Bursting the bubble: the decline in the pet sector

“I think breeders are cautious. Given everything you read in the news about the cost of living crisis, etc and for breeders the worst situation is when you can’t find buyers for all of the puppies in the litter,” says Axel Lagercrantz, CEO of Pet Media Group, which owns Pets4Homes.

The pandemic saw a boom in demand for pets and pet ownership in general. In 2018 the PFMA found that there were 9 million dogs in the UK and 25% of adults owned one. By 2021 the PDSA found that there were 10.2 million dogs in the UK with 27% of UK adults owning one.

This trend was also seen in other animals too. For example, there were 7.5 million cats in 2018 compared with 11.1 million in 2021 and there were 600,000 rabbits in 2019 compared with one million in 2021. However, since then the pet population has declined potentially as a result of the cost of living crisis or just a correction from the pandemic. Data from UK Pet Foods found that the proportion of households which owned a pet declined 5% to 57% in 2022.

The decline in population is something that has been seen in the rehoming sector of the industry but interestingly, unlike what some of the data says, the demand for pets actually has not declined, but rather the supply of them. “We’ve definitely seen breeding activity going down in the last year. The demand side is stable. Per puppy advertised, there’s actually more buyers So the demand side has stayed the same, but the supply side has declined a bit,” Lagercrantz says.

This decline in pet population and decline in the supply of pets begs the question whether the pandemic increase was merely a bubble which has now popped. However, Lagercrantz believes that while the boom during the pandemic was never sustainable, demand for pets will continue to stay well above pre-pandemic times.

“I think we’ve regressed to the mean and I say that because the demand is higher than pre-pandemic. Even though the pandemic is over it’s quite a lot easier to have a pet in your life. With working from home and [more] restaurants accepting dogs, etc, there’s lots of different services that people can take advantage of today that they couldn’t a few years ago,” he says.

To back up this point Lagercrantz believes that as the cost of living crisis eases the prices of pets will continue to rise at “more normal single digit levels”. This is also something that retailers have seen according to Jollyes CEO Joe Wykes who states that pet ownership is still well above pre-pandemic rates.

“While pet ownership is certainly modestly declining compared to its pandemic peak, it is still at a very high level and we know that puppy prices are still 20-30% higher than they were in February 2020,” Wykes adds.

What can be done

If the decline of pet populations is a result of a decrease in supply rather than demand then it seems like a simple fix. However, as Lagercrantz explains, it is not as easy for the pet industry to increase supply. After all pets are living breathing beings.

“In the UK, there are very strict animal welfare regulations and people are very aware of animal welfare. The most reputable breeder, or those who breed the same breed maybe have one or two litters a year. But they do all of the, all of the things a good breeder should do but that’s a very small scale.

“In some countries you have more commercial breeders or volume breeders and they may have forty or fifty breeding bitches which is a much bigger volume. If you want to have supply meeting demand, then I think that the rules prevent that and it’s a philosophical debate on whether that is correct or not,” Lagercrantz explains.

However, he continues on to say that while the breeding of pets will always be a labour of love, more can be done to streamline the breeding process and incentivise more people to follow their passion.

“What a lot of our breeders complain about is the amount of paperwork. Going through getting your licence if you need a licence and there’s, there’s significant costs with breeding as well, for the fields and insurance. However, I think it’s difficult to motivate people through financial means or otherwise.”

The future of pet ownership

So how will the sector develop? If Lagercrantz is right and the industry has now regressed to the mean, where does it go from here? For Lagercrantz he hopes that pet ownership becomes less of an emotional decision.

“I think more and more people are becoming aware of what a safe process to purchase looks like, and that’s a very complex purchase, right? An emotional purchase where traditionally an onus has been put on the buyer to make sure that they do their checks of the seller.

“I think buyers are also becoming much more aware of what good looks like. So I would say overall, or my hope is at least that there will be sort of less impulse buying and a safer environment for buyers and sellers and what it has been in the past,” Lagercrantz explains.