PE wants a pet platform. The industry keeps saying no.

Issue #297

January 28, 2026

Quick Hits:

📏 Subaru’s 2026 Outback displays its cargo space capacity in dogs

❌ A raw dog food co. has refused to recall its food despite FDAs pathogen reports

📉 New benchmarks show vet practices are losing the efficiency battle

🚘️ Sleepypod is introducing a new car harness to fit a wider range of dog bods.

🥇 Franchise Business Review names Woofie’s, mobile pet care as a top franchise for 2026

🦠 Scientists have claimed that they have mapped 95% of the dog gut and found nearly 1,000 new bacteria

The pet industry in 2026 will continue to watch two powerful forces collide.

On one side are micro-vertical "depth brands," companies that go extremely deep into a narrow, emotionally charged niche of pet care.

Think specialty brands built around anxious dogs, senior small-breed wellness, urban cat enrichment, or reactive-dog training.

On the other side is a wave of platform-driven consolidation.

Private equity roll-ups, pet retail chains, and large animal health players are racing to build "one-stop" pet wellness ecosystems that put food, vet care, insurance, and services under one roof.

The tension raises a key strategic question for anyone building or investing in pet. In a market racing toward all-in-one platforms, where can a narrowly focused brand actually win?

The answer is counterintuitive.

It's not by trying to broaden into a do-everything pet brand.

Instead, the most successful founders are making their brands indispensable components.

They're building focused, best-in-class niche players that platforms cannot replicate and increasingly need.

Depth brands and platforms aren't enemies on a collision course. They're complementary layers of the future pet industry stack.

The smartest pet businesses today are built to plug into larger systems, not to compete head-on with them.

Depth Brands: Why Narrow Can Beat Wide

Pet startups are discovering that going narrow and deep can beat going broad.

These micro-vertical depth brands are proliferating because they speak directly to high-intent pet owner segments with strong emotions and specific needs.

They feel "built for me," not "for everyone," and they win trust faster (and often more cheaply) than generic pet brands.

We've seen an explosion of breed-specific, life-stage-specific, and behavior-specific products and services.

Mobility aids designed just for senior large-breed dogs. "Reactive dog" daycare programs that cater to dogs with special behavioral needs.

Cat-only veterinary clinics and boarding facilities that eliminate the stress of canine neighbors.

These hyper-focused offerings resonate deeply because a niche brand can speak the language of a particular pet parent tribe, making customers feel uniquely understood.

As one pet marketing exec put it, "niche pet communities demand specialized products, personalized engagement and authentic pet marketing", and businesses that tailor their approach can build strong loyalty and sustainable growth.

Importantly, depth brands often own a specific conversation in the pet world, not just a product category.

Instead of launching yet another "one size fits all" dog shampoo, Skout's Honor built an entire line of probiotic grooming products for sensitive-skinned dogs, formulating for a distinct dermatological problem and marketing with vet validation.

That focus earned die-hard loyalty from grateful dog parents whose pets finally found relief.

Squishface won a cult following by obsessing over wrinkly dog care. Their bulldog-specific wrinkle wipes and paste solved a problem (skinfold infections) that broad pet brands had overlooked entirely.

The payoff?

Raving fans in the target niche, strong repeat purchase rates, and little direct competition.

We see this pattern across categories.

The Big Damn Dog Co. formulates joint supplements specifically dosed for giant breeds like Great Danes.

Pawstruck's Himalayan Yak Chews exploded by targeting "extreme chewer" dogs with an ultra-dense long-lasting chew.

Even pet tech hardware is going niche. Tractive's GPS tracker added an adventure mode for off-leash hiking dogs.

Why does narrow beat mass in these cases?

Depth brands tap into emotionally charged, specific pain points and solve them better than anyone else.

Pet owners identify strongly with their pet's "tribe" or challenge, whether that's a breed, an age, or a behavioral quirk.

A focused brand that speaks to that identity can become a go-to resource, yielding community engagement and a built-in marketing channel via breed clubs, Facebook groups, and subreddits.

These brands win trust and word-of-mouth in their segment. When a super-niche product truly delivers, passionate owners will rave about it in online forums and dog park chats.

