Only three decades have passed since the wild and skinny Guangdong cat was sniffing around in the bushes, trying to avoid being seen by humans. How did this truly gigantic metamorphosis in Chinese attitudes towards pets happen? So significant, in fact, that in Chinese, an ironic name for cat owners, "scoop attendant" (铲屎官), literally meaning "official in charge of the excrement scoop," has emerged and become firmly established, accurately reflecting the owner's subservient attitude toward his pet.
The competition of a billion people in the struggle for survival is a fearsome force, and the proverbial "quantity always turns to quality" is a perfect truth when it comes to China. The Chinese pet business took off in the early 90's. At that time the luggage unloaded from the airplane arriving from Moscow looked like a mobile zoo: in the designated place put in huge quantities of carriers, which announced the arrival hall meowing and barking. The Chinese have gotten down to business!... If you go to any Chinese park nowadays, you will find an incredible number of cats of all colors, brought in special strollers by their caring owners for promenade. It is so customary to walk pets, and if there is an old expression "to walk a bird" in the language, the concept of "to walk a dog or cat" is . And in any shop, hairdresser's, beauty salon, flower store, confectionery, everywhere you will find a cat, and more often two - pedigreed and fattened, which live in the institution and are the pride of their owners. Moreover, in every decent shopping center there is a special institution where cats are the basis of business, they can be petted, stroked, fed, photographed. And you have to pay for it. Not a koto-cafe, where you can drink coffee under the gaze of a Maine Coon sitting right on your table, but a special place where there is no coffee, but there are cat treats for every taste and purse.
You can feed the kitties here for only 100 yuan per person, feeding time and amount of food (for a fee) is unlimited
The Chinese have copied this (as well as many other things) from the Japanese, because Japan has long and firmly become the standard of living for Chinese youth. By the way, this does not in any way interfere with Chinese patriotism, because the ability to borrow what one likes does not diminish one's love for one's homeland. Fashion, the movie industry, goodies, coffee, cats - everything that Japan once copied from the gaijins is now successfully copied by the Chinese.
The Chinese pet market is only 30 years old and its development is usually divided into 4 stages. The first stage is the Enlightenment period (coma and the introduction of the cat - Enlightenment).
This stage is dated a decade from 1990 to 2000. It began, as usual, with the arrival of missionaries. The missionaries were old foreign expansionists - Nestle and Mars with their century-long experience in the pet industry and feeds. Well known to everyone Purina, Dog Chow, Kitekat, Pedigree, Whiskas, Chappi (and a dozen more) are all their products. They came in with aggressive marketing, and cuddly dogs and cats flooded the tweets. For reference - at the same time they were teaching China about milk, coffee, chocolate. Persistently, persistently, despite negative financial indicators at the start and skepticism of consulting companies. 30 years ago, the Chinese did not drink cow's milk at all, it was not available for sale, and now the shelves of stores in any Chinese hole are just full of dairy products of local producers. This is the case with any foreign products on the Chinese market - anything that starts to be in demand is instantly reproduced by Chinese business on an industrial scale, without shouting slogans about import substitution. And any inept foreign expansion built only on the logic of "there are a billion buyers!", without a clear strategy, understanding of the mentality and huge investments will fail miserably, because it is extremely difficult to compete with the Chinese in the ability to instantly reproduce almost any product for which there is demand. Yes, they will buy what you intended to sell them, dismantle it into molecules, and in a month (a year at most) they will offer you an analog that will beat the original in price and, in recent years, in quality. This is greatly facilitated by the national favorable policy, which puts exporters at a disadvantage compared to local producers.
In 1992, the "Chinese Association for the Protection of Small Animals" was established. Agree, through this name you can feel the difference in the attitude of the Chinese and Europeans to pets, in Europeans such an organization would be called "Association for the Protection of Pets". The establishment of this Association actually marked the formation of the Chinese pet industry.
During the Enlightenment period, the first Chinese companies appeared and started to produce pet products. And, of course, by OEM (original equipment manufacturer), because there was no market in China itself at that time. Thanks to the efforts of the world's industry giants, dogs and cats became fashionable, first as "living toys"... And the Chinese brought animals from... Russia. Yes, yes, it was Russia that became the donor of Chinese breeders, because the procedure of exporting animals from Russia at that time was much simpler than exporting from some Australia or, God forbid, Japan. Besides, the price even for pedigree kittens and puppies in Russia is sometimes marked with the figure "in good hands". And, of course, after a little time, the need to import animals disappeared for natural reasons - the Chinese very quickly learned to breed them, although cats were initially kept at home in cages (and some still do, although less and less often).
And the second stage began - the period of Growth (2000-2010). This is the time of rapid increase in the number of dog and cat owners, which was greatly facilitated not only by the general rise in living standards, but also by the development of the Internet, the main user of which in those years was the urban advanced youth. Together with their pets they broke the millennial staples and animals from "living toys" gradually turned into family members, favorites and "bros". In 2003, the official rules for keeping dogs appeared (the dog became the first pet officially allowed to breed and keep in homes), and in 2009, restrictions on the number of pets in one household were introduced.
According to a report by the Small Animal Welfare Association, during the Growth period, 37% of pet owners were 25-30 years old, 13% were under 25 years old, 24% were 31-35 years old, and 18% were 36-45 years old. The remaining 8% were people after the age of 45. The proportion of older people is still small even now, but will increase proportionately as current owners age. A cat or dog as a comfort in old age is still rare in China. The involvement of "silver economy" consumers (see "I want to grow old in China to live happily ever after") will create additional opportunities, and Chinese manufacturers are optimistic about the future. Incidentally, the increasing reluctance of young people to marry is also contributing to the pet cause.
