AKC Competitor : A Mobile App Strategy For The Dog World

The Challenge

The American Kennel Club runs hundreds of dog sporting and conformation events each year, but the experience on the ground is remarkably analog. Competitors navigate ring times through paper signage, handwritten whiteboards, printed binders, and judges shouting across crowded arenas.

The goal of this work was to develop a mobile app strategy that would meaningfully reduce friction for competitors, local clubs, and the AKC itself within one week.

Over the past decade, novice titles in AKC Obedience dropped 24%, sanctioned events fell 10%, and fewer new competitors are entering the sport at all.

Why Mobile, Why Now

Before recommending a solution, I needed to understand whether a native mobile app was actually the right investment for the AKC, or whether a responsive website would do.

The answer came from the environment itself. Dog trials are held at fairgrounds, training clubs, and outdoor venues where cellular connectivity is unreliable and the audience is on the move. A native app could integrate with Bluetooth for proximity-based check-ins, timely push notifications to keep competitors informed, and offline functionality when the network drops. A responsive site can’t reliably do any of that.

The AKC’s existing systems create real data gaps: check-ins are manual, scores are paper-based, and there’s no digital feedback loop between competitors and clubs. A native app would give the AKC a data infrastructure it currently lacks and improve the planning and event experience for clubs, volunteers, and competitors.

The UK Kennel Club offers online entry services for their events, and over the same 10-year period that AKC participation declined, UK participation grew.

Prioritizing for the timeline

One week is a forcing function. Rather than go deep in one area and surface with half a story, I structured the week to produce a complete narrative. The goal was to create a jumping-off point that could unlock deeper discussions and next steps with stakeholders.

Focus	Rationale
Day 1 Research	Built and deployed a 22-question survey to dog sport participants; pulled AKC historical participation data
Day 2 Synthesis	Found the signal in survey data and correlated it with AKC records
Day 3 Recommendation	Translated findings into a strategic position
Day 4 Narrative	Built the pitch deck to connect pain points → opportunities → value
Day 5 Wireframes	Illustrated key features to make the strategy concrete, not abstract
Day 6 Peer review	Pressure-tested whether the story could stand without me in the room
Day 7 Ship	Final refinements and submission

Who This Serves

Survey data (77 responses) and AKC participation records shaped three distinct personas, each with different goals and failure points:

• New competitors : excited but lost. They struggle to find events, don’t know how to fill out paper entry forms for each sport, and aren’t sure what to expect on the day. Long waits (novice events often run last) make an already uncertain experience worse.
• Veteran competitors : experienced and working around the system. They manage multiple dogs, track progress across hand-kept records, and spend 6+ hours at events with no reliable way to know when they’ll be in the ring. This is friction they’ve learned to tolerate, not solve.
• Event volunteers : organized but under-resourced. They coordinate competitors across a loud, crowded venue with whiteboards and their voices as their only tools. A late competitor or unexpected ring delay can cascade across the whole event.

The strategy had to work as a system across all three — because a feature that helps competitors only works if volunteers and clubs are running the same digital infrastructure.

The Recommendation: Start Narrow, Learn Fast

Survey data pointed to a clear MVP focus. When asked about barriers to entering events:

• 64% cited planning, travel, and time commitment
• 58% still mail in paper entry forms
• 31% cited the manual sign-up process itself as a barrier

This feedback pointed to a single, high-confidence starting frame: make it easier to find events and sign up.

MVP: Finding Events & Signing Up

Make it easy to plan for and attend events : Show upcoming events tailored to a competitor’s location, breed, competition history, and goals. Push notifications surface newly posted events and send entry confirmations right away, removing the stress of waiting for a judging schedule to arrive in the mail.

Make sign-up faster than paper forms : Autofill handler and dog information from existing AKC profiles. Let competitors select classes without re-entering data they’ve submitted dozens of times before. Integrate with Apple Pay and Google Wallet to eliminate the need to mail a check with a printed form.

Reduce paperwork for clubs and competitors : Give breed clubs a unified digital entry dashboard to replace the manual process of transcribing paper entries, printing forms, and processing mailed documents. The result is fewer mailers, less administrative labor, lower costs and a more accurate entry record going into event day.

The Roadmap

The MVP was deliberately scoped to one outcome with clear success metrics before expanding. Starting narrow lets the team iterate on real feedback rather than speculate about mid-term problems.

Where to start	How to measure success
Now | Finding events & signing up	Signing up for an event should take less than 60 seconds Increase the average number of events a competitor attends 12 months post launch Reduce time spent processing entries Reduce mailing costs for breed clubs.

Future focus areas
Mid-term | Improving the event-day experience (real-time ring schedules, live score results, volunteer coordination tools)
Far-term | Encouraging future participation — title tracking, training group discovery, mentorship matching, new competitor onboarding

Outcome

The pitch was well received by the review committee and led to a successful interview. Competitors who reviewed the work saw immediate, practical value, particularly around information access during events. The project demonstrated that even in a domain that skews traditional, there’s a clear appetite for tools that reduce friction and respect people’s time.

The real opportunity for the AKC is a platform that turns participation data into insight, and makes the sport more accessible to the next generation of competitors.

Read the pitch