That kind of advocacy is something generalist brands struggle to achieve.

Micro-vertical brands often enjoy higher retention and lifetime value.

If a product is literally made for your pet's unique needs and actually works, you're not switching to a generic alternative.

They also face less competition and more efficient customer acquisition, dominating specific search terms like "bulldog wrinkle infection remedy" at lower cost than bidding on broad keywords against conglomerates.

Rather than casting a wide net, consider drilling down into a micro-market and serving it obsessively well. Depth brands can achieve community evangelism and retention metrics that broad players only dream of.

If even a small subset of pet owners is saying "This was literally made for us," you're on to something.

What Depth Brands Are Actually Accumulating

Going niche isn't just a marketing tactic. It changes what a business accumulates over time, in ways that create real strategic value.

Depth brands, by virtue of their focus, gather high-resolution customer data and insight that broad players simply don't have.

They see the patterns and nuances of a specific pet journey end to end.

A brand centered on senior-dog mobility might collect detailed data on how a dog's gait, weight, or pain levels change over time with various interventions.

A company focused on anxious pets might develop deep understanding of what triggers anxiety in different environments, which calming techniques work for different personalities, and how owner behaviors correlate with outcomes.

The depth brand ends up owning a rich dataset and knowledge base about its specific domain.

This "data density" is an underappreciated asset.

A giant platform might have millions of customers with shallow data (basic purchase history across many categories), but a depth brand can have fewer customers with far deeper data per customer.

Behavioral profiles, longitudinal health info, community feedback. All of it compounds.

Micro-vertical brands also accumulate community trust that generalist platforms struggle to earn. By being present in niche forums, leading educational content, and genuinely understanding their cohort's day-to-day realities, a depth brand becomes the trusted authority in that space.

Think about the niche pet brands running Facebook support groups or YouTube channels for their customers. Pet parents in a niche feel like "this brand gets us."

The result is not just loyalty, but a willingness to follow the brand's guidance.

Brands like these are accumulating structured, proprietary data and loyal user bases. Ingredients that plug neatly into larger pet health ecosystems later.

Depth brands aren't merely selling products.

They are gathering pet-specific intelligence and goodwill. As the industry consolidates, those who hold unique data and genuine trust in a segment have a seat at the table.

Many depth brands find that larger players come knocking, interested not only in their revenue but in their engaged niche customer base.

Quality over quantity. A smaller community of true believers can be far more valuable than a large audience of casual buyers.

The Consolidation Wave: Why Platforms Want Everything Under One Roof

Meanwhile, the consolidators and platform builders in pet care are charging ahead on the opposite strategy.

Breadth and scale. Investors and strategic acquirers are chasing the dream of the "pet super-platform" that captures every aspect of pet parent spending under one umbrella.

The motivations are straightforward.

The pet market is huge and still growing, with over 87M pet-owning households in the U.S. spending $147B+ a year.

A platform that can serve a pet family from puppy adoption to end-of-life care stands to unlock multi-category revenue per pet and long-term loyalty that single-category companies can't touch.

The pitch is seductive, especially to outsiders looking in.

Lee McCabe, a private equity operator who founded digital growth firm Claymore Partners, recently laid out the bull case on LinkedIn.

"The pet industry is begging for a platform," he wrote. "Not another subscription treat box. Not another tele-vet point solution. A true platform, vertically integrated, brand-led, and built around the modern pet parent."

His argument is that pet ownership spending is fragmented across a dozen vendors and that consumers don't want more options, they want fewer headaches.

He points to Hims/Hers for skincare and Warby Parker for eyewear as models, asking why pets don't have an equivalent.

From a spreadsheet perspective, it looks compelling.

High customer lifetime value, recurring subscription revenue, cross-sell opportunities at every life stage, and a data moat at scale. McCabe even notes the emotional irrationality of pet spending.

But the comment section on McCabe's post tells a different story.

Industry veterans pushed back hard on the platform thesis.

Pamela Keniston, a longtime advisor to pet startups, offered one of the sharpest rebuttals:

"This 'one stop platform' concept has been kicking around for decades in the pet industry and many have tried it. I've yet to see one become successful."

