Petstock Brand Guidelines: A 1991 Ballarat Produce Store, a Striped Logo and Woolworths

A produce store in regional Victoria and two brothers.

Petstock began as a produce store in the Victorian goldfields city of Ballarat. In a statement to the Parliament of Victoria on 25 May 2022, the member for Wendouree, Juliana Addison, said the Young family took ownership of Ballarat Produce in 1991, that the family’s original retail store was on La Trobe Street in Delacombe, and that the business was born as PETstock in 2002, eleven years later. She named the brothers David and Shane Young as the people who built it. A Victorian Government release of 25 August 2022 likewise gives Ballarat and 1991 as the place and year the business was established.

The chain grew store by store from regional Victoria. The same parliamentary statement said Petstock opened its 100th store in Ballarat in 2013 and its 200th, on Creswick Road, in 2022, the fourth in the city, and that the company then employed about 3,000 staff across 200 sites, 68 of them in Victoria, with its support centre and flagship store still in Ballarat. In 2021 the Youngs set up Petspiration Group as a parent company for Petstock and the other businesses they had gathered; David Young told the trade title Pet Industry News in April 2022 that the group then included grooming salons, vet hospitals and cat boarding alongside the stores.

The name has been written two ways. The 2022 parliamentary record and government release style it “PETstock,” with the opening three letters in capitals, while Woolworths Group’s 2024 documents and later trade reports write it as Petstock, the form used in this guide.

A colourful stripe and a family of store brands.

The most visible part of the identity is the logo. The Wendouree member described it to Parliament in 2022 as Petstock’s colourful striped logo. The tones in this guide are our own reading of a multi-coloured stripe rather than a copy of it.

Behind the stripe sits a wider set of names. Inside Retail reported on 15 December 2022 that the group owned and operated the Petstock store network, the New Zealand e-commerce site Pet.co.nz and own-brand ranges including Caribu and Glow, and ran a loyalty programme for its customers. A Victorian Government release of 25 August 2022 said the group then owned 200 Petstock stores, five distribution centres, 150 grooming salons, 26 vet hospitals and more than 20 pet-care brands. That release marked the start of building work on a new national distribution and operations centre at the Avalon Airport industrial precinct near Geelong, a site of 32,000 square metres meant to replace the group’s existing centre at Truganina.

The store count moved quickly in those years. Inside Retail put the network at 276 stores in December 2022. Woolworths Group’s 2024 annual report listed 257 Petstock retail stores, plus 30 Petstock franchise stores supplied through its wholesale arm, as at mid-2024.

Design and documentation.

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 supermarket stake and a regulator’s review.

In December 2022 the supermarket group Woolworths agreed to take a 55 per cent stake in Petspiration Group, with the Young family and other existing shareholders keeping the rest, Inside Retail reported on 15 December 2022. Shane Young was to stay as chief executive and David Young as managing director, and the business was to run as a stand-alone company with its own board, subject to approval by the Australian and New Zealand competition authorities.

The review turned up a separate issue. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission said on 19 October 2023 that Petstock had completed numerous acquisitions between 2017 and 2022 that had not been notified to it, and that it had significant concerns that four of them may have contravened the Competition and Consumer Act: the purchases of the Western Australian chain Pet City, the Tasmanian chain Animal Tuckerbox, a single store in Eltham, Victoria, and a national chain that in 2019 had itself bought the retailer My Pet Warehouse. On 14 December 2023 the ACCC accepted a court-enforceable undertaking from Petstock to sell a package that included 41 retail stores, 25 co-located vet hospitals, four brands and two online stores, accepted a supporting undertaking from Woolworths, and said it would not oppose Woolworths’ stake. The regulator added that market feedback showed specialty pet retail and grocery to be distinct channels, with specialty stores offering a very different range and service from supermarkets and discount department stores. Inside Retail reported on 28 May 2024 that the Sydney pet chain PetO had agreed to buy the divested stores and clinics. Woolworths’ 2024 annual report says it completed the acquisition of its 55 per cent interest in January 2024.

Since then Petstock has been tied more closely to its partner. A Woolworths Group release of 15 July 2024 said Petstock had joined the Everyday Rewards loyalty programme, so members could collect and redeem points in its stores and online, and Retail World reported on 10 November 2026 that Petstock had begun selling more than 2,000 products through the delivery app DoorDash.

For a design guide, Petstock shows how one bright stripe can carry a chain from a single produce store to hundreds of sites. Compare Petbarn, the national chain it grew up alongside, and Pets at Home, a specialty pet retailer in Britain. For this guide we use a stripe of red, orange and green with an ink blue and a geometric sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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