Pets at Home Brand Guidelines: A 1991 Chester Store, a 2014 Listing & a Nomad “Pets” Identity

One shop, a founder and PetSmart’s UK stores.

Pets at Home began with a single store in Chester in 1991, opened by Anthony Preston, according to both English Wikipedia and the company’s own history page. The business grew as a chain of out-of-town pet superstores. In December 1999 it bought PetSmart’s UK business, which English Wikipedia says brought a chain of 140 stores under the Pets at Home name; the company’s timeline gives the same figure and dates the start of its in-store Companion Care vet practices to that year.

Ownership then passed between private-equity investors. The company’s history page and English Wikipedia both say the European firm Bridgepoint bought it in July 2004, and that the US investment firm KKR took over in January 2010. Along the way the chain opened a national distribution centre in Stoke-on-Trent in 2003 and a second one in Northampton in 2011, according to the company, and its 200th store opened in Barnstaple in November 2007.

In February 2014 the trade magazine petworldwide reported that KKR had hired banks to lead a flotation, and that the chain then had more than 350 stores across the UK and more than 6,000 staff. It also noted two recent purchases: the equestrian store chain Ride-Away and Vets4Pets, then a network of 93 vet practices. The flotation followed in March 2014, when Pets at Home Group Plc was listed on the London Stock Exchange. English Wikipedia says it has since been a constituent of the FTSE 250 index, and that KKR sold its remaining 12.3 per cent stake in January 2018. Companies House lists the listed parent, incorporated in February 2014, as registered at Handforth in Cheshire.

Superstores, salons and vet practices under one roof.

The store is the core of the brand. English Wikipedia describes Pets at Home as a British retailer selling pets, pet food, toys, bedding and medication, with in-store services such as grooming, veterinary care and dog training, and says it runs 453 stores across the UK as well as an online shop. The company’s own timeline marks the steps: online shopping at petsathome.com in 2008; Groom Room salons, first in seven stores, in 2009; the VIP (Very Important Pets) loyalty club in 2012, which the company says reached four million members in 2015; “Order in Store” in 2017, giving shoppers access to its extended online range; a “Store of the future” format in 2019; one-hour Click & Collect across the country in 2020; and its 450th store in 2021.

Own-label food is part of the shelf. The company dates the launch of its Wainwright’s food brand to 2007, the same year it says it began a pet-adoption scheme in selected stores for small animals that needed new homes. In 2012 it opened Pets at Home Asia, an office for sourcing products directly, the company says, and in 2019 it bought a stake in the online pet-sitting service Tailster.

The vet side grew alongside the shops. English Wikipedia describes Vets for Pets, formerly Vets4Pets, as a network of joint-venture practices in which vets or veterinary nurses become partners and pay the company a share of turnover as a management fee for back-office services. English Wikipedia counts 394 joint-venture surgeries and 47 practices managed by the group, alongside 316 grooming salons. The company says it bought its first specialist referral centre in 2015 and three more in 2016. Shops, grooming salons and vet practices are the three parts the 2023 identity was built to tie together.

How pet-supply retailers present themselves.

Pet-supply retailers present themselves first through the store. Many trade from large out-of-town units described as superstores, where food, bedding, toys and aquarium or small-animal supplies run down long aisles under plain category signs. Several chains have added services under the same roof: grooming salons, vet clinics and training, each often with its own name that sits beside the main shop name on the fascia and in the aisles.

Naming follows the same pattern. Chains tend to keep one short shop name and add own-label ranges with names of their own, so a single store can carry the retailer’s brand, its food and accessory ranges and many outside makers side by side. In the UK, for example, Pets at Home dates its Wainwright’s food range to 2007, and trade reports of Jollyes have named its K9, Lifestage and Raw and Simple ranges. When a chain unifies these names, as Pets at Home did in 2023, the change is usually reported in the design and retail press.

Loyalty clubs and online shops are the other public face. Retailers publish membership schemes for regular buyers, such as Pets at Home’s VIP club, launched in 2012 according to the company, alongside websites with click-and-collect, delivery and repeat-order options. Shelf prices, promotions and member offers are presented in the stores and online, and change often, so a design guide describes how they are shown rather than what they are.

Behind the shop fronts sit corporate and investor pages. These usually give a founding story, the current owner and any stock-market listing, and many chains in this category have passed between private-equity owners before or after a listing. This guide sets out what dated sources say about each company’s founders, owners and listings, and treats the companies’ own descriptions as their claims.

A 2023 identity that put every service under one word.

In April 2023 Pets at Home relaunched its brand. Retail Gazette reported on 20 April 2023 that the vet business would trade as Vets for Pets and the grooming service as Pets Grooming, with everything brought under one identity, Pets. The launch campaign carried the line “We’re all for pets,” set to Meat Loaf’s 1990s hit “I’d Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That),” and ran across cinema, TV, press, radio, digital and outdoor, the paper said. A week later petworldwide added that the identity was being introduced across more than 450 stores, more than 350 grooming salons and nearly 500 veterinary practices.

The design came from the agency Nomad. It’s Nice That reported on 20 April 2023 that Nomad warmed up the logo with calligraphic flourishes, echoed in a wordmark typeface for the sub-brands with tail-flick descenders and sloped-top ascenders, and built a graphic system from paw and fingerprint shapes, drawn from what the agency called “the connection of people and their pets.” Nomad commissioned the type foundry Colophon to draw two custom typefaces, including Pets Headline, for use across every channel, the magazine said. Illustrations of owners and their animals came from Hannah Warren, and photography from Roo Lewis, with pet portraits by Liz Seabrook.

The company’s own timeline records the change plainly, as “Launched our new consumer brand” in 2023, next to a new purpose-built distribution centre brought into use the same year.

For a design guide, Pets at Home shows how a retailer with shops, salons and vet practices can fold several trading names into one short word and a mark with calligraphic touches. Compare Jollyes, another UK pet-supply chain, and PetSmart, whose UK stores Pets at Home bought in 1999. For this guide we use a leaf green, a warm cream and a soft clay with a rounded sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Pets at Home’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.