A room full of people

In October we are heading to Copenhagen. Our International Pet Conference brings the industry together for two days, and by now the programme is largely in place: presentations, panels and, at least as importantly, the conversations that happen in the margins. Copenhagen itself is no accident as a venue: the Nordic markets have produced some of the more interesting retail and service concepts of recent years. Some of the faces will be familiar from previous years, others will be joining us for the first time, and it is precisely that mixture that tends to make the discussions worth travelling for. In an industry that increasingly organises itself through screens, a room full of people from different markets remains hard to replace.

Two decisions will be taken in Copenhagen. The Best Newcomer award goes to a company at the very beginning of its story. And at the evening event we will name the Pet Personality of the Year 2026. Both awards are, in the end, about people rather than product ranges.

Before that, congratulations are due elsewhere. The winners of our Products of the Year competition have been chosen: Stroetmann Tiernahrung, JR Farm and Woko convinced the specialist retailers among our readers with their new developments. A vote by the trade is a demanding one, because retailers judge a product not only on the idea behind it but on whether it can be explained across a counter and sold twice. Congratulations to all three.

Explaining something across a counter is also the theme of one of the features in this issue, although the counter in question is a digital one. Koi breeder Martin Kammerer sells fish that are anything but self-explanatory, and he has been selling them successfully online for years. How he manages to give advice at a distance, and to keep customers coming back to him rather than to the next supplier, is worth reading for anyone who assumes that advice-intensive categories belong exclusively in the store.

We also look at the cat category, which continues to move in directions that not every supplier anticipated. Cats have long since overtaken dogs in numbers across much of Europe, but the shelf space, the innovation budgets and the marketing attention have been slower to follow, and the current figures show where that gap is finally beginning to close. The second piece deals with a transaction that has attracted a good deal of attention: Trixie and Central Garden & Pet have found each other, and by all accounts the outcome is one…