---
title: "China's Pet Market Is About to Exceed 100 Billion Yuan! Why Is There Still No Unicorn?"
description: "As China's pet market approaches 100 billion yuan, it remains fragmented with no unicorn companies. This article compares China's pet market with Western markets, analyzes the entire industry chain, and identifies opportunities for investment and entrepreneurship amid consumption upgrades."
author: "龙猫君"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2017-05-28"
language: "en"
canonical: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/china-s-pet-market-is-about-to-exceed-100-billion-yuan-why-is-there-stil-f2e8e2a4/"
markdown: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/china-s-pet-market-is-about-to-exceed-100-billion-yuan-why-is-there-stil-f2e8e2a4.md"
original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/aH-dJK8jPrTyuw2TkY-rDQ"
translation: "https://xinjignxiao.com/zh/articles/%E4%B8%AD%E5%9B%BD%E5%AE%A0%E7%89%A9%E5%B8%82%E5%9C%BA%E5%8D%B3%E5%B0%86%E7%AA%81%E7%A0%B41000%E4%BA%BF-%E5%8D%B4%E4%B8%BA%E4%BD%95%E8%BF%98%E6%B2%A1%E6%9C%89%E4%B8%80%E5%AE%B6%E7%8B%AC%E8%A7%92%E5%85%BD-f2e8e2a4.md"
attribution: "New Distribution — https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/china-s-pet-market-is-about-to-exceed-100-billion-yuan-why-is-there-stil-f2e8e2a4/"
usage_policy: "https://xinjignxiao.com/ai-policy.txt"
---

# China's Pet Market Is About to Exceed 100 Billion Yuan! Why Is There Still No Unicorn?

> As China's pet market approaches 100 billion yuan, it remains fragmented with no unicorn companies. This article compares China's pet market with Western markets, analyzes the entire industry chain, and identifies opportunities for investment and entrepreneurship amid consumption upgrades.

Source: New Consumption Insider (ID: cychuangye)

**[Introduction]** Do you have a dog at home? Do you have a cat? It is said that this is a common topic when modern Chinese men and women strike up conversations, which also reflects that pet ownership has become a common social phenomenon in China, and in some places, families even keep multiple pets. It is generally believed that pet ownership is closely related to the lifestyle of the population. The increasing number of single empty-nest youth and empty-nest elderly has given pet ownership an emotional attribute, bringing business opportunities in pet supplies and services. In Europe and the US, this has long been a mature and huge industry chain. China's market has also been developing for a long time, but with the acceleration of consumption upgrades and the outbreak of the empty-nest economy in recent years, it has begun to attract more capital attention. Hillhouse Capital, renowned in China's investment circle, has smelled the business opportunity ahead of many investment institutions and started deep layout. Today, New Consumption Insider will use a long article to deeply and thoroughly interpret this new consumption market with huge opportunities in China's future.

**This article is divided into the following 3 parts for easy reading:**
01 In-depth comparison between the European and American pet markets and the Chinese pet market.
02 Complete map and analysis of China's pet industry chain.
03 Huge new opportunities for consumption upgrades in China's pet market.

**In-depth comparison between the European and American pet markets and the Chinese pet market**

**1.1 What is the fundamental difference between China's pet market and the European and American markets?**
Whether you are willing to admit it or not, the long-heralded boom in China's pet market has not fully arrived.
An industry entering a period of explosion and maturity is often closely related to the simultaneous maturity of internal and external environments. Capital is more of a leverage effect than a decisive one. Regarding the fundamental factors for the delayed explosion of China's pet market, New Consumption Insider believes:

**First, the per capita disposable income level is far from reaching the level of European and American countries.**
This is the fundamental factor. China's per capita disposable income still has a large gap compared with developed countries in Europe and America, and the disposable income for pets is even less. We can see this from the scale of the pet markets in China and the US:

**According to data from Haitong Securities Research Institute, China's pet industry consumption scale was 71.9 billion yuan in 2014, and it is expected to exceed 100 billion yuan for the first time in 2016.**
In contrast, the US pet supplies consumption market had already reached the scale of today's Chinese pet supplies market in 1994. **In 1994, the US pet industry consumption scale was approximately 17 billion US dollars. In 2015, the US pet consumption scale reached 60.28 billion US dollars, and it is expected to be around 62.76 billion US dollars in 2016.** The gap is obvious.

