A Chicago-area toy brand that organised itself around a slogan.

Petstages is an American dog and cat toy brand from Northbrook, Illinois, a suburb north of Chicago. Its own website, in a version captured by the Internet Archive on 21 December 2014, gave the company’s headquarters in Northbrook and said Petstages was founded in 2003. The same page set out the idea the brand was built around, in a phrase it repeated as a heading: “products with purpose.” “Providing products with purpose is the cornerstone of the Petstages philosophy,” the site said, “now and in the years to come.”

The 2014 site described a company that developed its toys with outside experts. Petstages said it worked with veterinarians and animal behaviourists to develop products for companion animals of all ages and sizes, and that it would continue to work with pet experts as new needs emerged. The home page was organised less around product names than around reasons to play: a grid of short phrases for dogs and for cats, such as “to occupy,” “to reduce boredom,” “just for fun” and “to provide comfort,” each leading to a set of toys.

The rest of the page followed the same pattern. Its sections carried short headings, “products with purpose,” “promising innovation” and “delivering results,” and the company said it was dedicated to providing continuous innovation in toys and other categories. A “where to buy” button sat beside the claim, in the company’s words, that its products were found in stores worldwide, and the page linked to a section headed “Our Story.”

A chew stick, a toy range for chewers, and a cat line with its own name.

By the middle of the 2010s the brand was known for a handful of signature products. When the trade magazine Pet Age reported the company’s sale on 17 October 2015, it named the Dogwood Chew Stick, the Orka chew toys and the INVIRONMENT scratchers for cats as products Petstages had developed. The investment bank Peakstone Group, which advised Petstages on the deal, listed the same three lines in its own announcement that month.

Those three names covered both sides of the catalogue: chew products for dogs and scratchers for cats, all sold under the single Petstages name until the cat range was given its own brand in 2023.

The president at the time of the sale was Torjus Lundevall. He repeated the company’s slogan when the deal was announced. “Providing products with purpose is the cornerstone of the Petstages philosophy,” he said, according to Pet Age. “This deal gives us the greater capacity and resources that we need to provide continuous innovation and develop new meaningful product solutions.”

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.

From an independent Illinois company to a brand within Outward Hound.

The buyer in October 2015 was Outward Hound, the dog toy and gear company of Centennial, Colorado, then owned by the private equity firm The Riverside Company. Pet Age reported the Petstages acquisition for Outward Hound and quoted its chief executive, Kyle Hansen, who said the company had found “an execution-oriented, passionate culture of pet experts” with products that complemented its own. Peakstone quoted Riverside vice president Steve Rice, and said terms were not disclosed. Outward Hound has owned Petstages since 2015, through a later change of private equity owner. PE Professional reported on 13 December 2017 that Riverside, which had bought Outward Hound’s parent company Kyjen in August 2013, had sold it to J.W. Childs Associates; its report listed Petstages of Northbrook, Illinois, bought in October 2015, among four add-on acquisitions made under Riverside, alongside Bionic Pet Products, the Swedish company Zoo Active Products and Dublin Dog. Those add-ons, the report said, took the group into products for cats.

Inside the group the cat range was given a separate identity. Pet Insight reported on 1 August 2023 that Outward Hound was launching Catstages, and that cat products which had sat under Petstages, including Tower of Tracks, Melon Madness and Nina Ottosson cat puzzles, would be rebranded as Catstages in the following months. Its range was sorted into three groups, “Frisky,” “Self-Care” and “Mind Games,” with new items such as the Hide N Seek Fish Bowl and Kitty Lickin’ Layers, and the report said the products would be sold through Outward Hound, Amazon and Chewy and in shops that autumn. The new brand came with a mascot, Kyle the Cat, described as a sassy, unimpressed feline who would appear on social media and on all brand packaging. Outward Hound chief executive Jared Mosher said the company had seen consistent growth in demand for mentally stimulating, interactive pet products.

When Outward Hound announced on 9 July 2026, in a release distributed by PR Newswire, that funds affiliated with H.I.G. Capital had taken majority ownership, the seven brands it listed included Catstages and Pupstages, two names that carry the “stages” idea forward, alongside Outward Hound, Best Friends by Sheri, Wholesome Pride Pet Treats, Nina Ottosson and Planet Dog.

For a design guide, Petstages shows how a toy brand can be organised around a slogan and a reason for each product, and how a single name can later divide into separate dog and cat identities. Compare Nylabone, the long-running chew brand, and Outward Hound, the group that owns Petstages. For this guide we use lime, plum and deep plum with a rounded sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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