Views: 0 Author: Site Editor Publish Time: 2025-11-21 Origin: Site
The pet economy has exploded in the capital market, becoming a key battlefield for new consumption. Several pet enterprises have more than doubled their value in just a few months, with market sentiment remaining high.
Thirty years ago, there was no pet industry in China—there wasn’t even a concept of "pets."
Today, hundreds of millions of pets have built a huge economic industrial chain covering "food, housing, transportation, and medical services," growing increasingly popular and becoming the focus of physical entrepreneurs and the capital market.
According to Tianyancha, the number of registered companies related to China’s pet economy soared from nearly 1 million in 2021-2022 to nearly 2 million after 2023. Emerging pet enterprises continue to emerge, and investment enthusiasm in the primary market is unprecedented. Since 2024 alone, companies like Xiaoyi, Chongbenben, and RedDog have secured over 100 million yuan in financing.
The secondary market’s pursuit of the pet economy is even more fanatical. As of June 19, GuaiBao Pet’s price-earnings ratio climbed to 64 times, and China Pet Foods reached 43 times.
Of course, the sudden rise of pet stocks is not purely concept speculation. Among them, GuaiBao Pet—the "market capitalization leader"—achieved a compound annual growth rate of 27% in revenue and 54% in net profit attributable to shareholders between 2020 and 2024. In 2022, it fully surpassed China Pet Foods (then the leader), reshaping the pattern of China’s domestic pet market.
So, why has the pet economy become so popular?
For many years, especially in rural areas, dogs were raised to guard homes and deter thieves, while cats were kept to catch mice.
Today, cats and dogs are no longer just functional animals—they have become intimate friends, companions, and even family members.
This role transformation mainly stems from the sharp increase in the spiritual companionship needs of China’s single-person population, who hope pets can add joy to life and alleviate loneliness. Among them, the growing single population and senior citizens have become key drivers.
According to the National Bureau of Statistics, the single ratio among 25-35-year-olds in China exceeded 37% in 2024, an 18-percentage-point increase from a decade ago. The number of single young people living alone has surged, with institutions predicting it will reach 40-70 million by 2030.
These single groups have no family burdens, are more inclined to self-pleasing consumption, and have a high rate of pet ownership, becoming an important pillar of the pet economy. Meanwhile, China has entered a moderately aging society with over 220 million people aged 65 and above—the rise of the silver economy has also boosted the pet economy.
The change in pets’ roles also means pet enterprises have better business models than ordinary consumer companies. Primary and secondary capital have keenly sensed the opportunity, pouring in to expand their layouts and further fueling the pet economy’s boom.
Specifically, the mass consumption sector covers many niche tracks such as snacks, condiments, beer, and beverages. Most of these consumer goods meet functional needs, with consumers focusing on cost-effectiveness. In the current fiercely competitive environment, enterprises struggle to achieve easy profitability.
In contrast, as emotional carriers, pets make owners more willing to pay for emotional value. Their growth logic is similar to the spiritual consumption of Pop Mart’s IP products or the social attributes of high-end liquor beyond drinking value—often supporting mid-to-high-end positioning and strong brand loyalty.
This model also determines that the pet track will spawn a large number of high-growth enterprises, with domestic brands already breaking through and rising.
In 1993, Mars took the lead in entering the Chinese market, launching an expansion spree and long-term monopolizing most of the market with several other leading foreign enterprises.
Domestic pet enterprises started late—GuaiBao Pet, Tianyuan Pet, and Petty Group were founded after 2000. Lacking brand appeal in the early days, they could only rely on OEM production for international pet giants.
But no pet enterprise was willing to be just an OEM factory.
In 2013, GuaiBao launched its independent brand "Myfoodie," focusing on the mid-to-low-end cat food market. Later, it launched beef dual-mix dog food, targeting the dog food market. Subsequently, the company entered the mid-to-high-end segment, launching brands such as "Freshmeat" and "Wangzhenchun." Among them, Myfoodie’s domestic market share rose sharply from 2.4% in 2015 to 5.5% in 2024, securing its position as China’s top domestic pet brand.
China Pet’s independent brand "Wanpi" grew more slowly but achieved certain results through acquisitions of New Zealand’s ZEAL and Hangzhou’s Toptrees. Petty launched independent brands like Juanyan and Hosigao, exploring more possibilities.
The collective rise of domestic independent brands has broken the foreign monopoly. According to Juken Data, in the first quarter of 2025, domestic brands accounted for 6 out of the top 10 best-selling cat and dog food products on three major online platforms , including Myfoodie and NetEase Yanxuan.
The wave of domestic substitution is rolling forward. Domestic enterprises have achieved breakthroughs mainly through two strategies.
