Introduction

Maxi Zoo, the German challenger in pet food retail, has seen remarkable growth in Belgium in the past years. They are one of the main winners in the market in terms of visits. Other comparable stores like Horta and Poils & Plumes have also been doing well in this market. In this article we take a deep dive into the Belgian pet food market to gain some insight into the upcoming stores and the market evolution.

Scope

In this analysis we compared the first half of the year for four consecutive years: 2024, 2023, 2022 and 2021. We did this for the pet store market, and for three pet food retailers specifically: Maxi Zoo, Poils & Plumes and Horta. This article was created using Accurat’s location dataset and it illustrates the functionalities of our platform for retail executives. For more information on our products, contact us through the website or book a demo of our software.

How has the market evolved in the last four years?

In the last four years, we saw an upward trend in the amount of visits in the pet store market. There was also a bump in visits in 2022, which might be attributable to the COVID-19 pandemic. While market leaders like Aveve and Tom & Co's visit share has stagnated over time, challengers such as Maxi Zoo, Horta and Poils & Plumes have managed to capitalise on the situation by attracting more visits and, in turn, more visit share.

Maxi Zoo has fared remarkably well, gaining absolute visits with every year, and gaining 22.1% more visits in the first half of this year compared to last year. Maxi Zoo also gained visit share in the last four years, moving from 12% to 15% share in this timeframe. Not only does Maxi Zoo win visits from competitors, but they also capitalise on the growing market.

The same holds true for Horta and Poils & Plumes, increasing their absolute visits by 6.8% and 24.1% respectively between 2023 and 2024. With Poils & Plumes and Horta receiving significantly less absolute visits than Maxi Zoo, we can conclude that Maxi Zoo is the big winner in the pet store market. At the same time the total market visits grew by 2.5% indicating that the small shops are growing faster than the market.

Where did Maxi Zoo’s visit growth come from?

To answer this question, we looked at the last three visits of the customers between April and June. This visualizer gives perspective on visit transfers between brands. The graph also shows that a lot of Maxi Zoo’s customers come from the “none” classification. These are people who only visited once or twice or who visited a competitor that is outside of the scope of this analysis, like supermarkets. This means that Maxi Zoo is doing a good job at drawing in people who are new to the market or who don’t frequent it. 

There is a smaller stream of more loyal customers, who visited Maxi Zoo twice or three times in those 90 days. Maxi Zoo also won a decent amount of visits from market leaders Aveve and Tom & Co. Note that the visit transfer between Maxi Zoo and Poils & Plumes is almost completely negligible, potentially because of the very limited territorial overlap between the two brands. Poils & Plumes is only located in the Walloon side of Belgium, whereas Maxi Zoo is more established in the Flemish side.

Who shops at Maxi Zoo?

The graph below is a visualisation of the composition of Maxi Zoo’s customer base, also known as audiences or segments. The graph shows how Maxi Zoo differs from the market average, with average being 100%. Most notably, Maxi Zoo draws a lot more urban customers than its competitors who are more low to middle class and less likely to be upper class than the market average. Maxi Zoo also draws more parents than the rest of the market.

How did Maxi Zoo grow so fast?

Recently, after launching four new stores in Belgium, Maxi Zoo disclosed a plan in a gondola article to open 30 new stores in the next three years. A large portion of this expansion is planned in Wallonia, where the brand is not well established yet. Maxi Zoo aims to become a market leader in Belgium with the help of its German parent company. 

Besides that, Maxi Zoo also launched a store in Belgium with a new XXL concept. These XXL stores focus less on pet food than traditional Maxi Zoo stores and more on articles for pet wellbeing. Besides that, they have a wider assortment. This could help explain why Maxi Zoo draws such a large portion of people who don’t frequent pet stores. Not only the new stores won visits for Maxi Zoo, the existing stores also drew more visitors as the average visits per store went up by 3%.

When it rains it pours

The first half of 2024 has been exceptionally rainy in Belgium. Compared to last year, there was over 25% more precipitation in and around Brussels. This could have negatively impacted visits to Horta and Aveve, who besides pet food offer garden equipment. However, this doesn’t explain why Horta gained visit share in 2024 and Aveve’s visits stagnated.

Conclusion

The small brands in Belgian pet food are growing faster in visits than the market and are winning visits from established brands like Aveve and Tom & Co. Maxi Zoo had an exceptionally good year, gaining 22.1% more visits after opening several new stores. Maxi Zoo draws a lot of urban customers that are slightly lower class than their competitors’ customers. The market leading companies have been losing visits, while Aveve might have lost visits due to incessant rain.

About Accurat

Accurat is a leader in retail, media, and real estate location intelligence, active in BeNeLux and Germany. By analysing real-world behaviour and combining location data of your business, customers, and competitors, we empower you to make informed decisions. Our work was unofficially dubbed Market Research on Steroids by our customers due to our very large panel-sizes, the focus on actual behaviour, and near real time reporting.