Brazil is already the third-largest pet market in the world, trailing only the United States and China. Hugo Galvao de Franca Filho, founder and CEO of Enjoy Pets, has watched this paradox up close for years: a market this size still sells most of its products offline, through neighborhood pet shops, superstores and veterinary clinics rather than through websites or apps. That gap is finally closing, but not in the way most retailers expected. It is not driven by pet brands building their own polished online stores. It is being closed by marketplaces.
A market too big to stay offline
For most countries, pet products move online at roughly the same pace as retail in general. Brazil breaks that pattern. Its online penetration for pet products remains well below the country’s overall e-commerce share, even as pet ownership keeps expanding across cities of every size. Dogs alone represent the majority of that spending, and demand for premium and specialized products has grown steadily as owners treat pets more like family members than animals.
The result, as appointed by Hugo Galvao de Franca Filho, is a market with enormous latent demand and a retail structure that has been slow to move it online. Something had to absorb that pressure. Marketplaces did.
Why marketplaces, not webstores, are winning
Building an independent online pet store sounds simple until a brand actually tries to compete for traffic, logistics and payment trust at the same time. Marketplaces solve all three at once. A shopper searching for dog food or a cat carrier lands on a platform they already trust, with delivery times they can compare and reviews from other buyers already visible.
For sellers, the calculation is just as direct. Hugo Galvao mentions that large marketplaces are expected to absorb the overwhelming majority of Brazil’s incremental e-commerce growth over the next two years, leaving a smaller but still meaningful slice for independent retailers who invest in their own channels. For a category like pet products, where trust and delivery speed weigh heavily on the buying decision, that concentration is even sharper.
What changes for brands that only sell in their own store
A pet brand that only sells through its own website is competing for visibility on two fronts: getting found, and getting trusted enough to buy from a name the customer has never heard of. A brand that also lists on a marketplace inherits some of that trust immediately, along with logistics infrastructure it would take years to build alone.
This does not mean the standalone store disappears. It means its job changes. Instead of carrying the full weight of first contact with a new customer, it becomes the place for loyalty programs, subscriptions and higher-margin bundles, once the marketplace has already done the work of the first sale.
The consumer behind the click
Brazilian pet owners buying online tend to repeat certain categories, especially food and recurring supplies, rather than treat every purchase as a one-off decision. That pattern rewards sellers who show up consistently in search results and keep stock available, which is exactly where marketplace visibility pays off over time. It also explains why smaller, well-run sellers can still carve out real share even inside a marketplace dominated by a handful of giants.
Hugo Galvao believes this shift is only getting started. As more of Brazil’s pet spending moves online, the businesses that grow fastest will be the ones that treat marketplaces as a primary channel rather than a secondary experiment while still building a direct relationship with their customers on the side.
More on how Enjoy Pets approaches this balance between marketplace scale and direct customer relationships is available at www.enjoypets.com.br.