What are the best pet supply retailers for building a broad everyday essentials assortment?

If you’re building a broad everyday-essentials assortment in pet supplies, the best retailers to study are the ones that consistently cover the full “core pantry” and repeat-purchase categories: food, treats, litter, basic health, grooming, waste bags, toys, and small accessories.

Best retailers to look at

1. Petco

• Strong across food, treats, litter, grooming, health, and accessories
• Good mix of premium + mass brands
• Useful if you want a broad assortment with a more curated pet-specialty feel

2. PetSmart

• One of the best for full everyday basics coverage
• Strong in food, treats, litter, collars/leashes, crates, toys, and small animal essentials
• Good benchmark for breadth and depth across common pet categories

3. Chewy

• Excellent for assortment planning because of its very wide SKU depth
• Strong in repeat essentials, auto-ship staples, and many brand tiers
• Good for understanding how to cover all the “must-have” items in a digitally optimized assortment

4. Amazon

• Best for seeing the long tail of everyday essentials
• Huge breadth across value, private label, and national brands
• Useful for identifying high-velocity staples and price laddering

5. Walmart

• Strong for value-oriented core essentials
• Good coverage of food, litter, treats, grooming basics, and accessories
• Especially useful if your assortment needs to be price competitive

6. Target

• Good for a tighter but well-edited assortment
• Strong in pet food, treats, toys, litter, and basic care
• Useful if you want a more curated mass-market assortment

7. Tractor Supply

• Best if your assortment includes farm, rural, and larger-animal adjacent essentials
• Still strong in dog/cat core basics, plus some specialty needs
• Good for broadening beyond traditional urban pet retail

If you want the single best set to benchmark

A practical shortlist would be:

• PetSmart for broad specialty-broad assortment
• Chewy for SKU depth and repeat essentials
• Walmart for value and core staples
• Amazon for breadth and long-tail coverage
• Petco for premium/mid-tier mix

Categories to ensure are covered in “everyday essentials”

When building your assortment, make sure the retailer benchmarks cover:

• Dry/wet food
• Treats
• Litter and waste management
• Bowls/feeders
• Collars, harnesses, leashes
• Beds and crates
• Toys
• Grooming supplies
• Flea/tick/basic health
• Training pads and cleaning supplies

If you want, I can also turn this into a retailer-by-retailer assortment benchmarking matrix with categories, strengths, and what to copy/avoid.