14 Business Ideas For Pet Lovers In 2023

My name is Justin Palmer and together with my co-founder Marshall Morris, we started iHeartDogs, a lifestyle store and blog for passionate dog parents. We’re fortunate to have grown one of the largest online communities for dog lovers, with over 25 million members in our Facebook groups, pages, and email newsletters.

We sell a pretty wide range of products for both dogs and dog owners. Most popular is our line of supplements, treats, and CBD oil. We’re also known for fun lifestyle products like t-shirts, bracelets, wine glasses, car stickers and magnets, and a lot more. Our customers love anything that allows them to make a statement about how much they love their dogs.

The one thing that ties all our products together is a cause. We’re passionate about funding animal rescue efforts through every product sold, and each item donates to a specific program. For example, most products donate anywhere from 3 to 15 meals to animal shelters. We also donate toys, blankets, shelter transports, and help fund service dogs for veterans.

At 22, I threw away my 2 engineering degrees and started my own e-commerce business. Five years later, and I couldn’t be happier with my decision.

My name is Kyle and I’m the founder and CEO of Pawstruck.com. If you have a moment, I’d like to share with you the story of how and why I created my business.

I’ve been a passionate dog owner my entire life. My first dog, Mali, and I were inseparable growing up, and I now share that same bond with my current dog, Tyson.

Hi! My name is Steve Appelbaum and I started a vocational school called Animal Behavior College (ABC). Having trained dogs for years and seeing how dramatically the pet industry was (and still is) growing, I wanted to create something that would allow passionate animal lovers a real chance to earn a living helping animals.

Back in 1998, the only two educational paradigms I knew were brick and mortar and correspondence type programs. I rejected the brick and mortar model because I didn’t have the capital to set up physical locations all across the nation. What’s more and I guess in 1998 I was ahead of my time, I believed that the internet would revolutionize education and make many conventional educational facilities obsolete.

Correspondence (distance learning) programs were the other option and while these were not new concepts, I didn’t like them because they lacked the hands-on element I knew was vital for people to experience if they wanted to become working dogs trainers. Since the only two options I knew weren’t going to cut it, I thought of a third option.

HousePaws started 10 years ago this April. I had become disenchanted with practicing in a “normal” veterinary environment: appointments every 10-15 min, stressed owners/ pets/ workers, etc. I was starting work and it was dark outside and leaving work and it was dark outside. Clients, despite liking me as a vet, did not perceive the value of the visit was worth what they were paying, and the hospital I worked out was corporate-minded. The practice had one size fits all plans which were not consistent with how I like to practice. I consider every patient as an individual. Each pet, even those living in the same house, have different lifestyles sometimes.

I decided to go mobile. I wanted to bring high-quality patient care to the pet, in the comfort of their own home. I planned on using my family SUV and visiting patient homes. I thought I would make some money with the low overhead and have plenty of time to spend with my 3 young children.

At the end of 2010, I was working alone, 80 hours a week, and making $60,000 in revenue. Today we have over 100 employees and are making more than 7 million in revenue and thankfully I am not working 80 hours a week anymore!

I’m Tyson Walters, the founder and CEO of Shed Defender. The company officially launched in October 2016, but I came up with the idea about 6 years ago and spent a few years testing out fabrics and designs so it’s been a long road to get to where we are today.

The only product we sell right now is the flagship product - the Shed Defender, which is a versatile onesie that contains pet hair and dander, reduces anxiety and can replace the medical cone for dogs with hotspots, skin conditions, allergies, surgical sites and more. We have nine different sizes so we are able to fit dogs from about 5 lbs. up to 200 lbs.

To date, we’ve sold over 30,000 units and generated over $1.7 million in sales. In 2019 were expected to continue growing and have some exciting new products in the works!

Hi. My name is Melodi Landi. I am the Founder & Owner of Furry Fellas Pet Service LLC.

Furry Fellas came into existence in 2006 when a need was discovered in the RI community for reliable and professional in-home pet care.

Furry Fellas offers a solution for the busy pet parent by providing mid-day dog walks / dog exercise sessions, mid-day let outs, vacation sitting visits, overnights in your home, in our home cage-free dog boarding & more... There are times when pet parents need to be away from home and we as pet parents, have a duty to our fur kids to ensure they are taken care of when we can’t be there.

My name is Spyq and I am a co-creator of Cat Sushi.

Cat Sushi is a flaky, tuna based treat that cats love. It is our flagship product that eventually led to us forming our current company Presidio Natural Pet Company, where we design and manufacture ultra-premium, natural, and healthy food products for pets.

We focus to create products in the pet space that best serve the customer - your pet - and believe that high quality and healthy pet products can help cultivate relationships between customers and stores.

Hey, Fur Friends! My name is Kaila Piepkow and I am Owner and Principal Designer at Dox Design, and dog-mom to three spoiled dachshunds. I’ve been a (mildly) crazy dog lady my whole life, so naturally, when I started my own design agency I decided to niche down and focuses on pet businesses and animal lovers.

