A Dutch Pet Brand Growth Story: When Retailers Lead, the Market Follows

One of the most compelling European pet brand stories I’ve heard recently comes from a company that doesn’t look flashy at first glance, and that’s exactly the point.

Prins Petfoods is a Dutch, family-owned pet food company that has been operating for decades (since 1963) and is still deeply involved in day-to-day strategy. Today, it is led by Marlou Mulder, the daughter-in-law of the original founder. This continuity matters, because Prins doesn’t think in quarters. It thinks in relationships.

Their strategy is built around three pillars: nutrition, knowledge and trust.

Prins is a rapidly growing brand, producing their own pet food brands in-house, and it also serves as the leading manufacturer of cold-pressed pet food in Europe.

However, what really differentiates the business is what happens around the product.

Over the years, Prins built an ecosystem that includes Edupet, an independent education and training center with more than 70 instructors, most of them veterinarians or trained professionals. Courses are built for multiple audiences: pet owners, veterinarians, veterinary support staff, pet retailers, and even breeders and groomers. Retailers selling Prins products are doing more than simply stocking bags.

They are being trained: on nutrition, on feeding behavior, on how to talk to pet owners who arrive anxious, confused, or overwhelmed by online or conflicting information. Education is not a marketing afterthought for Prins; it is part of the core infrastructure.

Prins also runs a dedicated care team where consumers can reach nutrition experts via chat, WhatsApp (very popular in Europe), social media, email, or phone. Interestingly, they are seeing phone and email usage decline, while messaging, WhatsApp chats, and social media communications continue to rise. Today, the Prins CareTeam includes approximately 10 full-time people, which is significant for a company of its size.

While Prins Petfoods is best known as a manufacturer, its direct-to-consumer model and education-led service ecosystem place it firmly in retailer territory. Prins goes beyond making pet food; instead, it  manages the relationship, the advice and increasingly the decision-making moment.

The communication challenge Prins faces, like many brands, retailers and manufacturers in Europe, is scale.

“People want answers now and fast, and they don’t want just answers, they want conversations,” Marlou shared at GlobalPETS Forum in Istanbul this past January.

They also want advice that feels personal, reliable and consistent across channels. And it is increasingly difficult to provide that with humans alone.

That is where Prins made a deliberate, cautious move into agentic AI. They partnered with CM.com, a global cloud software and conversational commerce platform, to build a virtual colleague and customer-facing agent named “Pettie.”

Pettie is not just a chatbot dumping answers. She is designed to hold conversations, ask follow-up questions, and adapt her tone to the person she’s interacting with. She is multilingual, which is really handy amid Europe’s 24 official languages. She is trained only on trusted Prins data, and, critically, she is live for just two hours a day.

Why so limited? Because Prins insists on a human-in-the-loop approach. Every answer Pettie gives is reviewed by a real person. Humans correct her, refine her phrasing, and retrain the model. It’s slow by Silicon Valley standards, but intentional.

Marlou was very clear: “This is about managed scale, not speed for speed’s sake.”

The result is striking. In 2002, Prins generated about 2% of sales online. Today, over half of its business is digital, all without abandoning independent pet stores. Instead, they actively help connect consumers back to local retailers, reinforcing loyalty on both sides.

The lesson here for U.S. retailers is not “add AI.”

It’s this: service and knowledge can scale if you treat technology as a colleague, not a replacement.

Another European Retail Fairytale

Every market has its origin story, and Europe’s most famous pet retail story reads almost like a dare.

In the late 1980s, Torsten Toeller, the son of a successful German wholesaler, traveled to the United States to study retail and discovered something that barely existed back home: large, specialized pet stores entirely dedicated to animals. When he returned to Europe with the idea of replicating the model, his father was unconvinced. The risk seemed enormous. The category felt niche, and people there already thought pet food belonged in grocery.

Torsten did what many visionary founders do. He put everything on the line and opened the first store himself. It didn’t work initially, and he still doubled down on his vision by selling his car, asking for multiple petfood brands to invest in his idea, and opening a second store.

Fast forward to 2024, and Torsten Toeller announced that Fressnapf’s estimated total turnover will reach nearly €4.8 billion ($5.7 billion USD), securing a 24.6% EU market share including online sales. The company now operates over 2,700 stores in 15 countries. What started as a borrowed idea became a distinctly European retail machine, and Torsten Toeller net worth is now evaluated at $1.7 billion USD.

What makes the story resonate today is not just the scale, but the consistency. Fressnapf invested early in private labels, clear in-store navigation, and everyday accessibility — not luxury theater. While trends come and go, the chain has stayed anchored in function, value, and trust, adapting formats without losing its core promise.

For US readers, it’s a reminder that many of Europe’s largest players were not born from tech or venture capital, but from retail instincts sharpened on the shop floor.

The Fashion Corner

Recent market data show Europe’s pet fashion category has grown into a $1.28 billion USD business and continues to expand, a reminder that style and function are converging on pet shelves across the continent.

Europe might not be ready for Adidas’ Originals, a dedicated pet collection for Fall/Winter 2025 featuring scaled-down versions of its signature track tops and vests tailored for pets. However, but we could imagine more brands and retailers taking note, considering that pet ownership continues to grow and birth rates continue to decline.

Closing Thought

European retail success today is not about who shouts loudest or moves fastest. It’s about who builds trust over time through education, service, and formats that make sense in everyday life. It’s about adopting new tools and technologies in a controlled and mindful way.