**Second, the habit of keeping pets in Chinese families is not yet mature, and the user education and popularization at the bottom of the industry chain have not been completed.**
When analyzing any market, we first need to look at the most basic user demand stage. The maturity of the pet market in any region will form different industry stages. The first step in the rise of a pet market in a region or country is a complete live animal trading market. Without the underlying pet ownership and live animal trading, it is not enough to support other transactions later.

China's per capita pet ownership is still relatively low. The US is the world's largest pet economy, with 65% of households owning a pet. In China, this figure is 2.6%, slightly higher in Beijing at 7.5%, and 4.5% in Shanghai. Overall, there is still a huge gap in pet ownership compared with Europe and America.

 _Source: Public data_

**In summary, the key indicators of the industry: purchasing power and pet ownership have not reached the critical point for a full explosion.**

However, what gives hope is that China's per capita GDP has reached the critical point of 8,000 US dollars. According to research data from the College of Veterinary Medicine at China Agricultural University, when a country's per capita GDP reaches 3,000-8,000 US dollars, the pet economy will usher in rapid development.

China's pet economy is growing at an average annual rate of nearly 30%, showing a high-speed growth trend. Especially **with the important transformation of China's pet ownership from traditional guard needs to spiritual companionship needs,** the growth of Chinese people's spending on pets will become increasingly larger.

 _Image: China Industry Information Network_

**1.2 Current status of China and the world pet market**
Earlier, we showed some data differences between the Chinese and American pet markets. Below, New Consumption Insider will analyze the development process and current status of China's pet market and the world pet market.

**What pets are being kept worldwide?**
Before understanding or entering a market, you must first understand the target customers. For pet market research, the first step is to understand the core group: what pets are everyone keeping?

Through comparison, it is clear that in both China and the US, dogs are the largest pet category, followed by cats. If turtles are counted in the aquarium category, then aquarium keeping is the third category, which is a market particularly worth noting in China.

Currently, pet trading in the market is mostly centered around cats and dogs.

**Basic overview of the global pet market**
In the global pet market, the largest market is currently in North America, with the total value of the pet economy in North America accounting for about 37% of the world market. Europe is the second largest pet economy, accounting for about 24%.

Asia follows closely behind Europe, accounting for about 23% of the market. Data from recent years shows that Asia's pet market is the booster of the world pet economy. **In the coming years, Asia is expected to surpass Europe to become the world's second-largest pet market.**

Of course, no matter how you compare, the US market is still the undisputed behemoth. As a pet economy that has been developing in North America for 100 years, as of 2014, the total annual consumption of the US pet economy reached 58 billion US dollars, and this 58 billion US dollars basically comes from:

Pet food accounts for the largest share of consumption expenditure, about 38% of the market share; veterinary care accounts for about 26%; pet supplies (including non-prescription drugs) 24%; pet cleaning 8%; and live animal trading 4%.

**As the second-largest trading market, Europe's pet supplies market share is slightly different.** In the European market, pet food expenditure accounts for about 50%.

**Finally, we can compare the pet consumption share in the Chinese market to infer the current situation of the Chinese market:**

According to the "2016 China Pet Industry White Paper" released by Youchong.com, pet food accounts for the largest proportion of the entire pet consumption market in China, about 37%. The core product categories are pet snack cans and domestic (imported) staple food, which is currently the most competitive market, and foreign brands still dominate.

China's pet medical market accounts for about 22.02%, the second largest expenditure, basically maintaining the same proportion as European and American countries. Through the comparison of the above data, we can draw some interesting conclusions:

**Conclusion 1: Globally, pet food expenditure dominates the entire expenditure.**
In recent years, as China's pet market matures, in addition to the staple food market, a new pet snack market has gradually emerged. These two markets complement each other, but the staple food market still holds an absolute dominant position.