She pointed to the fundamental cultural mismatch across pet verticals. "Talk to a groomer, then a veterinary pro, then a supplement company CEO, then a food brand leader. Their communication style, operations, and beliefs are going to be wildly different."

Steve Simitzis, who actually built and ran a pet platform startup called Treat Inc., added a paradox that should give every consolidator pause…

"The fragmented nature of the industry may be what keeps it fragmented. Pet parents have trusted relationships with the small service businesses that support their pets, and don't expect crossover."

He noted that when his pet food store offered in-store vet checkups, he never used it.

They eventually stopped offering the service.

The most telling response came from an actual pet parent, Ethan Ehlers "As a pet parent, I DON'T need and DON'T want a 'platform'. What I want is the personal touch that my current vet, my current daycare/kennel, and my current local pet supply shop all offer."

He added that he'd switched all three providers in recent years after PE acquisitions degraded the experience.

"Gone were the friendly people who remembered our names, replaced by lower paid staff who couldn't be bothered."

This is the gap that outsiders miss.

They see fragmentation as inefficiency to be solved. Industry insiders see it as a feature, not a bug. The fragmentation exists precisely because trust is earned at the niche level, not the platform level.

No wonder private equity and corporate giants keep pouring capital into roll-ups of vet clinics, pet hotels, insurance providers, and pet product brands.

In 2023, Blackstone acquired pet-sitting marketplace Rover for $2B+, betting on integrating pet services into a larger platform.

Petco repositioned itself as "The Health + Wellness Co.," launching Vital Care memberships that bundle vet exams, grooming, and discounts.

Chewy added telehealth and launched CarePlus insurance plans, positioning itself as a comprehensive health destination.

Large platforms excel at capital, infrastructure, and distribution scale.

They can fund nationwide logistics and marketing blitzes that no startup could afford. But they struggle with authenticity and niche credibility.

A corporation trying to be everything to everyone can't have the organic street cred of a brand that lives and breathes a specific niche.

Pet parents might buy toys or food from a large retailer, but do they trust it for specialized nutrition advice for diabetic cats?

Or rehab exercises for a disabled senior dog?

This is where depth brands have leverage. They engender trust and passion in ways a big platform brand usually cannot.

The Core Argument: Why Depth Brands and Platforms Need Each Other

Far from being an "either/or" battle, the future of pet care will be built on depth brands and platforms working in tandem.

Platforms need the authenticity and focus of niche players, and depth brands need the scale and resources of platforms. Each solves the other's blind spots.

Platforms, for all their breadth, are not very good at creating depth from scratch.

They can acquire a million customers, but they often can't make those customers feel seen the way a specialist brand can. Depth brands excel at winning hearts and minds in a niche, but they usually hit a ceiling when it comes to scaling operations, distribution, or tech.

Together, they form a symbiotic relationship.

The platform provides the backbone (funding, logistics, expansive reach) while the depth brand provides the soul (trust, specificity, and unique data).

Think of depth brands as the killer apps that run on top of a platform's operating system.

We already see hints of this model.

Petco partnered with JustFoodForDogs to bring fresh kitchens into stores rather than trying to make its own fresh food line, acknowledging the value of that specialist brand's expertise.

You can think of depth brands acquired into a platform as "category captains." Instead of flattening every brand into a homogenized corporate label, smart consolidators let their niche acquisitions continue to shine, often keeping their original brand names and communities intact.

If a large pet wellness platform acquires a company known as the authority on canine anxiety (with a popular app, product line, and community), that brand becomes the anxiety solutions captain. It leads that category across the whole customer base.

The platform supplies capital and distribution but defers to the depth brand's playbook for engaging anxious-dog owners authentically.

This approach creates a system where platform plus niche brand together deliver what neither could alone. Wide reach and deep relevance.

How This Changes the Founder Playbook

If you're a pet startup founder building a depth brand, this new paradigm should change how you plan your journey.

Rather than obsessing over "How do I become the next Petco or Chewy?", the better questions are "What would make my brand irreplaceable to a platform?" and "How can I design my business to plug in seamlessly to a larger ecosystem when the time is right?"

