Phoenix, 2016-Oct-20 — /EPR Retail News/ — PetSmart Inc., the largest pet specialty retailer and leading resource for pet adoption in North America, today ( Oct. 19, 2016) announced it has acquired AllPaws, one of the largest online and mobile platforms that matches those looking to adopt a pet with pets ideally suited for their home, family and lifestyle. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
“Pet adoption is core to our purpose-driven business, and the acquisition of AllPaws offers a smart technology platform to accelerate our in-store adoption program even further,” said Michael Massey, president and chief executive officer for PetSmart. “Our leadership role in pet adoption has led to a record-setting seven million pets adopted from our stores since we started the in-store adoption program in 1994. More than 3,000 current animal welfare partners — plus thousands of additional rescues and shelters — will be able to use AllPaws as a digital hub to promote adoptable pets, which we believe will result in even greater success in finding forever homes for pets across North America.”
Approximately 5,000 animal rescues and shelters across North America directly utilize AllPaws to promote their adoptable pets.
Thousands more animal welfare organizations will be able to use the centralized PetSmart AllPaws platform to create, populate and update detailed profiles for adoptable pets to increase their exposure and chance of being adopted. Prospective pet parents can then use AllPaws to search for pets by various search categories such as breed, age, gender, energy level, training stage, temperament and geo-location in order to find the pet best suited for their home, family and lifestyle requirements.
“We are thrilled to join the PetSmart family and to contribute to its mission of helping save pets’ lives through adoption,” said Darrell Lerner, AllPaws founder. “When we set out to develop AllPaws, we wanted to take a fresh and modern approach to pet adoption that combines a sophisticated, user-friendly functionality with deep social integration in order to connect prospective adopters with the best pet match possible. With PetSmart’s scale and PetSmart Charities adoption program leveraging more than 1,470 stores that serve as adoption centers, we believe AllPaws has found its forever home with PetSmart.”
The AllPaws pet adoption platform — free to all users — offers a comprehensive solution on the web and a fun, engaging mobile application experience on iPhone. Its iPhone app is frequently the top ranked adoption app on iTunes and has grown nearly every month since its launch in 2014. The platform has strong traffic, typically averaging 800,000-900,000 visits per month.
For every 30 seconds a PetSmart store is open, a pet is adopted, totaling 1,400 pets lives saved every day. Through these efforts, nearly 500,000 pets find forever homes every year.
About PetSmart®
PetSmart, Inc. is the largest specialty pet retailer of services and solutions for the lifetime needs of pets. At PetSmart, we love pets, and we believe pets make us better people. Every day with every connection, PetSmart’s passionate associates help bring pet parents closer to their pets so they can live more fulfilled lives. This vision impacts everything we do for our customers, the way we support our associates and how we give back to our communities. We employ approximately 53,000 associates, operate 1,477 pet stores in the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico and 203 in-store PetSmart® PetsHotel® dog and cat boarding facilities. PetSmart provides a broad range of competitively priced pet food and pet products and offers dog training, pet grooming, pet boarding, PetSmart Doggie Day Camp day care services and pet adoption services in-store. Our portfolio of digital resources for pet parents – including PetSmart.com, PetFoodDirect.com, Pet360.com and petMD.com – offers the most comprehensive online pet supplies and pet care information in the U.S. Through our in-store pet adoption program with independent nonprofit organizations, PetSmart Charities® and PetSmart Charities™ of Canada, PetSmart helps to save the lives of more than 500,000 homeless pets each year.
About AllPaws
AllPaws offers a fresh and modern approach to pet adoption that combines sophisticated online dating functionality and a deep social integration. Built by a team with deep roots in the online dating space, AllPaws has grown nearly every month since launch and has 850,000 registered users.
Contacts:
Erin Gray
623-516-3908
egray@petsmart.com
PetSmart Media Line:
623-587-2177
Source: PetSmart Inc.