In the first two months of the year, the sales of pet snacks increased by 157 per cent over the same period last year, and the sales of pet ablutions increased by 253 per cent. By way of example, there was a 36 per cent increase in sales over the same period last year.
Zhou Chunhua, Secretary-General of the pet industry branch of the Chinese Livestock Association, said that the enormous potential of the pet consumer market had attracted many small and medium-sized entrepreneurs and that leading companies from the Internet, electricity, consumer goods, health care and agriculture had also begun to enter the pet industry. For example, the market for small rice, beautiful layout pets, and the Internet's easy choice of dynamic pet food tracks. The entry of these enterprises has further boosted the growth of the pet industry, extended the chain and enriched the market supply.
The rapid development of the pet consumption market has benefited both from a complete and highly synergistic domestic OEM/ODM industrial chain and from efficiency gains and cost optimization in the production of supply-end products, logistics, etc., and from the decreasing threshold for pet consumer goods from design to landing.
However, product homogenization followed. Industry believes that due to the relatively simple structure of pet products, the enterprises concerned have less capacity to design and develop their own research and development and less to innovate. Most brands tend to make “fast money” in fast-growing industries, with heavy sales, light R & D and services, resulting in most brands being kept in low-dimensional “inner packagings”.
“High quality is the foundation upon which pet consumer brands stand in competition in the market, while technological innovation capacity determines the upper limit of product quality.” Shen Sing, a long-standing researcher on cat food in pet food enterprises, suggested that the brands should explore collaborative development models for “scientific institutions + producers”, strengthen technology support and enhance self-research and development capabilities, thereby enhancing the core competitiveness of enterprises.