In practical terms, this means stop optimizing purely for breadth (market share, SKU count) and start optimizing to be indispensable in your niche.

Own your corner of the pet world so fully that a bigger player must work with you to serve that segment credibly.

Think in terms of "journeys," not just products. A depth brand creates value by guiding pet owners through a specific lifecycle stage. If your niche is "first year with a rescue dog," consider all the touchpoints and build a cohesive offering around that journey.

By owning a complete journey, you make your brand plug-and-play for a platform.

Design offerings to be modular and clearly defined. Platforms will integrate or acquire you only if they can see where you fit. "The definitive membership program for anxious dogs" is a clearly defined module a platform could latch onto.

Keep your data and systems clean and interoperable. If you've accumulated rich data, ensure it's stored in a structured way that can be analyzed and integrated. Being able to say "here's 3 years of cohort data on how our community's dogs improved" is a huge asset.

Cultivate community and brand assets that extend beyond you. Many depth founders are intimately involved in their community. That's great, but to be an attractive partner, ensure the community's loyalty isn't solely dependent on your personal touch. An acquiring company will be far more comfortable if they believe the community love can survive the transition.

Build narrow but think system-wide. The founders who do this aren't "selling out" their vision. They're amplifying it by positioning to leverage bigger channels when the time comes.

What Platforms Should Be Looking For (and Often Miss)

If you're on the platform side, this thesis suggests you should value depth over breadth in your targets.

Yet many acquirers still get this wrong, chasing the pet brand with the broadest SKU line or the highest revenue rather than the one with the deepest connection in a valuable niche.

The smartest platforms in 2026 will scout for "category captains."

A company that has become the voice of authority in feline renal health (with a thriving community, tailored product line, and database of case studies) could be more strategically valuable than a larger generic cat food brand.

That depth brand brings unique trust and data.

Prioritize brands that control a high-intent audience.

Not just large follower counts, but engaged users who rely on that brand for guidance. Does the brand run forums, support groups, educational series?

That indicates they're leading a mini-movement, not just selling a product.

Look for data that you can't easily recreate. 

A niche brand collecting health outcome data for years (a mobility startup tracking improvement in 5,000 arthritic dogs) could fuel new services or improve predictive models.

A caution: don't over-index on SKU count and short-term sales at the expense of engagement quality.

If Brand Y's 3 specialized products have a fanatical following and solve a critical problem better than anyone, they might be a linchpin in your future ecosystem.

Content and community are part of the asset.

Build Narrow, Think System-Level

Depth brands are not the opposite of platforms.

They are the ingredients of future platforms. The narrative shouldn't be "niche versus scale" as adversaries, but niche feeding into scale.

For founders, this means your end game need not be "beat the giants or bust."

There is a third path - be so good in your lane that a giant wants you as an essential layer.

For the giants, it means acknowledging that you can't organically create passionate micro-communities for every need. You'll need to invite or acquire the specialists.

As 2026 unfolds, the pet industry's power dynamics are becoming clearer.

The goal for a depth brand is not to avoid consolidation at all costs, nor is it to roll over and sell at the first opportunity. The goal is to enter any larger ecosystem on your own terms, with your value prop intact.

Build so that you could stand alone if you had to, but be ready to amplify your impact when the time is right.

"Freeze dried treats" hit 46K monthly searches with 33% YoY growth, and the trajectory line tells the real story.

This isn't a pandemic spike that's fading.

Search volume has climbed steadily from roughly 18K in early 2022 to consistent peaks above 50K by late 2025.

The seasonality is predictable (holiday gifting bumps, summer dips), but the underlying demand curve keeps ratcheting higher.

For operators, that's the signal that matters, sustained consumer pull, not a trend cycle.

What makes this compelling is the shape of the growth.

The category didn't explode overnight and plateau. It built gradually, which typically indicates real behavior change rather than viral hype.

Freeze-dried has graduated from "premium niche" to "mainstream expectation" in the treats aisle, and brands that aren't thinking about how to play here (whether through product expansion, positioning, or acquisition) risk ceding ground to those who are.

The demand is there and it's not slowing down.

See you Friday!