Ready to Launch: Lessons from Emerging Pet Brands at SuperZoo 2025

Each year, the Emerging Brand exhibitors at SuperZoo showcase the next wave of innovation in pet care—founders who are redefining how products are made, marketed, and scaled. From smart nutrition and sustainable treats to digital-first retail models, these early-stage companies offer lessons for any founder navigating the complex path from prototype to presence. With pet owners now spending over $140 billion annually in the U.S. alone, these shifts carry real economic weight.

Five Lessons for building Emerging Brands from Pet Care Experts on Stage

On stage, we heard from a line-up of former CEOs, investors and strategic partners on what it takes to build and scale a pet care brand, and how to work with pet parents, their pets, partners, and investors in a market seeing a steady stream of new startups and brands offering solutions. The 5 key lessons, gathered by The Digital PawPrint team on the ground, were:

1. Start with an authentic problem, not just a product

Founders across the stage echoed the same theme: their businesses started by solving a pain point they felt personally. Whether it was developing healthier formulations after struggling to find clean pet foods, or creating tools for independent retailers to compete with big-box chains, purpose drove product. In a category as emotionally driven as pet care, authenticity is the strongest differentiator.

2. Build brand trust early through transparency and science

The standout exhibitors focused on backing up claims with data, from vet partnerships and nutritional testing to supply chain traceability. Consumers are increasingly looking beyond cute packaging; they want proof of efficacy and ethics. Emerging brands that communicated their testing methods, ingredient sources, and measurable outcomes built credibility quickly with both buyers and investors.

3. Distribution is strategy, not an afterthought

Many founders admitted their biggest learning came from understanding retail dynamics. Getting on the shelf is only the start; staying there requires education, sell-through support, and digital visibility. Several brands leveraged hybrid approaches: starting with DTC for feedback loops, then using trade shows like SuperZoo to connect with distributors and retail partners who could scale reach sustainably.

4. Investors want proof of product-market fit, not just passion

The SuperZoo Emerging Brand Stage wasn't just a showcase; it was a funding conversation. Investors emphasized that traction, repeat purchase rates, and community engagement now outweigh glossy growth projections. Founders who could articulate a clear path to profitability, backed by metrics and efficient execution, stood out.

5. Don't underestimate storytelling

Even the most technically sophisticated innovations, whether in AI nutrition planning or sustainable packaging, need clear storytelling to resonate. Brands that lead with their "why" find faster adoption. As one founder put it, "We sell trust before we sell treats."

Brand Spotlights: Innovation in Action

As we took these lessons from conversations with founders, it was clear they were playing out across SuperZoo’s floor.

We also captured the high-level stories behind these innovations and categorized them in three ways: proactive care that prevents problems before they start, data-centric products that get smarter over time, and convenience integrations that make pet care fit seamlessly into daily life. Here’s how emerging brands are putting these principles into practice.

Proactive Care: Building Prevention Into Daily Life

Pet care has traditionally operated on a simple principle: wait for a problem, then fix it. The new generation of pet brands is flipping this model entirely, embedding prevention into daily routines and capturing ongoing attention through habits rather than emergency purchases.

Petkit: Smart litter boxes analyze urine color with each use, catching kidney disease and urinary blockages weeks before symptoms appear. For multi-cat households, facial recognition tracks which cat exhibits which patterns, creating individual health profiles over time. A premium price point ($300+) creates different unit economics than traditional litter boxes, generating ongoing data relationships and monthly subscription revenue.

Guru Pet and Pawzler: Modular puzzle systems keep mental stimulation fresh, treating cognitive engagement as preventive mental health care rather than simple entertainment. The approach addresses behavioral problems before they develop, positioning enrichment toys as proactive wellness tools rather than occasional diversions.

EverChew: Pre-drilled bully sticks eliminate choking hazards by design rather than hoping dogs won't swallow the dangerous end piece. The product engineers the risk out entirely, exemplifying how prevention can be built into product design rather than relying on consumer behavior.

ReadyRESCUE: Positions itself as first-response for pet poisoning from chocolate, THC, or human medications, addressing the emergency before the vet visit. The brand creates a new category between incident and intervention, capturing the critical moments when owners need immediate action.

