PetO stops live animal sales to drive business growth

Australia’s third-largest pet retailer has wiped $15 million in revenue by stopping the sale of live animals, but, it believes the move is an investment in long-term growth.

PetO co-founders Nick Greenhalgh and David Rowe

PetO, Australia’s third-largest pet store brand, has wiped $15 million in revenue from its books by ending the sale of live animals but its founders believe it won’t stop the business reaching $250m in revenue by 2028.

PetO co-founder Nick Greenhalgh said the business is banking on its purpose over profits approach to win out in the end, and he thinks customers will agree.

“Consumer habits have changed and sentiment has changed,” he told The Australian. “The notion of transporting live animals, bringing them into a store, putting them into an enclosure, a cage or a tank, and then putting a price on them. It doesn’t seem quite right in 2025.

“Pets are family not commodities and there’s a certain impulse in retail. You’re buying a pair of shoes and then you go and buy a puppy on the way home. Pets are a long-term commitment

Mr Greenhalgh said while the independent pet store chain will take a $15m revenue hit, plus a further $5m to remove the animal enclosures and reconfigure its stores, the move will provide more space for more products and choice for its animal loving customers.

“For us, it really is purpose over profit. And profit is not a bad word by the way, far from it, as a family business, it can’t be. But we believe, if you have a purpose, the profit will follow.

“We’ve taken a backwards step, in terms of revenue, but we’re trying to establish ourselves as that clear, credible and compelling number three in the Australian pet retailer market. That’s where we want to be.”

PetO became the third largest brand behind Petbarn and Petstock last year when it acquired 41 retail stores including the Pet City and My Pet Warehouse brands from PetStock and Woolworths. The deal bolstered the brand’s footprint beyond its NSW homebase and provided a presence in Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia and Tasmania.

It has big ambitions for growth, with plans to hit $250m in annual revenue in the next three years. That figure reflects the business strong growth trajectory up from $50m revenue last year and a projected $150m this year.

“We’ve got 60 stores now, but if we opened another 100 stores, 160, we would still be number three. So we’ve got a really extended runway of growth. So, we think we can achieve that FY 2028 number through a combination of organic growth, which is just growing the obviously the performance of each door. But equally then enhancing that with rolling out new stores.”

The growth of the business is also a reflection of Australia’s booming $14bn pet retail market where two-thirds of Australian households own at least one pet.

“Pet ownership went up dramatically during Covid,” he said. “Close to 60 per cent of households owned a pet before Covid, and at the end of Covid, nearly 70 per cent of households owned a pet - so there was a massive increase there. Overall, Australia is one of the highest countries for pet ownership in the world.”

Mr Greenhalgh said the move is also part of an overarching strategy to focus on customer experience as the brand seeks to drive greater engagement with pet owners and tap into the market trends.

“There’s quite a push on fresh, frozen and raw foods, that’s quite a big, growing category. Also with the snap of cold weather, there’s a big rise in pet coats and raincoats. We wouldn’t have sold anything like what we sell today even 10 years ago but now the trends mirror the habits of humans,” he said.