Comparison of US eBay Marketplace Pet Supplies categories, based on current top ranking listings
Of the various animal supplies categories on the US eBay marketplace, the Dog Supplies category is the largest with current top ranking listings[4] achieving sales of 7,163 items per week, generating $163,700 per week.
Dog Supplies Category
In the Dog Supplies category there are 41 subcategories. The top 10 ranked by $sold/wk are listed in the table.
The table reveals:
Top ranking categories within the Dog Supplies category on US eBay Marketplace
Flea & Tick Remedies: Generates the greatest value sold overall at $65,306 per week, but is also very competitive with 77 high ranking sellers.
Cages & Crates: Has the lowest number of high ranking sellers out of the group (7) yet they are generating, on average, more than twice the revenue of those in the Flea category at an average of $2010 per week per seller.
Bed category: Has relatively low competition with 12 high ranking sellers and is achieving higher average weekly sales revenue per seller than the Flea & Tick category.
Brands
The focus on brands is very different across the top three categories:
Brand share of $sold/wk of categories within the Dog Supplies category on the US eBay Marketplace
Flea & Tick Remedies: 35 brands are sold within this category with three big competitors. Frontline is just beating Seresto for the number one place with 28% share and 25% share of total $sales/wk respectively.
Cages & Crates: Generics dominate in this category with 54% of average weekly sales revenue. Of the 5 brands that are sold within this category, BestPet has the largest share at 19%.
Beds: There are 9 brands, of which Furhaven leads with 46% share of weekly sales revenue.
Take Away
The largest categories may appear to be the most attractive at first glance, but smaller categories with fewer large competitors and established brands may be far more profitable.
Cat Supplies Category
In the Cat category, there are 29 subcategories. The top 10 ranked by $sold/wk are listed in the table.
Top ranking categories within the Cat Supplies category on eBay.com
Top ranking categories within the Cat Supplies category on ebay.com
The table reveals:
Flea & Tick Remedies is the highest value category with average sales of $37,068 per week. Although this category’s value is approximately half that of the similar Dog category (at $70,352 per week), it has more than twice as many competing sellers. This results in a far lower average weekly sales revenue per seller. However, it still has the highest average $sold/wk per seller of the top 10 cat categories.
Tags & Charms has the lowest number of competitors and ranks 10 in category size, but the average $sold/wk per seller is the third highest, demonstrating that smaller value categories with fewer competitors can yield higher returns.
Brands
The focus on brands is also very different across the top three categories:
Flea & Tick Remedies: 40 brands compete, with the largest being Bayer with 34% share of $sales/wk.
Furniture & Scratchers: 53 brands compete, with generics taking the biggest sales revenue share at 11%
Litter Boxes: 57 brands compete with Litter-Robot taking the largest revenue share at 23% of $sales/wk despite their low sales volume.
The leading seller in the Cat Supplies category over the last two weeks was a liquidator with Bayer Flea tablets, achieving over $5,000 on average per week, showing how exposed sellers of common brands are.
Take Aways
The largest cat categories are highly competitive, much more so than the dog category.
Brands are common but none overly dominate.
Buyers are willing to pay for niche products, especially when it comes to cleaning up after their cat.
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[1] 2013 American Housing Survey
[2] American Pet Products Association, “Pet industry market size and ownership statistics”
[3] Top 640 best match listings on the US eBay site in the Pet Supplies category as at March 18 2018, using the ShelfTrend Supply Demand report
[4] Top 718 best match listings on the US eBay site in the Dog Supplies category as at March 19, 2018, using the ShelfTrend Supply Demand report