With sales of pet-related items through Amazon increasing by 25% in 2023, how do the online figures look in different segments and for larger and smaller retailers and brands in the US?
Part of the story of Amazon’s growing dominance is that other retailers struggle to achieve a fraction of its growth, let alone its volume. Yet growth is still possible for pet product companies that target the right niche – often while seeking to sell through Amazon as well as competing with it.
Record-breaking activity
Amazon continued to grow its stake in the pet segment, with the category accounting for $18.2 billion (€16.7B) in US revenue during the whole of 2023, up 24.6% from 2022. Its own brand of pet supplies, Amazon Basics, increased its performance by 43.3% last year, with 8.5 million units sold and a total revenue of $204.7 million (€188M).
According to Similarweb Shopper Intelligence estimates of US consumer activity on amazon.com, natural pet food producer Blue Buffalo was the most sold pet brand in 2023, with 16.1 million units and $391 million (€359M) in revenue.
Purina’s Fancy Feast and ONE hit a combined revenue of $463.7 million (€426M). Friskies, another Purina label, achieved the biggest increase on Amazon, with 9.4 million units sold – up 289.5% – and $188.1 million (€172.8M) in revenue – up 315%. This jump was mainly driven by the brand’s Party Mix cat treats and Gravy wet cat food.
Blue Buffalo is top dog
The Similarweb US data shows that Amazon’s sales of products for dogs reached $11.3 billion (€10.4B) in 2023, an increase of 26.7% on the previous year. This represented 469.2 million units sold, up 23.4%.
Blue Buffalo was the top brand in the dog segment, with 11.7 million units sold (up 51.2%) and revenue hitting $287.7 million (€265M), 27.5% more than in 2022. Pedigree was the second most sold brand in the category, but experienced a slight decline of 0.8% in units sold.
Amazon Basics ended as the fifth most popular brand. The giant’s private label also achieved the second biggest performance increase last year, with sales going up by 39% to 6.8 million units. Revenue rose by 31.3% to $161.8 million (€148.7M).
The cat department
Although a smaller category on Amazon than dog products, items for cats showed similar trends in both sales value and units sold. Sales of cat supplies between January and December 2023 were $4.8 billion (€4.4B), up 25% from the same period the previous year. Units sold increased by 21.6% to 209.1 million.
Purina Fancy Feast was the top brand in the category, with a 94% rise in sales value to $202.2 million (€185.8M). Friskies was the fastest growing of the top brands, however, with sales up 316.5% to reach $177.1 million (€162.7M). Temptations ended in third place, with 8 million units sold and $121.9 million (€112.2M) revenue.
Fast growing pet care websites
Producer of dog supplements and chews Greenies was one of the fastest growing online businesses in the pet category in the US last year. Its website received a total of 9.6 million visitors over the 12 months of 2023, with 663,900 unique visitors per month. In addition to growing this direct-to-consumer webshop, Greenies increased its sales on Amazon, with Similarweb Shopper Intelligence estimates indicating revenue up 21.6% and units sold up 13%.
According to the Digital 100, Similarweb’s ranking of the fastest growing online businesses in the US, traffic on the Greenies website increased by 492% between 2022 and 2023. The websites capstarpet.com (+236.2%), sundaysfordogs.com (+160.8%) and 1800petmeds.com (+138.6%) followed in this growth ranking.
Other ups and downs
Several companies in the pet sector showed some online growth in 2023. These include webshop petsmart.com, which grew its traffic by 3.7%, and dog walking service rover.com, up 10.3%.
A number of better-known online pet retailers had a less successful year online. Traffic to Chewy’s website, for example, was down by 5.2%, year-on-year, while traffic to petco.com dropped by 2.3%.
David F. Carr
Senior Insights ManagerSimilarweb
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