“Our goal is to match Amazon’s delivery times”, Frédéric Le Guen, CEO, Animalis

When it started out in 1996, Animalis was a pioneer of pet retailing in France. CEO Frédéric Le Guen joined the company in 2022, which he describes as having become by that point “not very dynamic”.

When he took on the role, there were 40 stores across the country, all of which had been there for a while, and no new locations were being added.

Now, Animalis has embarked on a full-speed journey, opening a store every 2 weeks.

What’s it like operating in one of the biggest markets in Europe?

The French pet market is big, but a very competitive environment. It’s a sector where grocery, hypermarkets and supermarkets are the strongest.

You also have quite a few successful pet specialists, strong pure players acting on a global scale, such as Amazon, or on a European scale, like Zooplus, but you also have very strong French pure players.

Additionally, there are garden centers, which aren’t so common in other countries but have an important presence here. It’s a very dynamic but very competitive environment with strong and successful competitors.

So, to win market share, you have to be smart, execute well and be better than the others. It’s really a challenge.

How has Animalis navigated such a competitive landscape?

The good thing with a journey like the one we’ve been on with Animalis is that we’ve had the opportunity to modernize a lot and move forward.

Every time we think of something, we consider how we can differentiate ourselves.

Online has been a challenge, but overall the competitive landscape is not an easy one. We have to move fast and execute excellently.

We have quite a few cards to play. Our belief is that the omnichannel experience is what will help us win in this retail landscape.

Is the online channel important for pet retail?

Online penetration is about 16%, depending on the surveys, but it’s similar to other categories that were where we are about 10 years ago. This will likely double over time.

Although it’s not growing as fast as we’ve seen in other markets, there’s no question it will become very important. So, we must be part of that growth and see it as an opportunity.

In what way is Animalis embracing this potential growth?

The customer is not only online or in one store, but they are everywhere. And we aim to be where they are and offer what they want.

We already offer a broad range of services compared to our competitors. For instance, we’ve had click and collect for a long time, which is not yet offered by all market players.

We’ve just launched a new service that allows us to ship products directly from our stores within 24 to 30 hours.

We’ve started with 8 stores, and we’re going to continue rolling this out. Currently, we’re the only one doing this, and it’s a key part of our strategy to be faster and more efficient than our competitors.

Do you have a specific target for expanding the new service?

Our goal is to match Amazon’s delivery times. We don’t know exactly how many stores we’ll need to reach that, but our starting point is what the customer needs.

The customer demands fast, efficient delivery and a wide range of products. We will have close to 20,000 SKUs from our web catalog. So, our target is to meet the customer’s needs, not just a specific store count.

What does your store layout look like?

We’ve developed 2 main formats: the traditional retail park format, which is about 600 sq m and offers a wide range of products, including small animals and fish.

Then we have an urban concept with stores of around 250 sq m, focusing on dogs and cats, with no live animals.

We are opening stores in a 50/50 split between these 2 formats, depending on the location.

The urban concept is particularly important, because location is a key driver for customers choosing where to shop. Being close to the customer is crucial.

How different is your strategy for the product offering in smaller locations?

In urban stores, we prioritize dog and cat products first and foremost. Aquaristics and small animal products are on sale, but the selection is more limited.

We focus on the 80/20 of what customers need and ensure that we can ship anything else directly to their homes. Despite the smaller size of urban stores, we’ve been able to optimize the space and provide a strong selection of products for dog and cat owners.

Inflation in the category seems to be on a downward trend…

The first thing I did 3 years ago was to lower prices, because we were not competitive enough. Animalis was a retailer that belonged to the higher-priced end of the market and that was very harmful to the brand.

The first thing we did was to start matching our competitors. We had no intention of being the first to lower our prices, but we want to make sure that we’re as competitive as everyone else, or as the most competitive player in the market.

Otherwise, I think you gradually face a major problem.

At the same time we had inflation, so you can imagine it was very hard on our margin.

It was a bit of a challenge – and still is – because while everyone was increasing their prices, we were lowering them. But I think that was the right thing to do, and the result is that we’ve almost tripled our market share since 2022.

Could you tell us something about your range of own label products?

Inflation and overall economic conditions in France have slowed down customer spending. One trend we’ve seen is a move toward own label products, particularly when big brands had huge price increases.

That’s been positive because we have a very wide range of own label options, covering every price quartile, from entry level with fresh meat and antioxidants up to premium products.

Another challenge we’ve seen is with non-food items. We’re growing, but it’s been more challenging this year than last year. People don’t want to trade off on food, but they’re making accessories, toys and things like that last longer.

They’re also more cautious about impulse purchases. To address this, we’ve launched a broad range of own label products, even in non-food items, to stay competitive across all price ranges.

How much does private label or own label represent in your Animalis sales?

Not enough. But we believe that own label should never be more than 50%, and should even be slightly less. National brands bring innovation. They are great brands with great ideas.

As a retailer, our duty is to distribute them, bringing those innovations to our customers. We want a balanced environment between own label and national brands.

Our plan is not to go fully own label. No one does that. We believe that by being a better shop window for national brands, we’ll always have more of them than our competitors.

We also need to provide good value for the customer. Private label helps with loyalty, because a customer can shop elsewhere for a national brand, but with an own label product, they’re more likely to return to us.

We’ve seen how cultivated meat is entering the pet food market. Do you see Animalis having these types of products on the shelves any time soon?

We are looking at it, but we haven’t seen a great demand yet. As soon as it picks up, we’ll be there too. It’s a matter of priorities, but if it’s successful in other markets, there’s no reason why it wouldn’t work in France eventually.

One of your competitors, Maxi Zoo France, plans to open 65 new stores this year. What’s your strategy when it comes to expanding your location count?

We’ve been opening 30 stores every year for the past 2.5 years, and now have 90 stores.

We plan to continue doing that, possibly accelerating. So, whether it’s 30 or 40 stores, we’ll keep developing. Our strategy is simple: we want to be where the customers are.

I don’t want to open so many stores that we get it wrong. If you open a lot of stores, you can make mistakes in location.

We’re not in a position to make too many mistakes, so I’d rather have the right 40 stores than open too many and have to close them again due to poor location decisions.