Today, we will be breaking down pet care giant, Petco. Founded in 1965 as a mail-order business, Petco has evolved into a one-stop-shop pet care solution across its nearly 1,500 locations. We cover how Petco evolved into its current big-box model, how pet care store economics differ from grocery economics, and what impact e-commerce has had on the industry.

To help break down Petco, I am joined by Greg Kamstra, current CEO of pet care provider, Riverdog and former private equity investor.

Show Notes
[00:00:00] – Introduction
[00:02:19] – [First question] – What is Petco?
[00:03:06] – How much of their business is solely eCommerce
[00:03:40] – The scale of the market today and what that space looks like
[00:05:24] – Pet ownership in the US and how much it’s grown over the decades
[00:06:28] – The spend-per-pet metric and how it continues to grow
[00:06:49] – Sales channels for Petco and the big players in this industry
[00:07:31] – When and how Petco started and unique insights that led to starting the business
[00:09:09] – Unit economics for specialty brands versus generic brands
[00:09:42] – General thoughts on the economics of Petco
[00:11:03] – Viewing their revenue and customer base through the lens of a single-store
[00:13:15] – How they drive same-store sales growth and customer frequency
[00:16:22] – The ways they’ve invested in services to incentivize return customers
[00:18:13] – Conventional retail strategies and how they’ve performed for Petco
[00:20:42] – Ways they are trying to compete with their eCommerce competitors
[00:23:50] – What their eCommerce growth could look like over the next few years
[00:25:20] – Early days of a mobile app and working on their digital-first footprint
[00:26:18] – How good of a deal Chewy was for Petsmart
[00:27:48] – Other big deals Petco has made and why they’ve mattered
[00:28:52] – Unique private equity aspects of Petco
[00:31:07] – What happened to their business during the pandemic and what trends might be here to stay
[00:32:03] – How many non-pet owners became pet owners because of COVID-19
[00:33:11] – Reasons why their market cap could double in the next five to ten years
[00:34:19] – Reasons why their market cap could be cut in half over the coming years
[00:35:10] – Lessons for builders when studying Petco’s story
[00:37:14] – Lessons for investors when studying Petco’s story

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