**Conclusion 2: The maturity of a pet market and pet industry chain has its basic laws, and they cannot be skipped.**
According to a senior pet industry insider who revealed to New Consumption Insider, the pet industry has a "live animal barometer" rule. When visiting a city, if there are only trading markets and pet hospitals, we can consider the market to be in an early stage.

But if data shows that live animal trading is no longer growing, and adoption and gifting of live animals are becoming more frequent, it marks the market moving toward maturity. At this time, more refined and vertical services such as pet funeral services and pet services will have opportunities.

So we find that the live animal market in the US accounts for an increasingly smaller share of the entire consumption market, which marks the maturity of the market, or in human society terms, a prelude to an aging society. At this time, related pet services such as pet social and pet funeral services have the basis and value to exist.

**Conclusion 3: The maturity of the pet market is positively correlated with population structure.**
Data shows that the more young empty-nest people and elderly empty-nest people in a country, the more prosperous pet keeping is. China has about 20 million empty-nest young people aged 20-29, and China's aging trend is also gradually strengthening, moving into an aging society. Both factors contribute to China's pet market entering a new peak period.

**Complete map of China's pet industry chain: capital, bubbles, and changes**
Earlier, we briefly scanned the comparison between the European and American pet consumption markets and China's. Below, New Consumption Insider will introduce the gold diggers in this gold mine and their methods one by one. First, let's look at what industry chains exist in China's pet consumption.

In fact, China's pet consumption market started relatively late. Compared with the European and American markets, which have a history of a hundred years, China's entire pet consumption market has only a history of more than 20 years.

**It also relied on the golden decade from 2004 to 2014. During these 10 years, China's pet market achieved a 36-fold growth, and gradually formed basic industry chains such as pet food, supplies, beauty and health care, and pet hospitals.** New Consumption Insider believes that the core links of the current domestic industry chain are divided into two parts:

**Upstream pet consumption links:**

**Pet breeding and live animal trading:**
This includes pet farms and pet trading. It is worth noting that, according to New Consumption Insider, there are currently no large-scale professional institutions for pet breeding and live animal cultivation in China. **It is more like traditional farmers raising chickens and ducks, and some live animal breeding is done in more fragmented pet families.**

Currently, the more active areas for live animal breeding in China are mainly distributed in Chengdu, Henan Province, and the Northeast.

Due to the limitations of the live animal breeding environment, a relatively large live animal breeding center can carry a maximum of no more than 400 animals, and the reasonable breeding rule is two litters every three years. With limited breeding scale and limited breeding capacity, it is unlikely that cats and dogs can be bred on a large scale like chickens and ducks.

This leads to a result: the two ends of China's live animal trading market are extremely fragmented. There is neither a unified sales channel nor a large-scale standardized supplier, resulting in a chaotic market. Many problems arise from this: **such as "week dogs" (dogs that die within a week of purchase), pet inspection and quarantine, and pet logistics and distribution.**

The live animal trading process is very complex, involving live breeding, "live animal packaging," live animal inspection and quarantine, live animal distribution, and after-sales service. Therefore, from a market opportunity perspective, New Consumption Insider believes that this link has obvious pain points.

This is reflected in the fact that there are no professional live animal sales service institutions, and pets entering the formal market do not have quarantine and distribution, making it difficult for families who want to keep pets to obtain live animals in a convenient and safe way.

In the upstream breeding link, compared with European and American history, due to the current breeding technology and the requirements of cats and dogs for breeding environments, achieving large-scale operations is very difficult, and it is not recommended for capital to enter.

However, there are greater opportunities in the after-sales service market for pet packaging, quarantine, and distribution. But live animal trading is a low-frequency trading market compared with pet food purchases, suitable for large traffic platforms to provide this part of the service. Currently, the larger player in this field is 58 Xinchong under 58.com.

