From Doskocil Manufacturing to a house of pet brands.

Petmate is a pet products company headquartered in Arlington, Texas, between Dallas and Fort Worth. According to the release with which the investment firm Platinum Equity announced its purchase of the business in September 2021, the company was founded in 1959 as Doskocil Manufacturing, with a focus on pet transportation, and that focus led it to develop a dog kennel. Kennels were still the first item on the product list in that 2021 release.

The Doskocil name stayed in use long after Petmate became the public face of the business. When the Chicago private equity firm Wind Point Partners bought the company in January 2011, the trade magazine PET worldwide described the target as the Doskocil Manufacturing Company, trading as Petmate, and added that Petmate would continue to manufacture under its previous company name. The Orange County Business Journal reported the same deal as the sale of Arlington-based Doskocil Manufacturing Co., which does business as Petmate.

The seller in 2011 was Westar Capital, a Costa Mesa, California, private equity firm funded by the businessman George Argyros, the Orange County Business Journal reported; terms were not disclosed. Wind Point’s own announcement said the firm was partnering with the executive Joe Messner, who joined Petmate as chief executive and had earlier worked with Wind Point at Bushnell Performance Optics. Petmate was at the same time acquiring the products and intellectual property of Bamboo, the pet products division of Munchkin, Inc., whose line included grooming tools and the Fat Cat brand of dog and cat toys. Wind Point described a range of carriers, shelters, collars and leashes, feeding and watering systems, toys and pet beds, sold under names including Dogzilla, Booda and LeBistro. Messner called Petmate “a solid platform for growth – an established brand with a long history”.

Toys bought in, a factory kept at home.

The toy side of the business grew mostly through acquisition. In December 2012, Wind Point announced that Petmate had acquired JW Pet Company and Canine Hardware, adding the JW Hol-ee Roller toys and the Chuckit! balls and launchers. By then, the announcement said, Petmate also sold under the Aspen Pet and Doskocil names alongside its own. Messner said the two companies brought “exciting names” to the toys and accessories category, and Wind Point’s principal Paul Peterson said the toy category offered a chance to innovate and build strong consumer brands.

Wind Point brought in Alice Tillett as chief executive in 2014, the firm said when it announced its exit. She had previously spent twelve years at Pacific Cycle, latterly as president, and before that had been vice president of sales at Huffy Bicycle Co. On 22 May 2017, Wind Point said it had sold Petmate to Olympus Partners of Stamford, Connecticut. Olympus’s release of the same day described its purchase of Petmate Holdings Co., listing crates and carriers, outdoor shelters, feeding and watering products and toys, and named ChuckIt!, JW Pet and the licensed Jackson Galaxy line among the company’s toy brands. Olympus partner Dave Cardenas said the firm looked forward to working alongside Tillett and her management team.

Manufacturing in Texas is a point the owners have returned to. Olympus said in 2017 that the company designed, manufactured and distributed its products from its facility in Arlington, and Tillett, quoted by Wind Point the same day, spoke of the company’s manufacturing facility there. In 2021 Platinum Equity’s managing director Adam Cooper pointed to the company’s “vertically integrated manufacturing capabilities and domestic footprint”, while the same release described a business that manufactures, sources and markets its range.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are all dog toy and accessory names: Planet Dog, Petstages, ZippyPaws, Petmate, Multipet, Coastal Pet and Lupine. Toy and accessory brands for dogs sit at many different points in the pet trade, from small workshops that still carry a founder’s story to names that now belong to larger pet-products groups, and a single brand can be sold everywhere from an independent pet shop to a national chain.

A pet brand’s identity is usually carried less by one toy or collar than by a name, a mascot and the promise printed on its packaging, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its production or grown far beyond the town where it started. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its toys, collars and leads are actually made.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its products are made and how its packaging and marks have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Four sets of owners, then the lenders.

Platinum Equity, the Los Angeles investment firm founded by Tom Gores, announced on 15 September 2021 that it had acquired Petmate from Olympus; financial terms were not disclosed, and Tillett stayed on as chief executive. The release listed a brand portfolio that included Chuckit!, Pet Qwerks, Gamma2 and JW, alongside a licensed La-Z-Boy line, and a product range of plastic and wire kennels, dog houses, toys, food storage, bedding, treats and chews and other accessories. The products, it said, were sold through big-box pet retailers, mass merchandisers, e-commerce retailers, farm and agricultural stores and specialty pet shops. The trade magazine PET worldwide reported the deal on 28 September 2021.

Platinum’s ownership was followed by a financial restructuring. Bloomberg Law reported on 20 March 2024 that Petmate had agreed to hand all of its equity to its lender group, made up of private equity and credit investors including Gamut Capital Management. The financial news service 9fin described the business that week as Platinum-owned Petmate reorganising with its lenders set to take control.

Searches need a little care. Older documents, including the 2011 deal coverage, name the company as Doskocil Manufacturing rather than Petmate, and the Chuckit! ball launcher, though marketed under its own name, has belonged to the same Arlington business since the Canine Hardware purchase of 2012.

For a design guide, Petmate shows how a carrier and kennel maker from 1959 became a house of pet brands, its own plain name sitting beside toy labels it bought in. Compare Chuckit!, the ball launcher brand it has owned since 2012, and Outward Hound, another American pet company built through acquisitions. For this guide we use kennel blue, deep navy and signal orange with a sturdy sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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