How to Sell on Chewy and Petco as a Brand
For pet care brands, Chewy and Petco represent two of the most important retail channels alongside Amazon. Both platforms have distinct customer bases, content requirements, and operational models. This guide covers how pet brands approach selling on Chewy and Petco, what it takes to succeed, and how these channels complement an Amazon strategy.
Chewy vs Petco: Two Different Models
Chewy and Petco operate differently as ecommerce channels. Chewy is primarily a direct-to-consumer subscription model — famous for its Autoship program, where pet owners subscribe to recurring deliveries. Petco operates as a traditional omnichannel retailer with physical stores plus an ecommerce presence. Selling on both typically involves separate retailer relationships and operational models.
How to Sell on Chewy
Chewy operates primarily as a 1P (first-party) retailer — they buy your products wholesale and resell them. To become a Chewy vendor, you typically need a brand or product in a relevant pet care category and must apply through Chewy's vendor portal or be invited through buyer outreach. Chewy evaluates vendors on product-market fit, pricing competitiveness, brand credibility, and supply chain reliability.
Chewy Content Requirements
- High-quality product images on white backgrounds, similar to Amazon standards
- Detailed product descriptions including ingredients (for food/supplements), feeding guidelines, and product features
- Accurate product attributes including species, breed, life stage, and product type — these drive Chewy's search and filtering
- A+ style rich content is available for Chewy's enhanced brand content program for eligible vendors
Unlike Amazon where category browsing is broad, Chewy shoppers actively filter by species (dog, cat, bird, fish, small animal), life stage (puppy/kitten, adult, senior), breed size, and health condition. If your product attributes are missing or inaccurate, your product will not appear in filtered search results — which on Chewy represent a significant share of discovery traffic. Accurate attribute mapping is therefore one of the highest-impact content tasks for new Chewy vendors.
How to Sell on Petco
Petco operates as a retailer and marketplace, depending on the category. For established brands, Petco is typically a wholesale relationship through their buying team. Petco also has a marketplace program for select sellers. The approach mirrors traditional retail buyer outreach — demonstrating product quality, brand story, margin structure, and logistics capabilities to Petco's category buyers.
Operational Considerations for Pet Specialty Retailers
- Both Chewy and Petco have strict vendor compliance requirements similar to Amazon's — EDI integration, labeling standards
- Autoship on Chewy is a major driver of customer lifetime value — pricing and promotion strategy needs to account for Autoship enrolled customers
- Both platforms have strong customer service expectations — negative reviews on Chewy particularly impact conversion given their detailed review culture
- Hazmat and DG (dangerous goods) products face similar complexities on Chewy and Petco as on Amazon
Multi-Channel Strategy: Amazon, Chewy, and Petco
Successful pet care brands typically operate on all three platforms simultaneously. Coordination across channels requires: consistent pricing to prevent channel conflict, unified content strategy adapted to each platform's requirements, coordinated promotional calendars, and cross-channel inventory planning. The brands that perform best on Chewy and Petco are typically those who bring the same operational rigor they apply to Amazon — catalog management, content quality, and data-driven performance review — to the specialty pet channels.
Frequently Asked Questions
Chewy is primarily a direct-to-consumer subscription model — famous for its Autoship program where pet owners subscribe to recurring deliveries. Petco operates as a traditional omnichannel retailer with physical stores plus an ecommerce presence. Selling on both typically involves separate retailer relationships and operational models.
Chewy operates primarily as a 1P (first-party) retailer — they buy your products wholesale and resell them. To become a Chewy vendor, you typically need a brand or product in a relevant pet care category and must apply through Chewy's vendor portal or be invited through buyer outreach. Chewy evaluates vendors on product-market fit, pricing competitiveness, brand credibility, and supply chain reliability.
Chewy requires high-quality product images on white backgrounds similar to Amazon standards, detailed product descriptions including ingredients (for food and supplements), feeding guidelines, and product features. Accurate product attributes including species, breed, life stage, and product type are critical as these drive Chewy's search and filtering. A+ style rich content is available for eligible vendors.
Petco operates as a retailer and marketplace, depending on the category. For established brands, Petco is typically a wholesale relationship through their buying team. Petco also has a marketplace program for select sellers. The approach mirrors traditional retail buyer outreach — demonstrating product quality, brand story, margin structure, and logistics capabilities to Petco's category buyers.
Both Chewy and Petco have strict vendor compliance requirements. Autoship on Chewy is a major driver of customer lifetime value — pricing and promotion strategy needs to account for Autoship enrolled customers. Both platforms have strong customer service expectations — negative reviews on Chewy particularly impact conversion. Hazmat and dangerous goods products face similar complexities on both platforms as on Amazon.
Successful pet care brands typically operate on all three platforms simultaneously. Coordination requires consistent pricing to prevent channel conflict, unified content strategy adapted to each platform's requirements, coordinated promotional calendars, and cross-channel inventory planning. The brands that perform best on Chewy and Petco are those who bring the same operational rigor they apply to Amazon to the specialty pet channels.
About Perfality
Perfality is an end-to-end ecommerce and marketplace management agency trusted by 75+ global CPG and DTC brands including Spectrum Brands, Kenneth Cole, Black+Decker, Stella & Chewy's, and Galderma. With 8 years of hands-on experience and a 100+ specialist team based in Jaipur, India, Perfality helps brands grow on Amazon, Walmart, Chewy, Petco, and other major marketplaces through listing optimization, A+ content, PPC management, account operations, chargeback recovery, and data intelligence. Learn more at www.perfality.com.
Perfality manages Chewy and Petco alongside Amazon for leading pet care brands. Let's review your multi-channel strategy and build a coordinated expansion plan.
