IN THE LAP OF LUXURY

However you pamper yourself, Vetreska will match the experience for your fur babies. We talk to founder DONALD KNG about cat wine, pet spas, and the growth of luxe petcare.

- RACHEL GENEVIEVE CHIA

Twice a month, Donald Kng takes his dogs to the spa. Three hours of botanical shampooing, salt baths, black clay treatments and aromatic oil massages later, a plump white labrador and black Alaskan malamute bound out into Holland Village, smelling faintly of bergamot.

"When they come back to me, they literally glow," he says. "They shine. Their fur is smoother."

The trio head home to a cream-hued space kitted in designer furnishings, where the pooches rest on a plush giant flower and take afternoon snacks in color-block bowls with matching dining mats.

In the evening, they don a mint-color harness and backpack for a walk, with Kng scooping up poop into compostable cerulean bags dispensed from a graphic rubber pill.

All the products are designed by Vetreska - a company that has captivated young, independent dog and cat owners around the world with glossy advertisements that hardly look out of place in a luxury photo spread. The brand has sold millions of products, from balls to bibs, across 20 markets including the US and France, counting among its 40,000 stockists New York's Museum of Modern Art Design Store and Paris' Le Bon Marche. Its annual revenue hovers in the nine-figure range.

Meanwhile, Fur - its experiential pet wellness concept opened in Singapore in February - is consistently booked two months in advance. (Celebrity singer JJ Lin stopped by once.) Plans are underway for two more outlets next year, 10 in five years, and then globally under an ambitious long-term strategy.

But chief executive Kng, 34, could have scarcely imagined any of this fresh out of national service in 2010, when he fought to attend New York's Fashion Institute of Technology.