The Amazing Growth of the Pet Industry

As a life long dog owner, I love following pet trends. The Mini Trends blog has a nice post on both pet trends and the “Petrepreneurs” who are building businesses related to pets.

The post has a good “state of the pet nation” description:

“Even though more households have a dog than a cat, cats have the upper paw, with 93.6 million feline pets compared with 77.5 million canines. However, there are more pet fish than cats and dogs combined: 171.7 million of them swimming in American aquariums. Rounding out the menagerie are 15 million birds, 13 million horses, and, yesss, over 13 million reptiles.”

We spend a lot of money on our pets, almost $50 billion in 2010. The chart below shows the amazing growth of in the amount we spend on our pets.

A couple of things hit me about this chart. First, the pet industry missed the Great Recession. I cant think of many industries that had close to 20% revenue growth from 2007 to 2010.

Im also struck by the total amount we spend on pets and how it continues to grow at a much faster rate than inflation and the overall economy. This trend will likely continuedue toan increasing number of “pet parents” – mostly aging baby boomers -who doteon their pets.

(Note to Mini Trends blog: I think “Petrepreneurs” sounds like a dinosaur. How about “Pet-preneurs” with or without the hyphen instead.)

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