A reptile importer in Orange County.

Zoo Med Laboratories grew out of a live-reptile business. Gary Bagnall told the story himself in an article for the aquarium magazine AMAZONAS, published online by Reef to Rainforest Media in October 2017: in 1977, after leaving a job selling fish, he started importing and exporting reptiles, in a one-car garage. The company’s about page adds that his interest began as a boy exploring a creek near his home in northern California, and that he later worked in pet and fish shops before going into business with reptiles. He named the business In Cold Blood, after Truman Capote’s book, because reptiles are cold-blooded. English Wikipedia, citing that article and a 1992 profile in The County Telegram, gives the same year and places the garage in Costa Mesa, in Orange County.

The name did not last. Bagnall wrote that freight workers “did not share my humor,” so In Cold Blood became Orange County Zoological Supply and then California Zoological Supply. English Wikipedia dates the change to Orange County Zoological to 1978, when Bagnall went into partnership with the snake breeder Lloyd Lemke, and the change to California Zoological Supply to 1979, when the two parted ways.

The products company came out of a vitamin. In the 2017 article Bagnall recalled that a customer, Mike Verner, handed him a bottle of his ReptiVite vitamins and asked whether he wanted to sell them; Bagnall agreed, and later bought Verner’s business. English Wikipedia says that in 1984 the business split in two, with “Cal Zoo” continuing to import reptiles and the dry-goods side becoming Zoo Med Laboratories, Inc. The trade magazine PET worldwide, in February 2013, dated Zoo Med’s reptile vitamin to 1982, so the sources differ on the year.

A lamp, a vitamin and a move north.

The company later moved to San Luis Obispo, on California’s Central Coast. Bagnall wrote that it outgrew its old town, which “did not have any buildings large enough” for the business. The company’s own web page, archived by the Internet Archive in February 1997, already gave San Luis Obispo as its corporate headquarters, described Zoo Med as hobbyists who “manufacture only products that we would use with our own pets,” and said it had “recently expanded into Europe.”

Lighting became the company’s best-known line. Zoo Med dates its ReptiSun UVB 310 fluorescent lamp to 1993, and Bagnall’s 2017 article opens that part of the story with “1993 was a big year for Zoo Med,” crediting the idea to observations of iguanas kept by a former Cal Zoo employee. The company’s about page today lists a lighting range across compact fluorescent, T8 and T5 tubes, mercury vapour, metal halide and LED.

On manufacturing, Zoo Med says it makes a large part of its product line at its headquarters in San Luis Obispo, and that much of the rest — including most of its reptile lighting — is made in Europe. It also says it has moved its glass terrarium manufacturing from overseas to its California headquarters. PET worldwide reported the same split between the United States and Europe in 2013, and said that new buildings had allowed the company to make more glass tanks, naturalistic terrariums and ReptiHabitat kits.

The range has widened beyond reptiles. English Wikipedia describes Zoo Med as a maker of specialty pet products for reptiles, amphibians, fish, insects, birds and small mammals, and the 2013 report listed products for reptiles, amphibians, fish and birds. The company says it supports conservation organisations and donates regularly to aquarium, reptile and avian societies.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are all reptile and terrarium names: Exo Terra, Zoo Med, Arcadia, Komodo, Lucky Reptile, Fluker’s and Pangea. Reptile-care brands in general sit at many different points in the pet trade, from businesses that still carry a founder’s hobby in their story to labels that now belong to much larger pet-products groups, and a single brand can be sold everywhere from a specialist reptile shop to a general pet chain.

A reptile-care brand’s identity is usually carried less by a single product than by a name, a pack and the kind of keeper it speaks to, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its production or grown far beyond the place where it started. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its lamps, enclosures and foods are actually made.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its products are made and how its packaging has changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A founder’s company on the Central Coast.

Zoo Med’s product names follow a pattern set by its early vitamin. ReptiVite and ReptiSun share the “Repti-” prefix. The company’s about page frames the business as “a story of passion and discovery” that began with a young Gary Bagnall exploring a creek near his home in northern California. The same page quotes him: “I think I am good at putting good people together and allowing them to create magic.”

The company remains tied to its founder. Its website names Bagnall’s vision as the origin of Zoo Med Laboratories, and its about page says that since 2011 Zoo Med Studios has been the company’s “social hub.” PET worldwide reported in 2013 that the company kept a collection of live reptiles, amphibians and fish at its San Luis Obispo County buildings, used by its education department, and English Wikipedia describes the company as privately held. The footer of its website reads “Zoo Med Laboratories, Inc.”

For a design guide, Zoo Med shows how a founder’s hobby can become a products company with a naming system of its own. Compare Exo Terra, the reptile brand of Canada’s Hagen Group, and Fluker’s, another American reptile-care name. For this guide we use terracotta, basking orange and a chaparral green with a slab serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Zoo Med’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.