter boxes in the city's industrial park. That was followed by a move to an old feed mill before relocating to Columbus, Wisconsin, to a building owned by Prairie Plastics, which provided more space as the company grew. In 2008, Baxter purchased a 33,000-square-foot building from the city of Juneau but at the time thought it was too big for his needs.

Those thoughts were short-lived as sales continue to balloon. The company's annual revenue has grown 35 times what is was in 2015 with nearly 400 employees added since 2019, the same year a 30,000-square foot addition was constructed. In 2022, the company completed a $10.7 million project that created a 165,000-square-foot warehouse and distribution facility. The project was supported by $450,000 in state tax credits based on the company creating 150 jobs, something it has now surpassed.

But expansion hasn't been limited to Juneau. Whisker's corporate offices are in 69´«Ã½ Hills, Michigan, where Baxter just completed a stint as the city's mayor. In January 2023, Whisker completed a $3 million renovation of its headquarters which included a new 8,000-square-foot research and development space, a new atrium and more pet-friendly areas.

Back in Wisconsin, the addition of Whisker is reminiscent of nearby Horicon, home to massive John Deere plants that employ more than 1,200 people and produce snowblowers, lawnmowers and side-by-side utility vehicles. Only while the John Deere Horicon Works has been a Dodge 69´«Ã½ staple since 1911, Whisker is a relative newcomer but making a similar impact on the area.

"It just baffles my mind," said Wegener, who continues to do contracted electrical work for Whisker. "It's our John Deere."

A new workforce housing project consisting of 30 units near the Whisker plant was completed this fall by the Dodge 69´«Ã½ Housing Authority but housing remains a concern for the community as vacant apartments and homes that go up for sale are quickly snatched up, Wegener said. Long the county seat of Dodge 69´«Ã½, Juneau's downtown is sparse with several empty buildings with those that do have tenants consisting of taverns, a bowling alley, a motorcycle parts shop and a few hair salons. Wegener, who owns three buildings in the city's downtown is hopeful that the success of Whisker could create more businesses in the community.

Employees at Whisker come from about a 30 mile radius, said Mike Marks, the company's production manager, who runs the first and second shifts at the plant that is air conditioned in the summer and remarkably clean and quiet year round.

"We're obviously suffering from growing pains. You can have demand but trying to keep up the head count needed can be challenging," said Marks, who grew up in West Bend and lives in Hartford. "We've done a lot of hiring in the last two months and we're getting close to where we need to be."

The production plant holds multiple assembly lines, one for repairing and rehabbing returned units that are then sold at a discount while one line is for the third generation litter box and another for the fourth generation product, the latest in the product line up. Plastic moldings for the litter boxes are still manufactured in Wisconsin by contracted companies in Sheboygan, Burlington and Eau Claire but all assembly is done in Juneau. Whisker also rents 20,000-square-feet of storage in Reeseville and Fall River.

Quality tests are done along the assembly line to ensure the safety of the felines once they start using the litter box.

To help ease the Christmas rush, production was "level-loaded" throughout this year, meaning the company produced more units throughout the year beyond demand in anticipation of more orders this fall and early winter. The Litter-Robot 4 starts at $699 not including the litter hopper or specialized litter.

"We're building this kitty, no pun intended, down in distribution, so that when Black Friday comes, we're ready for 20,000 units that first day and on Cyber Monday," Lodl said during a tour. "When the dishwasher came out, you didn't need to get a dishwasher. You don't need to get a Litter-Robot but man it makes life way more enjoyable when you don't have to do that chore."