Calm Paws: Brings physical therapy-grade recovery aids like knee braces and lift harnesses into consumer markets, bridging the gap between veterinary care and at-home recovery. The products support rehabilitation as a daily practice rather than a clinical-only intervention.

Data-Centric Products: When Hardware Becomes Intelligence

Pet products are evolving from static objects into data-generating devices that get smarter over time. When products generate their own evidence through measurable outcomes, they prove value without relying on marketing claims. First movers who reach critical mass in data collection will be extremely difficult to displace, even by competitors with better hardware.

iPupPee: Training device monitors potty habits, service-dog life events, and senior dog routines with live video and two-way audio. The system learns patterns and sends alerts when routines deviate, helping owners spot health changes or training regressions early. The device captures the full picture of daily behavior, creating a longitudinal health record that grows more valuable over time.

Petfamily: UV water fountain keeps water clean for 30 days while passively logging consumption patterns that flag dehydration risks. Changes in drinking behavior often signal illness before other symptoms appear, giving owners an early warning system that runs automatically. The fountain proves its value through data rather than promises.

BirdReel: Solar-powered smart feeders use AI to identify over 10,000 bird species while capturing HD video and audio, tracking visiting patterns over time. Each identification improves the algorithm for all users, transforming what started as a bird feeder into a distributed wildlife monitoring network. The product gets smarter with every customer interaction.

Findpet: Collar system layers GPS, QR codes, microchip registry, and AI-based coat recognition rather than relying on a single tracking method. Each additional data layer increases recovery probability geometrically, showing how redundancy and intelligence combine to solve high-stakes problems more effectively than any single solution.

Fido's Bark App: Consolidates pet health records, vet visits, medications, and vaccinations into one platform that owners and veterinarians can both access. By solving the fragmentation problem across providers, it creates a centralized health hub where the app matters more than any single piece of hardware.

Convenience Integration: Making Pet Care Disappear Into Life

The smartest brands are integrating pet products into existing lifestyle infrastructure rather than asking owners to do something new. Pet care products win by fitting seamlessly into existing routines or making old routines obsolete.

Pura: Adapted their mainstream home fragrance system for pet households, offering app-controlled diffusion with pet-safe scents. Rather than creating a separate "pet care" moment, the product integrates into the home environment infrastructure owners already use, making it invisible as a task.

ChefPaw and PetCooker: Automated meal prep appliances collapse an entire workflow—research recipes, shop for ingredients, cook, portion, store—into a 40-minute automated cycle. Think of them as appliances that eliminate the need for meal prep knowledge rather than tools that require it, removing both time investment and expertise barriers.

Red Rocket: Litter disposal system brings diaper-genie convenience to cat waste, making an unpleasant daily task nearly effortless. The familiar mechanism from baby care translates directly to pet care, requiring no learning curve and dramatically reducing friction.

Wag'n Tails: Sells turnkey grooming vans that bring the groomer to customers, eliminating travel time and stress for both pets and owners. By reimagining distribution entirely, the brand removes the "getting there" problem that prevents many owners from maintaining regular grooming schedules.

SoySand: Tofu-based litter solves the "lug a 40-pound clay box" problem with lighter alternatives that are easier to handle, carry upstairs, and dispose of. The sustainability story matters, but the immediate win is physical convenience.

What This Means for the Next Generation

Taken together, the lessons from stage and the patterns on the floor point to a simple shift: the winners in pet care pair clear customer problems with evidence, then scale through the right channels. Proactive care builds daily habits, data-centric products prove outcomes over time, and convenience integrations remove friction so adoption sticks. That combination earns trust from pet parents, makes retailers’ jobs easier, and gives investors measurable signals beyond pitch decks.

For founders, the path is practical: validate a real pain point, show the data behind your claims, and treat distribution as design. For retailers and partners, back brands that reduce returns, lift basket sizes, and come with built-in education. For investors, look for repeat usage, clean unit economics, and a credible route to profitability. If SuperZoo’s emerging brands are any guide, the next wave won’t be defined by novelty, but by disciplined execution that turns good ideas into durable businesses.