Pet Industry News
The deals, launches, and strategic moves behind the brands and operators shaping the industry.
Escalade Buys ASL Solutions, Betting on Pet Hard Goods
Escalade, the public sporting goods company behind Goalrilla and STIGA, has acquired ASL Solutions, a founder-owned manufacturer of insulated dog and cat houses. The deal, terms undisclosed, hands Escalade a rotational molding capability it didn't have before and marks its first move into pet hard goods.
Fi Puts Its Dog Tracker on Starlink Satellites, Betting Connectivity Is the Moat
Fi launched Ultra, the first consumer dog tracker on T-Satellite with Starlink, keeping dogs locatable past cellular range. The satellite feature is really a subscription play, and the Whistle shutdown shows the lock-in risk baked into pet-wearable memberships.
A supplement brand bets that cat compliance is a format problem, not a formula one
Pet Honesty launched Cat Squeezables, eight lickable purée supplements for cats, live on DTC, Amazon, and Chewy now and reaching Petco in August. The actives are commodity; the bet is that the lickable format cats already love solves the supplement-compliance problem that caps the category.
A Dog Blood Test That Reads Several Diseases at Once, Without a Sequencer
LatusPet, an Oxford biotech startup, published peer-reviewed evidence that its metabolomics-and-AI platform screens dogs for cancer and cardiovascular disease from a single blood sample. Unlike PetDx's sequencing-based cancer test, it needs no sequencer and reads multiple conditions at once. The science is proven; distribution, owned by IDEXX and the diagnostic incumbents, is the real hurdle.
Unicharm Enters India Leading With Litter, Not Food
Unicharm is opening its India pet care business with cat litter and toiletries rather than premium food, riding baby-care and feminine-care distribution it already owns in-country. The sequencing is the lesson: a market entry is a distribution problem before it is a product problem, and diversified CPG giants can enter pet sideways at scale.
Product marked for destruction ended up back on shelves
Mars recalled two lots of Pedigree wet dog food it had already condemned and sent for destruction, after the cans were diverted to U.S. shelves. The operator lesson is the unaudited disposal chain.
A Wrinkly-Breed Skincare Brand Widens Its Wedge With a Tail-Cleaning Tool
Squishface, a skincare line focused entirely on wrinkly and brachycephalic breeds, added a tail-cleaning brush and is expanding into groomer, retailer, and vet distribution. The move trades mass-market reach for depth, trust, and lifetime value inside a die-hard ownership base.