**Pet food and processing sales**
This link is currently the largest expenditure in the pet consumption market and the most competitive field. Foreign brands still occupy a relatively dominant position in the Chinese market.

First, let's introduce a concept: what is pet food. So-called pet food refers to products between human food and traditional livestock feed, mainly providing various pets with nutrients needed for life support, growth and development, and health. According to specific functions, pet food can be divided into three categories: pet staple food, pet snacks, and pet health products.

**Currently, pet food processing enterprises in the world are divided into two types:**

**One type is international big brands represented by Nestlé and Mars.** These brands previously manufactured and produced human consumer goods. Because of the explosion in household pet ownership demand, they entered the pet food manufacturing field. Mars and Nestlé products are in a leading position in domestic pet food sales.

The second type is raw material-based food manufacturing companies. These companies may have been engaged in agricultural products in the past, such as corn, chicken, or fish farming. When processing human food, they have a lot of leftover scraps. It would be a pity to sell them simply as scraps.

So these companies may choose to make higher value-added pet food. Wenzhou is now the largest leather dog chew base in Asia. Shandong also has similar industrial clusters, which is closely related to Shandong being a major chicken-raising province.

From the current sales of pet food in China, the foreign consumer goods giant Mars established a Sino-foreign joint venture, Effem Food (Beijing) Co., Ltd., producing Pedigree, Whiskas, Royal Canin, and Nestlé's Pro Plan, and other foreign brands should account for more than 50% of the market share.

Among domestic well-known leading brands such as Bridge PetCare, Good Master, and Zhongchong Pet Foods, none has a market share exceeding 10%. They can be said to live in the shadow of giants.

There are historical reasons for this current situation and pattern. These Sino-foreign joint venture brands previously relied on leading production capacity and brand capabilities to form a certain monopoly position in the world pet food market.

When entering the Chinese market, this market was still blank. For example, Mars's famous dog food brand "Pedigree" and cat food brand "Whiskas" entered China in 1993, when Chinese pet owners did not yet have the habit of using professional pet food for pets.

**However, under the new wave of consumption upgrades, this pattern is now facing a new window of dividends. Capital has also seen this new opportunity and has begun to increase investment in domestic pet food brands. There are several reasons for the new window of opportunity:**

**1 The younger generation of pet owners has not yet fully formed brand concepts for pet food.**
Although there are big brands like Mars, in this field, after the rise of new media, users may rely on new media and e-commerce channels to buy brands they are more familiar with and understand. In this segmented mental market, channel capability is more important than brand. Chinese pet food consumers are still in the early stage of mental education.

**2 With the new round of consumption upgrades and channel reshuffling, the strong position of international big brands in supermarket channels is no longer dominant.**
In fact, international brands entered China relying on the strong channels of their original consumer goods in large supermarkets. But with the rise of a new wave of convenience store channels and specialized channels in China, new channel dividends will appear. In particular, pet community stores may become a new distribution channel for dog food.

**3 The era of personalized and segmented demand among Chinese users has arrived, putting big brands that provide standardized products at a disadvantage.**
In fact, with the popularization of China's pet consumption concept, the new generation of young Chinese users is increasingly understanding the professional knowledge and habits of pet keeping. They will choose appropriate pet food based on the pet's physique and characteristics, rather than blindly buying foreign big brands. This process is a new consumption upgrade process.

Based on the above judgments, we believe that there will be many investment opportunities for new brands in the pet food field, especially the vertical, segmented, specialized, and functional attributes of food will be strengthened. The leading categories in each specific segment have significant investment value. We are optimistic about the emergence of a new generation of high-quality pet food brands in China.

**Pet supplies retail**
The pet supplies retail field has many similarities with the pet food field. Products in this field mainly include: accessory supplies, cleaning tools, and pet clothing. More specifically, it also includes pet home supplies, pet toys, pet feeders, pet nests and pads, and other segmented products.

This field in China is characterized by many small enterprises, with basically no companies that have formed relatively large brand advantages. Most manufacturing enterprises' customers are oriented to foreign markets. In contrast, Europe and America have more giants in this field, such as:

American supermarket giant Walmart has its own pet supplies brand. Relying on its terminal advantages, it not only provides other brands of pet supplies but also sells its own brand.

