Fido Fave at SuperZoo 2024: Notes From Las Vegas

This week two of us, Michael Chen and Jason Song, walked SuperZoo 2024 at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas. We did not exhibit this year. We came to look, listen, and take notes.

What SuperZoo is

SuperZoo is the largest pet industry trade show in North America. Retailers, distributors, groomers and brands from around the world fill the halls for three days in August. For a small brand like ours, it is the fastest way to see where the whole category is heading in one place.

What we looked at

We spent most of our time in the grooming and home-care aisles and at the New Product Showcase, where brands enter their newest launches to be judged. A few things stood out.

The brands that drew the biggest crowds were not the ones with the lowest prices. They were the ones with a clear point of view: a specific pet parent in mind, a product designed around one real problem, and packaging and demos that explained it in ten seconds. Many of them had already built a loyal following on social media — their booths were busy because customers already knew them.

Grooming tools themselves are getting more thoughtful. Rounded tips, self-cleaning mechanisms, and handles designed for long sessions are becoming the baseline rather than the exception. That matches what we hear from our own customers on Chewy.

What it means for us

We came home with a clearer answer to a question we had been circling for a while: what should a small brand focus on? The answer we saw on the floor was simple. Pick your customer, solve one real problem well, and be patient enough to build a reputation around it.

That is the direction our product work is taking. Our next brush, which has been in development since last winter, just came off its first production run, and it was designed the way the best products at the show were designed: around one animal, one problem, and a lot of testing.

Thank you to everyone who stopped to talk with us. See you at the next show.

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