Pets at Home to invest £70m as it targets pet ‘baby boomers’

The pet specialist has benefited from the pandemic, which saw the UK’s pet population grow by an estimated 8% resulting in a pet “baby boom” for it to cater for.

Pets at Home, which was classed as an essential retailer and therefore remained open throughout the pandemic, recorded retail revenues over £1bn for the first time and identified a £600m future customer revenue opportunity.

It has therefore announced plans to invest £70m in its stores, digital and supply chain in order to grow its market share further.

Chief executive Peter Pritchard told Retail Week: “We’ve announced a £70m capex programme building up our shops, our digital programme and our supply chain to continue the journey growing our share of the pet market, which you can break down into three big chunks.”

The retailer has started work on a digital scheme to unite its business propositions, which include the veterinary business, the retail business and the grooming business.

Pritchard explained: “Today if I want to access them as a customer, I have to go into each of those brands. What we’re doing is creating a front end so you log in as you and your pet, and have access to all the services that you need.

“You’ll be able to do everything from the things you’d expect to do like shop online, but also book appointments for any of our services, see all your pet data like birthday or key information.

“You’ll be able to access people in our organisation using telehealth or by video-conferencing an expert in our business. You’ll be able to manage subscriptions. Its a fully integrated project that brings the whole business together –whether you want to connect with us physically or digitally.”

Pets at Home is also continuing work on refurbishing its stores – prior to the pandemic, it had turned 23 stores into its pet care centre format “incorporating all the new innovations like click and collect, digital hubs, event spaces, product as well as services”.

While this programme was put on pause during the pandemic, the retailer is now targeting 30-40 stores per year going forward.

Pritchard is also planning to build on the successes of Pets at Home’s smaller-format stores inside the M25 which opened last year in Camden and Putney, with the next opening set to be in Balham.

Finally, the retailer is starting work on a new distribution centre to serve its network of customers and stores to open in 2023.

Pritchard added: “Today we’ve got two distribution centres – one in Stoke and one in Northampton. Both do slightly different things, but our plan is to move both to this one new location in Stafford.

“Its 760,000 square feet of warehousing space and it will be quite automated, but will actually serve the whole business whether that be a customer order or a store order.

“We will hold all our stock in one place, which means not only will we have more capacity for our growing business, it also means we can increase the speed at which we serve our customers and our stores.”