**PetSmart, founded in 1987, is currently the largest comprehensive pet supplies retailer and service chain in the US, occupying 40% of the US market share.** It provides professional products, services, and solutions for the entire life cycle of pets. PetSmart has 1,433 pet stores in the US, Canada, and Puerto Rico.

Its main business is divided into three categories: general pet consumer goods, pet durable goods, and pet trading. Services can be divided into pet hotels, pet hospitals, pet training, and pet grooming.

**PETCO, founded in 1965, is the second-largest professional pet supplies retailer in the US.** It occupies about 20% of the US market share. PETCO provides pet food, pet clothing, pet grooming supplies, pet leashes, and pet durable goods, and has its own brands such as You&Me.

At the same time, PETCO provides pet services such as pet grooming, veterinary services, pet adoption, and small pet trading in its pet stores.

Through the above analysis of the US market, we find that in a mature retail format, comprehensive chain pet supplies service providers will definitely appear, and they will extend services to the upstream and downstream industry chains.

After understanding pet supplies retail in the US, we will find that China's pet supplies service providers are basically still mainly in manufacturing. Among them, the larger ones include:

**Tianyuan Pets: a relatively leading pet supplies enterprise in China, and has become one of the largest and most complete pet supplies providers.** The company's products are mainly exported to dozens of countries and regions such as the US, Australia, and Germany. The company cooperates with large chain supermarkets and hypermarkets such as Walmart and TRT SHOP.

**Taizhou Huamao Crafts Co., Ltd.: a professional manufacturer of pet toys, bathing supplies, and travel supplies.** All products are supplied to markets in Europe, America, Japan, etc. It has three production bases for pet toys, bathing supplies, and travel supplies. It is particularly noteworthy for its leading product experience in cat trees.

**Shandong Dongyangtai Crafts Co., Ltd.: a professional pet supplies and willow and straw crafts production and export enterprise integrating development, production, and sales.** It mainly operates dog and cat supplies, toys, and indoor home furnishings made of grass and willow.

It is especially good at making cat trees, cotton dog nests, and various hand-woven laundry baskets, drawers, storage boxes, etc. made of willow and straw. **Its own brand CATRY is sold to European, American, and Japanese markets and has received market praise.**

Through the above comparison, we find that local pet supplies brands are still in the manufacturing stage and basically do not target domestic users. Most are mainly for foreign trade export.

But the US retail chain business model proves that a single pet supplies brand may need to form synergies with subsequent industry chains such as pet grooming, pet adoption, and trading.

China still faces huge blue ocean market opportunities in this area. The entire pet supplies brand field is basically in a stage of having categories but no strong brands and no professional strong channels. **In the next step, capital can focus on investing in pet supplies chains and services.**

**Downstream services**

**Pet medical care**
**Pet medical care is an important link in the entire pet industry chain and is also the link where big capital has flocked in 2017.** Pet medical care can be divided into pet diagnosis and treatment, disease prevention, and pet health care.

Internationally, unicorn companies have appeared in the pet medical care segment. VCA Inc, a pet medical care giant listed on the NASDAQ in the US, is a NASDAQ-listed company with businesses mainly in the US and Canada. It has about 750 pet hospitals and independently owns animal hospitals and clinical laboratories in the US.

**As of now, its total market value is about 7.464 billion US dollars. The company has been acquired by the world's leading FMCG giant Mars for 9.1 billion US dollars.**

**Banfield, founded in 1955, is another pet medical care giant in the US and the second-largest animal hospital chain in the US. It currently has more than 800 animal hospitals in the US.**

In the US pet market, pet medical care and related vaccines, testing, and inspection markets are already very mature, so it is common to see large unicorn-level listed companies. In the Chinese market, capital is still in the early stage of layout.