One is the proven "cost-effectiveness" of products.
Take "Myfoodie Dual-Mix Dog Food" as an example: its formula includes frozen beef, beef meal, and fresh chicken, with a crude protein content exceeding 28% and a unit price of 32.5 yuan/kg. In contrast, Mars’ Royal Canin "Poodle Complete Dog Food" has main ingredients such as wheat, duck meal, and chicken meal with similar nutritional content but a price as high as 120 yuan/kg.
In the same price range, most domestic brands offer better formulas and raw materials than foreign counterparts. Coupled with the cost reduction advantages of domestic supply chains, their products are more cost-effective. Although most lack the brand strength of foreign companies, many pet owners have now "demystified" foreign brands and focus more on the products themselves.
The other strategy is seizing the dividends of sales channel transformation.
Leading foreign brands, leveraging their first-mover advantage, completed the layout of offline channels early, including supermarkets, pet hospitals, and specialty stores.
However, China’s e-commerce has developed rapidly, with increasingly improved logistics experiences—especially pet owners in first and second-tier cities prefer online shopping. According to Euromonitor, e-commerce accounts for nearly 70% of China’s total pet sales, compared to only 10-20% in the United States, Japan, and Europe.
Moreover, domestic enterprises are more adept at capturing pet owners through online channel layout and brand promotion. They use diverse marketing methods: seeding content and collaborating with KOLs on video platforms like Xiaohongshu, Bilibili, Douyin, and Kuaishou, as well as reaching young people through live streaming to trigger purchases.
China’s pet market is continuously expanding, providing a stage for the rise of domestic products. Its size grew from 170 billion yuan in 2018 to 300 billion yuan in 2024.
But the future holds even greater potential.
Compared to overseas markets, the pet markets in the United States, France, the United Kingdom, and Japan have maintained steady growth over the past decade—with double-digit growth rates after the 2020 pandemic—even as their GDP either stagnated or grew at a low rate.
China’s market started much later, meaning the pet track will maintain high prosperity for a longer period in the future, with growth driven by both volume and price.
According to the China Pet Industry White Paper, the number of urban pets in China increased by 32 million over the past six years (2018-2024), with a CAGR of over 5%. As marriage and birth rates decline, people’s spiritual demand for pet companionship is becoming stronger, and the number of pets is expected to grow further.
Among the existing 120 million pets, there is still "consumption upgrade" potential—the proportion of pet owners feeding leftovers will continue to decline, while the proportion purchasing staple foods and snacks will rise. Additionally, pet owners who previously bought low-end staple foods will tend to choose higher-quality products in the future.
More importantly, the pet market has not fallen into price wars. From 2018 to 2024, the average annual consumption per pet in China jumped from 1,600 yuan to 2,400 yuan. Due to higher food intake, dogs had a total annual consumption of 2,961 yuan in 2024, while the "cat economy" emerged with faster growth, reaching 2,020 yuan per year.
Leading pet enterprises have maintained steady growth in both staple food sales and unit prices, confirming the market’s high prosperity of "volume and price growth." Against this backdrop, some institutions optimistically predict the market size will hit 400 billion yuan by 2027 and exceed 1 trillion yuan in the long term.
On the journey to 1 trillion yuan, where will the new market growth drivers be?
First, the pet medical sector still has many unmet market needs.
Currently, pet medical care accounts for 28% of the total market size, second only to pet food. It mainly consists of pet diagnosis/treatment and pet pharmaceuticals, supplemented by pet physical examinations and vaccines.
Among the more than 30,000 pet hospitals currently operating, public and private institutions coexist, but the degree of chain operation is low, leaving significant room for integration. The domestic substitution of pet pharmaceuticals and vaccines has an even larger untapped market.
Among the top 10 cat deworming drugs, only two are domestic; all dog deworming drugs are foreign brands. Foreign enterprises account for 90% of the vaccine market—domestic pharmaceutical companies are making efforts in this field but progressing slowly.
China has over 30 million senior pets, but specialized drugs for age-related diseases account for less than 5% (compared to over 30% in the United States). In particular, there is a shortage of drugs for chronic diseases such as cardiovascular diseases, renal failure, and tumors.
Second, intelligent pet care has spawned a blue ocean in hardware. In recent years, innovative devices such as health monitoring equipment (tracking abnormal pet behavior and connecting to veterinary systems), automatic feeders, and smart cameras have emerged one after another. For example, UBTECH’s C10/C20 series smart litter boxes are not only popular in China but also topped TikTok’s U.S. pet products sales chart.
Of course, niche service segments like pet funerals also hold business opportunities for integration and upgrading.
