E-commerce trends in the Southeast Asian pet supplies market
Rising pet ownership is creating potential. Although in-store shopping remains dominant, online sales growth is robust throughout the region.
More and more people in Southeast Asia are choosing to keep pets, especially cats and dogs. And, as pets become beloved family members, pet parents throughout the region are increasingly willing to spend more on pet health and well-being – with e-commerce platforms looking for ways to take advantage of the resulting opportunities.
Buying and selling secondhand
Carousell is a Singapore-based online marketplace launched in 2012 to focus on buying and selling secondhand lifestyle items. The platform is available in 6 Asian markets, including Southeast Asian Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines. In recent years, Carousell has observed a rising trend among users who list their unwanted or preloved pet items, ranging from cages and pet beds to like-new dog treats and cat condos. This indicates a strong demand within the pet community for buying and selling secondhand items.
According to Jing Zhi Peh, Head of Goods for Singapore and Malaysia at Carousell, this shift prompted the platform to adopt the pet supplies category, which now ranks within the top 20 categories out of over 30 categories. The company has since introduced sub-categories for pet food, accessories, and health and grooming for dogs, cats, birds, fish, rabbits and hamsters.
Making inroads in Singapore
“Pet accessories emerges as the top sub-category in which our pet owners actively participate in buying and reselling. It seems wasteful to confine sometimes expensive pet accessories to the storeroom. Instead, opting to pass them on to fellow pet owners who can make good use of them becomes a more meaningful and sustainable choice,” Jing tells PETS International.
The most significant traction in the pet supplies category on Carousell’s secondhand buy/sell/swap platform is in Singapore and Hong Kong.
Online search trends
According to Jing, cat and dog food are popular, with cat food slightly edging out dog food in rankings, while kibble is the most searched-for type of pet food. Royal Canin, Nurture Pro and Taste of the Wild are among the most popular brands on the platform.
Cat items are among the top search terms in the pet supplies category. “We see an increase in year-on-year searches [2022 vs 2023] with the keyword ‘cat’ in English and local languages, in Hong Kong, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines and Taiwan. The highest being Indonesia with over 30% increase and Malaysia with over 20% increase,” adds Jing. The dominant popularity of cat items such as food, cages or condos in Singapore and the Philippines is particularly striking because there are more pet dogs than cats in those two countries. The dog ownership rate in the Philippines reaches 67%, the highest in Southeast Asia, according to Rakuten Insight.
Potential in Indonesia
Indonesia is one example of a high-potential market in the region. According to the TGM Global Pet Care Survey 2023, 71% of people in Indonesia own pets and 61% of them own at least two pets. Cats are the most popular choice of pet among this Muslim-majority population.
This is echoed by Singaporean Clarice Zhang, founder and owner of PT WAW Indo Utama, a Jakarta-based premium cat and dog food distributor. The company witnessed significant growth soon after its establishment in 2019. The COVID-19 pandemic, during which more people adopted pets or paid closer attention to caring for their existing pets, served as a boon for the business. Initially supplying to only a few pet stores, it now distributes to 70 online and offline pet retailers in 19 cities across Indonesia. This includes 17 outlets of the Chinese multi-brand retailer chain KKV, all of them with a pet section.
“The pet industry in Indonesia has tremendous potential. It is not as sophisticated as Singapore yet. There is a growing market among well-to-do pet owners, mostly located in 7 major cities – including Jakarta and Bali,” she tells PETS International. According to Zhang, low-cost pet food and pet products are also doing well, depending on the demographics in Indonesia.
Online and offline strategies
The firm plans to expand by acquiring more international brands in its distribution list, following the success of its marketing strategy, which involves engaging influencers and organizing offline events. The company is even considering creating its own brand. “We act like we are [marketing] our own brand. So, it’s either I take on more brands, or I do hear that there are distributors starting to create their own brands as well,” Zhang adds.
Despite the robust sales growth of pet items on online marketplaces, in-store shopping is still where most pet owners spend their money. Zhang notes that maintaining both an offline and online presence is crucial in Indonesia, where “almost everybody” has Tokopedia or Shopee accounts. Despite this, pet parents still go to specialty pet shops for offline services like grooming, and they purchase pet care supplies while there.
Home-prepared pet food
Both Jing and Zhang identify home-cooked or home- prepared pet food as a trend. “I am starting to see more and more pet owners becoming conscious of their pets’ health,” points out Zhang. She adds that providing pets with healthy, freshly prepared, home-cooked or raw food rather than just feeding them regular canned or dried pet food is a trend that is picking up in Indonesia.
This trend is also visible among Carousell’s customers. “This could suggest that modern pet owners are even more particular about their pets’ nutrition, and we could see more variety of pet food soon to cater to our nutrition-savvy pet owners,” concludes Jing.
The total gross merchandise volume (GMV) on 9 leading e-commerce platforms in Southeast Asia – Shopee, Lazada, Tokopedia, Bukalapak, TikTok Shop, BliBli, Tiki, Amazon and Sendo – reached $99.5 billion (€92.1B) in 2022. According to an e-commerce report by insights research firm Momentum Works, Indonesia contributed 52% to Southeast Asia’s GMV.
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