Media
Our Business
Pets at home is the UK's leading specialist pet care business.
We provide everything a pet owner needs to ensure their pet can lead a happy and healthy life, including food and accessories, specialist advice, grooming services and veterinary care.
Pets are the heartbeat of our business and our aim is to be the best pet care company in the world, sharing our knowledge and passion to help pets and their owners live long and happy lives together.
The group provides a comprehensive range of merchandise and services for customers and pets. It is the combination of our specialist retail offer, veterinary practices and grooming salons all within a single pet focused environment that represents a uniquely attractive offer to our customers.
There is an estimated 35 million pets in the UK, resulting in a pet care market worth c£6.7bn
Our core ethos is to put pets first.
Retail
Our retail stores offer the ultimate one stop shop for pet owners, and we are online too.
Under the brands Vets4Pets and Companion Care, we have small animal vet practices in many of our stores and also in stand alone locations.
Grooming
Groom Room salons can be found within many Pets at Home stores and offer full grooming services and nail clips.
Grooming is much more than a cosmetic exercise, going well beyond simple bathing and brushing to treatments such and clipping and nail trimming. As responsible pet owners are increasingly aware of the benefits of grooming to the health and wellbeing of their pets, this is an expanding area of petcare. Despite the importance of grooming there is still no industry training standards for those entrusted with the care of animals. Pets at Home believe this should change.
We recommend the introduction of industry standards on dog grooming to the equivalent of the City & Guilds dog grooming standards. This will help to raise levels of both skills and care across the industry. We are proposing the development of a national register to be maintained by the Pet Industry Federation; DEFRA to encourage accreditation of a new apprenticeship route linked to the City & Guilds standard.
Pet and Pet Sourcing
Pets are both our business and our passion and 'Putting Pets First' has always been our number one value. Advocating the ethical and responsible treatment of pets is incredibly important to us and we believe the best way to do this is to lead by example, so we keep every aspect of our pet operations highly regulated.
We are pet people at heart and work to promote good pet-care practice. This is driven by our Board through all the various committees in our group.
We ensure all pets sold by our retail stores have been bred in caring and comfortable surroundings according to the five freedoms set out in the Animal Welfare act 2006.
We conduct regular spot checks on our suppliers and all our stores are subject to annual independent inspections by SAI Global to ensure high standards of welfare throughout their journey from breeder to store.
We discourage impulse buying and and take great care in helping customers make informed choices about buying a pet so that lifelong homes can be established. All our colleagues are empowered to refuse the sale of a pet if they feel that is the right thing to do.
Our highly trained colleagues will only sell a pet when they have established that the customer understands the welfare needs of a pet. If we aren't sure, we won't sell.
We never have and never will sell puppies or kittens.
Caring for Pets comes naturally to our colleagues. When we open our stores in the morning, our colleagues make sure that all the pets are in clean surroundings with fresh food and water. This happens 365 days a year including Christmas Day.
As well as cleaning all the pens and cages in the store, our morning routine includes a health-check for every pet before returning them to their clean surroundings.
If any of the pets in our care need any healthcare whatsoever, we place no limit on the amount we will spend on veterinary care for one of our pets.
Waste
Providing clean and comfortable environments for our pets creates a lot of waste however the welfare of our pets must come first. We have been able to put this waste to good use rather than being sent to landfill. Our delivery fleet collects the waste from every store and takes it to one of our two distribution centres on a normal return to depot journey, avoiding any unnecessary mileage. Here it is compacted before being sold and processed into high grade compost, or incorporated with other wood waste to be used in bop-mass generation of low carbon electricity.
Charity
Pets at Home set up the UK's leading rehoming charity, Pets at Home Foundation. Since 2006 the charity has worked with over 1,300 rescues to help them transform the lives of pets in their care. The charity exists to supports pets in need and help the people who love them.
Colleagues
Our people are the heartbeat of our business. We have over 7,000 trained, knowledgeable and engaged colleagues in our stores.
In our retail business, our 4 Step training programme enables colleagues to advise on all aspects of pet ownership, nutrition and welfare, including colleagues who are specifically trained to provide nutrition consultations and advise on licensed medicines.
Our Vet Group colleagues are made up of highly trained vets, nurses, animal care assistants and Specialist Consultants all of whom are practicing members of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons.
We have been recognised in a number of Great Place to Work awards.
For all media enquiries, please contact:
Maitland/AMO
Email: PetsAtHome-Maitland@maitland.co.uk
Phone: +44 (0) 207 379 5151