The ratio of education to having pets was also interestingly distributed. The most significant part was people with a bachelor's degree - 39%, master's degree - 32%, the remaining percentages were distributed approximately equally by people without higher education and with scientific degrees.
Every pet owner and, of course, market player knows that pet food is at least 70 percent of purchases for keeping a pet. That is why the Chinese market began its development with pet food, first under the OEM scheme, and then by creating its own independent brands (OBM - Original Brand Manufacturing), raising the rating and by acquiring foreign companies. Industry standards, laws and regulations were introduced, which finally streamlined the production environment and made life very difficult for exporters. In these years, the first online platforms to serve the needs of the emerging market appeared, which created all the conditions for the next phase to take place.
the stage of Rapid Development. This is still almost 10 years (2010-2019). Of course, the development of the pet industry went in parallel and in proportion to the rise in living standards and was solely due to it. One after another companies appeared on the market offering not only feed, but toys, clothes, hygiene products, medical products and, finally, various services. In 2015, pet health care standards were introduced, and in 2017, Chinese pet industry companies started to enter the stock market on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange.
And, from 2019 to the present, China's pet industry is officially in a period of Superior Development, with the market still growing (although growth slowed during the pandemic) and cats firmly overtaking dogs. The maturation of the market has yielded a stable online plus offline model, and companies have turned to the scientific approach of animal breeding and intelligent innovation in their competitive quest.
Pat industry is very popular with the primary market. And while before 2014, according to open data, the number of investment and financial events per year was no more than 10, in the third phase the number has increased to 30. This is also due to the relatively low investment threshold for entering the market. For example, in 2023, there were four financings of only RMB 10 million, with the three largest investments exceeding RMB 100 million each (Pet Family, Weijiexin Biotechnology and Nannong Animal Medicine).
The bulk of consumers are concentrated in the major developed cities, the leaders of consumption - Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen. The cities of the so-called "second echelon" also demonstrate an enviable growth in wealth, and pet owners are increasingly willing to spend money on their pets, favoring more and more high-quality products. The fact that the main consumers are young people has contributed greatly to the development of online sales, and small retail stores have had to urgently reposition themselves to focus on providing care, boarding, training and treatment services.
Mid-level pet hotel
Recently, more and more offers appear in the luxury segment. For example, in Shenzhen's Shekou district there is a five-star hotel for cats (without owners) - a three-story building near Mangrove, the most expensive residential skyscraper in China. The price of a day in this establishment will cost the owner, depending on the package of services, 800-2000 yuan. The demand for veterinary services is also growing sharply - aging animals need special care and nutrition, and owners are ready to spend a lot for the happy old age of their pets.
Robotic animal tracking device. The rotating camera with a viewing angle of 110° gives a clear image and allows you to see every movement even in the dark
Since the pet industry entered a period of rapid development, Chinese companies have realized the potential of the "blue ocean" of the pet industry and have rushed into innovation, challenging multinational corporations. The industry is experiencing a boom in technological development and "smart" products are taking up an increasing share of the market: smart collars that monitor the pet's heart rate and temperature; smart cameras and toys that can analyze the pet's activity level; smart feeders that dose and distribute food according to an individual nutrition plan. All these products are aimed at remote control over the animal, because their owners are young active people who are busy at work (by the way, this is why cats beat dogs in the race for the hearts of the Chinese, as their maintenance requires less effort on the part of their owners).
Of course, with the development of the market, competition has intensified, and companies with sought-after advantages - high quality products and powerful innovation capabilities - are taking the
lead, emphasizing product quality - healthy, natural, additive-free, etc. The requirement for green products is generally the latest trend in China, which is concerned about a healthy environment to increase life expectancy. This applies to both human and animal products and the newest trends are biodegradable materials, eco-friendly feed and equipment, and personalized approach. Social media advertising plays a crucial role in promoting new trends - Chinese manufacturers have focused on this very advertising, leaving TV to Wiskas, and the social network "weibo" is packed with all sorts of celebrities and their pets.
Super mega Chinese movie star Zhang Yi as a special forces captain and with his pets, founder of a platform to save homeless animals
The main "stages of the big way", which have passed major players in the Chinese market can be traced on the example of the company "ZhongChong" (Yantai China Pet Foods Co., Ltd.), whose products "Wanpy" are already quite well known to Russian consumers.
The company was founded in 1998 in Yantai City, Shandong Province. Until 2012, it was engaged in OEM feed production, then started to develop its own brand, focusing on the production of treats, dry and wet food, then toys were added to the food. Currently, the company's products are a line of assorted snacks (63% of revenue), dry and wet food (17% and 15%), and other products (5%), with half of the revenue still coming from OEM. The company already owns 5 of its own brands: Wanpy, ZEAL, Happy100, Leading and KingKitty. As its advantage it declares environmentally safe raw materials from New Zealand, advanced innovations and ultramodern equipment at its factories (there are already 14 of them). It actively promotes its products on the Chinese online platform TMall, sells its own brand products in the USA, EU, Japan and other countries, including Russia.
This is, or roughly, the story of most of the major Chinese players in a market that will, of course, enter another Period. What it will be like, we are sure to find out. But it can be said with certainty that the Chinese love for cats can no longer be canceled, and through heartfelt affection for pets people become closer and more understandable to each other, mental differences are erased, and this, you must agree, is progress.