**Among them, Hillhouse Capital, which became famous for investing in JD.com, has begun to make a big push into the pet medical care market through its professional medical investment platform, Cexing.**

**There are three major players in China's pet medical care market: Ruipeng, the industry leader; Ruipai Pet, which has the investment background of a listed company; and Babytang, backed by Hillhouse Capital.** It is worth noting that Hillhouse Capital also invested in another local pet hospital brand, Shanghai An'an Pet Co., Ltd.

**Ruipeng, currently ranked first in the industry, is a NEEQ-listed company. Public data shows that this company was founded in 1998 and is one of the earliest pet hospitals in Shenzhen.** Currently, its hospitals are mainly distributed in first-tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen, as well as some second- and third-tier cities. It currently has more than 100 pet hospitals nationwide and is growing at a high speed of 50% per year.

**Its core business model is mainly direct-operated chains. Shenzhen local investment institution Da Chen Ventures participated in a very small equity investment in this hospital.**

**According to official data from Ruipai, as of December 2016, it operated 100 pet hospitals nationwide, but some data shows it operated 105 pet hospitals. This pet hospital previously received strategic investment from the GEM-listed company Ringpu Biology.**

Babytang Pet Hospital only started its expansion after receiving capital injection. Babytang, which had been operating for many years, only opened its third pet hospital in November 2014. After receiving investment from Hillhouse Capital, the company started its expansion path. As of 2016, it had 50 chain hospitals.

**New Consumption Insider believes there are several important factors for capital's large-scale entry into the pet medical care market:**

**1 China's pet medical care market is still in a very early stage.** Compared with the top two US chain giants, which both have more than 750 chain stores, the leaders in the Chinese market are only at the critical point of 100 stores, less than one-eighth of the US chain industry.

This means that after capital enters, there is still huge room for expansion and growth. The market pattern is not yet set, and this node is the right stage for capital to enter.

**2 Pet medical care chains have been proven viable business models in the US, and in the future, they can be deeply combined with downstream industry chains such as pet care and pet grooming. They are an important entry point to leverage the large pet market.**

This industry has already produced unicorn giants. As the Chinese market gradually matures, large-scale enterprises will definitely emerge.

**3 Pet medical care is the second-largest market after pet food, and its demand is a rigid demand market.** It is also an industry that can more easily create service premiums than the pet food industry.

Because this industry requires high professionalism, has high pricing power, and is easily associated with industries such as pet funeral services, it has very high investment value.

**4 This industry has certain entry barriers, with high requirements for the professionalism and technical skills of veterinarians.** If a certain monopoly can be formed in the field of excellent veterinarians and scarce diagnostic vaccine technology, it is an industry that can quickly build brand barriers.

Calculating based on the mature US market with 800 chain stores, whoever reaches the critical value of 400 hospitals first in the Chinese market may become the number one in this segment.

**In short, pet medical care is the industry with the highest value, replicability, and chainability in the entire industry chain. Together with pet supplies retail chains, it is the most promising segment in the future. New Consumption Insider is very optimistic about continued capital investment in this area.**

**Pet services market**

First is pet grooming. This is a market that develops further after the maturity of the previous four segments. Compared with European and American history, this market has grown relatively fast in recent years, but domestically it is basically just in its infancy:

**The pet grooming market mainly includes: bathing, hair cutting, nail trimming, and hair dyeing.**

Since this belongs to the pet services category, the core is service technicians. Currently, there is no large-scale chain service in this field in China. It is mostly in the form of mom-and-pop shops near residential areas.

But New Consumption Insider believes that the biggest possibility for this market in the future is to integrate with markets such as pet supplies services into one service. We do not favor a market that only provides pet services. The previously popular pet funeral market is also like this. Due to its special service attributes, scalability is the biggest problem in this industry.

Moreover, because China's pet services market is still in its early stage, a large-scale demand explosion may still take a long time. **So the reason why the once-hot door-to-door O2O mostly failed is that the popularization of demand has not yet been completed.**

**Second is the pet training market, mainly providing basic training, home etiquette, and social etiquette training for pets.**

This part is also still in a very early long-tail market in China, and the overall demand is not as large as the food, supplies, and medical markets. The previously popular pet social also belongs to this part, but New Consumption Insider is not optimistic about the pet social market, still believing that the Chinese market stage has not yet arrived.

