Form S-1 Table of Contents We believe we have a highly engaged consumer bast of passionate pct parents, who connect with our authentic story of a pet food brand that is "by pet parents for pct parents.- Our goal is for the buffalo icon and the BLUE shield featured on our products to symbolize quality and project a certain attitude that pct parents feel good associating with. We actively support pct cancer awareness and research, promote animal welfare and engage our pet parents in these important causes with special events such as the Pct Cancer Awareness Month during May of every year. We believe our consumers arc strong advocates of our brand and arc major contributors to our success in the marketplace. Our master brand grateff, combined with significant cumulative investments in highly effective marketing and brand-building of over $400 million since 2003, has marked in what we believe to be one of the strongest brand equities in the pet food industry. We have a full- service in-house advertising and marketing agency which enables us to maintain the authenticity of our communications, whether through marketing or packaging, and allows us to build a cohesive brand. This integrated approach gives us a significant advantage in speed-to-mar et from product development to advertising, increases our marketing effectiveness and creates marketing efficiencies. We are currently the #1 advertiser in the Wholesome Natural market segment by a wide margin and one of the top advertised brands in the industry overall. However, we gill have a significant opportunity to expand our brand awareness compared to brands with much longer histories in the marketplace. We plan to continue to invest in advertising to increase our brand awareness and drive traffic to brick-and-mortar stores and (-Commerce retailers where BLUE is sold. Our commitment to pet nutrition education is reflect'sd in our approach to marketing, which has a strong call-to-action for pct parents to e