The story of Amikinos
In 1991, after long university studies, my wife and I created “L’ Institut La Vallière”, a training centre on dogs’ behaviour.
Together, we trained over 1,000 dog owners, and hundreds EDF and GDF agents (I was in charge of a training course specialised in preventing dog bites). Rapidly, many owners started to question us about dog food.
The concept “Amikinos” was born.
Our mission: finding the healthiest dog food available in France.
In 1997, after many requests from many dog owners, Amikinos had just started to provide carefully selected pet food. We were, at the time, working with a Canadian brand. Many years later, this brand decided to change their recipe – the quantity of animal proteins was immediately divided by five. On the other hand, the quantity of cereals was greatly increased. The fat content also changed, and was now of much poorer quality.
We stopped dealing with this company straight away and we selected – after much research and deliberation – a family owned company in the US for their great quality products. In 2007, this company was taken over by new shareholders. Their goals were now to dramatically increase the production and therefore profit, regardless of quality. They could not guarantee the non-use of GMOs anymore. They were now buying ingredients from the global market instead of local suppliers.
Like every other manufacturer, the quality dropped down significantly. As a consequence, we stopped dealing with them.
Getting tired of having to constantly control the quality and having to constantly find new manufacturers, we decided to start producing our own brand.
It was the only way to guarantee a consistent quality. It also allowed the use of a new manufacturing process which would guarantee an optimal quality.
For technical reasons of know-how and also to guarantee optimal traceability, manufacturing is carried out in England. Unfortunately, we have not found a French factory using a kibble manufacturing method as qualitative as the one we currently use. You will find more information on the manufacture of our kibbles by consulting our following page: Manufacturing of Amikinos kibbles
Joseph Maupilier, founder of Amikinos