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Krefeld (dpa) - Not only the food trade is a winner of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Pet supplies retailers such as Fressnapf, Zooplus or Futterhaus also achieved strong sales growth in the Corona year 2020.
"The emotional relationship between humans and animals has become even more intense during the crisis," reported Fressnapf founder and owner Torsten Toeller on Wednesday.
And with that the willingness to dig deeper into your pocket for dogs or cats, or even to buy an animal for the first time, has grown.
The result: Fressnapf, Germany's market leader for pet supplies, achieved the greatest absolute sales growth in the company's history last year.
Across Europe, its sales rose by 15.2 percent to 2.65 billion euros, as Toeller reported.
The company clearly exceeded the target set for its 30th anniversary.
An important reason for this, however, was that the company was classified as a system-relevant retailer across Europe and its stores therefore remained open even in lockdown.
According to Fressnapf estimates, consumers in Germany alone spent around six billion euros last year on pet food, litter and accessories from scratching posts for cats to luminous collars for dogs.
A good quarter of it, around 1.6 billion euros, ended up in the Krefeld company's coffers.
That means an increase of twelve percent compared to the previous year.
Abroad, sales even rose by a good 20 percent to almost 1.1 billion euros.
The bottom line is that the group has benefited from the strong sales growth, according to Krefeld.
Traditionally, the company does not provide precise information on the result.
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The biggest growth driver at Fressnapf was the online channel.
Here sales rose by 45 percent to around 160 million euros.
However, the company has some catching up to do here.
For a long time, the people of Krefeld had neglected the online business.
Here competitor Zooplus is way ahead.
While Fressnapf achieved online sales of 160 million euros in 2020, the pure online retailer expected sales of around 1.8 billion euros.
That would be an increase of almost 20 percent compared to the previous year.
At Zooplus too, business in 2020 was more than encouraging, according to CEO Cornelius Patt.
The company raised its forecast three times in the course of the financial year.
Meanwhile, the Fressnapf rival Futterhaus, which increased its sales by 12.7 percent to 452 million euros, has shown that good business can currently be done in the industry even without a strong online base.
The company is currently represented with 351 locations in Germany and 42 locations in Austria and sees the opportunity to expand the network of locations to 550 markets in the coming years.
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Market leader Fressnapf will continue to grow in 2021.
Overall, sales are expected to increase again by more than 10 percent in the current year.
The opening of more than 100 new locations in Europe and the rollout of online shops in other countries should contribute to this.
Further acquisitions are also possible.
Above all, the group intends to vigorously expand its mainstay in online trading and reduce the gap to its competitor Zooplus.
In the current year, online sales are expected to increase again by more than 40 percent.
"We want to and will conquer this market for ourselves," said Fressnapf managing director Hans-Jörg Gidlewitz.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210224-99-576363 / 2
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