The omnichannel approach is all but a given in the pet food space these days. When e-commerce got an unforeseen boost during the stay-at-home measures enacted at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, pet food and treat companies took a hard look at where their products could be found and reacted accordingly. Today, Chewy.com, Petco.com, PetSmart.com and Amazon.com vie for dominance as majority pieces to the pet e-commerce puzzle, while many pet food companies and retailers have their own e-commerce platforms pet owners can purchase products from.
In the retail quarter ending July 2023, there was plenty of evidence that the big dogs in pet ecommerce are trying to grab market share from each other. Chewy, which draws more than double the traffic PetSmart does, saw website visits drop 5.8% year-over-year while PetSmart gained 9.3%, according to David F. Carr, senior insights manager for Similarweb, a digital data provider. In July 2023 alone, Chewy saw traffic go up 3.5% month-over-month and PetSmart gained 14.9%. Petco is roughly the same size as PetSmart in terms of traffic volume, but hasn’t seen the same consistent gains in the last year.