At Dox Design we put the spotlight on exceptional pet businesses and products with drool-worthy branding, website and packaging design. Our bread and butter is branding and graphic design. We do everything from logos, to postcards, to tradeshows, and more. Dox Design aims to ensure your aesthetic is in-line with the message you want to portray to your audience. By taking the time to build a relationship with our clients, we make the most strategic decisions to develop top-notch brands.

We strive to make great design accessible to everyone—even brands starting out with a low budget. That’s why we’re very excited for the upcoming release of our online store. This is where brands will be able to go to purchase templated designs, ranging from business cards to stock photos, to upgrade their branding. Be on the lookout late summer for the launch here.

Hi Guys! Michael and Erin here. We are the co-founders of Dope Dog and we’re on a mission to make dogs happy.

We started Dope Dog in 2017 to bring the benefits of CBD to the pet world. We designed a product we wished we had for our dog James during his recovery from 2 ACL surgeries. The medicine he was prescribed had negative side effects and we were looking for a natural alternative. We started supplementing with CBD and the results were undeniable. We wished there was a dog product on the market for us to continually use on him, and that's how Dope Dog was born!

The first product we created was a human-grade dog biscuit called the Calming Crunchie. Dogs went crazy for it and pet parents were happy to find a quality CBD product that was designed specifically for dogs by dog lovers.

We’re Lucas Walker and Riley Wallbank, and we are from Toronto. We make all natural dog treats with our company Treats Happen.

Our flagship product is our beef lung dog treats. Dogs go crazy for it and their parents love that it’s healthy and made without fillers or additives. We’re making about $15K per month right now but expect that to consistently double by the end of the year as we launch our new branding and increase distribution.

One of our biggest learnings is that we aren’t just an e-commerce company, we’re a brand. Many people who want to start a business look to be direct to consumer through their own website. We look to be available on as many profitable channels as possible.

I’m Jill Bong, co-founder of Chicken Armor®. We designed a different chicken saddle that makes it not only affordable but low-maintenance as well.

What is a chicken saddle? It is basically a chicken “vest” that helps to protect the backs of the chicken from mating or molting injuries. The coverage that these saddles provide gives the chicken time to heal and to grow new feathers while preventing other chickens from pecking at these sore spots.

Our customers are mostly homesteaders or suburban chicken-keepers who want to protect their chickens affordably and without the hassle of having to maintain and wash a more traditional saddle.

Hello, my name is Roy Stein and together with my good friend Bill Rebozo we founded BabelBark 4 years ago.

BabelBark is a very unique software platform that connects the whole ecosystem around pets, both dogs and cats, in one place - on one app and platform. We connect the pet parent with the vet, groomer, walker, trainer, shelter - and anyone else in their community of care givers, enabling the sharing of data, remote connectivity, remote monitoring - and basically caring for the fur baby in an easy and modern way.

We started the company based on an idea we had when we were planning to go on vacation and were worried about who will take care of our pets. The vets and caregivers have a portal where they can do cloud based client management, online scheduling and all the remote monitoring, while the pet parents have an app that not only enables them to connect to all the care providers, but also receive newsletters and articles that are specific to them and their specific pet. We rolled out the products last year and have seen amazing growth that we never expected… we already have over 200,000 pets on the platform and 2019 is really “exploding” for us with over 800% growth over the same period in 2018. For example, in July 2019 alone we had over 7,800 new downloads, and August is on track to be 60% higher than July…..

My name is Chelsea Rhoads and I am the CEO/Co-Founder of pup-eeze, the smartest device on four legs. pup-eeze is a wellness tracker for dogs that tracks activity, monitors location and automates our dog’s lives by connecting them with hundreds of smart home devices giving ourselves and our dogs the ability to monitor, maintain and change the environment of the home if we’re concerned about separation anxiety or well-being.

We’ve built out a consumer-facing application for dog owners to monitor their pets’ data, visualize trends and send alerts when necessary. We’re focusing on the happy dog by creating an adjustable ecosystem for the dog’s environment.

We’ve had great success speaking with and testing the wellness tracker among those who love their dogs and love technology. We thought, “we bring our dogs on every other journey with us, why not include them in the technology journey as well?” With the overwhelming support from the technology community we were able to strategically partner with an emerging leader in the IoT enterprise solution field; Fathym.

My name is Yuri Sinitsa and I’m the founder and CEO of COLLAR LLC - the pet products manufacturer. The main mission of the company is making pets and people happy. Our customers are pet parents all over the world who are fond of innovative solutions for their four-legged loved ones.

Among the best sellers of the COLLAR company, there are AiryVest - the lightest reversible dog vest in the world that was awarded by Pet Business magazine as the best product in the USA in 2016, PULLER, the dog fitness tool that created a world sport and many many others.

For now, COLLAR LLC is a constant member of APPA and a constant visitor of GPE. Its presence in the USA is constantly growing, now there are 77 companies that are good and faithful partners of COLLAR, 5 of them are wholesale retailers.