Pets at Home boss Lyssa McGowan is focusing on profit growth this year after business took a 3.2% hit in its last financial year.
Despite the dip, McGowan labelled 2023 a “pivotal” year for the retailer as it delivered “key building blocks” towards its ambition of becoming “the world’s best pet care platform”.
McGowan notes that while trading so far this year has remained “more subdued”, she expects it to “improve progressively as we go through the year”.
Having laid much of the groundwork last year – including a rebrand, launching a new digital platform and transitioning to a new distribution centre – McGowan is keen to ramp up the retailer’s efforts in the months ahead.
“The biggest challenge I face in my role is making sure we stay absolutely focused on the biggest [opportunities] because honestly, there’s so much that we could get after in such a structurally growing market with such great consumers,” she says.
Stores and services
McGowan says the retailer will do “even more” across its store estate over the next 12 months, building on the five new openings, 41 store refits and 55 rebrands it did last year.
Part of the plans include opening more city stores inside London, which McGowan says has been “underserved” by the retailer, which traditionally trades from big box shops.
“As we’ve cracked this new, smaller format, we’ve been able to open up the Pets at Home experience to younger, more Generation Z consumers who actually love what we’ve got to offer,” she says. “They’re actually more likely to buy into the vets, grooming and integrated offer.”
Pets at Home currently has 13 small concept stores in the UK, of which seven are located in places around London including Balham, Beckenham, Camden, Ealing, Sutton, Putney and Whetstone.
Alongside new stores, McGowan wants to expand the groups veterinary division, which she described as the “standout” of last year’s performance as more customers sought out vets services.
Pets at Home added vet extensions in 23 of its stores in 2023 and is set to add practices to its new Sutton and Whetstone locations, which both opened last month, to become “integrated healthcare centres”.
McGowan says the group has “loads of opportunity” with its vets services, with around 120 stores in the portfolio that currently don’t have a vets inside that could have one added.
However, she explains that the biggest issue to its plans is “finding the talent” and a “practice owner that wants to open”.
Subscriptions
Subscriptions is another area McGowan is focusing on this year.
She says there’s still “plenty of headroom” to grow the model, which is already up by a third on last year at 1.7m subscribers and generating 10% of consumer sales.
“Pet spend is quite habitual – flea, tick and worm treatments, vet treatments, food is something you buy on a regular basis,” she explains.
“We’ve got a new subscriptions proposition where anything you buy on subscription, you get at least 5% off and we’ll match any in-store promotion.”
She says that the retailer will add “more functionality” to its site over the coming weeks, allowing subscribers to access the 5% off as well as being able to change delivery days.
“The other thing we’ve been able to do is to plug all of our data into our website so that our recommendations are now powered by the 85% of transactions that happen in store, not just the 15% online, which means that we’ll be able to tailor offers and recommendations and things that you might want to put in your subscription much more personally.”
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