**Finally, there is the pet insurance market, including pet disability insurance, injury and illness insurance, loss insurance, and death insurance. For many high-value large and precious dogs, there is indeed a demand in this area.**

**Pet media**

In foreign countries, pet magazines are also a popular content demand market, and even every category has independent professional content providers.

In recent years, relying on the rise of WeChat public accounts, a large number of pet-based media and content providers have emerged in China, such as Goumin.com, Haogougou, and Dahua Chishi, a batch of dog vertical media. Around cats and aquariums, many vertical content providers may also rise.

In terms of monetization methods for these vertical content media, New Consumption Insider believes that e-commerce will become the main monetization model. There may be potential for product branding in this, and even a new batch of pet food consumer brands may be born.

**New opportunities for consumption upgrades in the pet market**

Earlier, we introduced China's pet industry chain in considerable length. In the last part of the article, New Consumption Insider wants to talk about potential investment and entrepreneurial opportunities in China's pet consumption links under consumption upgrades:

**1 From the perspective of the entire Chinese pet consumption environment, the biggest opportunities in China's pet consumption are still in the two major sectors of pet food and pet medical care.**

In the future, the proportion of pet services and innovative services around pets such as high-end hotels will increase, but at the current stage, the downstream service industry is still a niche market and in a growth period, but the opportunities are great.

**2 In the pet consumption market, changing the experience in the live animal trading link has investment opportunities.**

As the entry point for the entire live animal trading, how to safely deliver high-quality pets to users is still a big problem. So there may be innovative opportunities hidden in this pain point of delivery.

**3 In the pet food field, specialization, functionality, and segmentation are major trends.**

With the strengthening of Chinese people's understanding of pet keeping itself, and the arrival of China's empty-nest economy, Chinese people's raising of pets based on emotional attributes and personal preferences will become increasingly personalized.

Different pet species (large dogs, small dogs) will have increasingly specialized requirements for food. For animals of different body types, it is increasingly possible to formulate personalized food plans based on health data detection and matching. This provides opportunities for the upgrade and branding of pet food.

**4 With the return of new retail and offline business, more specialized and refined pet supplies chains have major opportunities.**

In the past, the pet supplies field was dominated by manufacturers, who were long at the bottom of the value chain. If they layout specialized offline stores themselves and integrate back-end services, there is a great window of opportunity. Compared with the two major US chain giants, a pet supplies service provider with a new retail format integrating online and offline will definitely appear in China.

**5 Pet medical care has huge window-period investment value. Because pet medical care has high entry barriers, the expansion speed will be relatively slow, because one of the fundamental factors restricting the industry is the lack of professional veterinary talent.**

Even if capital enters, it cannot change the shortage of veterinary professionals in China in a short time. So at this stage, whoever has strong scientific research strength may seize new opportunities in this wave of consumption upgrades. It is recommended that capital lay out professional training markets for veterinarians in advance.

**6 The pet services industry cannot subvert the mom-and-pop shop format in a short time, and the industry inflection point has not yet appeared.**

As a service industry, professional talent supply and systematic chains are standard. But because services such as pet grooming are still in the early market cultivation stage, this stage is still a stage of continuing education for the market, and capital entry is currently of little value.

In short, China's pet consumption industry is a huge, rapidly growing golden market, catering to the current empty-nest economy and consumption upgrade wave. But most links in the industry chain are still in a very early stage of extensive competition. If you can enter the market at this stage and build barriers, there will definitely be opportunities for unicorns in China's pet consumption market.

Industry professionals are welcome to communicate with me.

-END-


---

## Copyright and AI use

This article is sourced from New Distribution. Search, quotation, summarization, and model training are permitted, but every use must credit New Distribution and retain the canonical source URL.

Contact: zhaobo258@gmail.com · +86 158 5481 7671