This article first appeared in our monthly Unleashed pet tech newsletter, a collaboration with Purina Accelerator Lab. All content is editorially independent. Sign up to our newsletter here to keep up to date with the latest goings on in the European pet tech industry.
As wearables like Apple Watches become ubiquitous, a growing number of pet owners also now use smart collars for their cats and dogs.
The market for pet wearables, valued at $2.7bn in 2023, is forecast to see double-digit growth to the end of this decade.
That uptake is underpinned by the same trends that support the pet tech industry at large: rising rates of ownership and the growing propensity, especially among younger “pet parents”, to treat their animals with the same kind of love and attention as children.
“A lot of people really do consider themselves as dog parents. And if you consider yourself a dog parent, then it’s not enough just to feed your animal. You have to keep it healthy,” says Clément Moreau, CEO of Invoxia, a French company which produces GPS trackers, including ones for pets.
On the right track
Early smart collars offered simple GPS tracking devices, to help owners find lost animals, but many of today’s offerings also monitor sleep and footsteps.
Well-known location and activity tracking brands include Tractive, an Austrian startup which has reportedly reached one million active global subscribers, and Fi, an American group has raised around $40m since 2017. Invoxia, meanwhile, has developed a new tracker which measures a pet’s breathing and heart rates, as well its location and activity levels.
If our animals could talk, they would have a lot of things to tell us. We believe that this device enables us to understand a bit more of what they would have to say, and how happy they are.
“The majority of pet technology devices today are just GPS tracking systems. What we provide is not only a GPS, but a health monitoring and activity tracking system. The distinctive part is that we put a focus on health,” says Moreau.
Invoxia’s “Minitailz” device uses miniature sensors and AI to measure a pet’s vital signs and interpret the findings. Moreau says that it can detect anomalies including Atrial Fibrillation (AFib), a common arrhythmia that affects pets as well as humans. Owners are kept informed through personalised data reports on the company’s app.
The device has proven helpful for owners who use dog sitters and want to understand how much stress that puts their animal under, says Moreau.
“One user who spoke to our customer service said that the device enabled him to understand that his dog sitter wasn’t good, because the dog’s stress level and heart rate rose very rapidly each time he left his dog there,” he says. “If our animals could talk, they would have a lot of things to tell us. We believe that this device enables us to understand a bit more of what they would have to say, and how happy they are.”
A virtual dog “fence”
Halo, an American smart collar startup, works differently, by allowing owners to create a virtual “fence” around a dog, to prevent it from roaming. Founder Ken Ehrman set up the company with his brother Michael after his niece’s dog escaped an “invisible fence” — an old technology which relies on a buried wire to emit a shock, via a collar, when a dog approaches it — and was run over by a car.
10m dogs are lost every year and a million dogs are hit by a car.
“It dawned on me that you could replace the invisible fence and the wire with an accurate GPS,” says Ehrman. “The concept of keeping your dog safe, but letting them have the ability to be free, is what Halo is all about.”
Unlike invisible fences which use shocks, Halo’s collar is designed not to cause a dog pain, he adds. The company worked with a well-known American dog trainer, Cesar Millan, to devise customisable warnings, starting with a beep, that are designed to condition a dog to stay away from a boundary. If it does not respond, the collar escalates its warnings, by vibrating, and finally emitting static feedback, designed to mimic a tap on the shoulder. Owners are immediately notified if a pet does escape.
Since its launch in 2020, Halo has sold around 300k collars, first directly to consumers, and now via e-commerce platforms such as Amazon. But Ehrman argues that the potential market for Halo’s collars is huge — he says this year, the company expects to generate revenue of $90m, a 50% increase on 2023.
“10m dogs are lost every year and a million dogs are hit by a car” in the US alone, he says, adding that buying a collar is cheaper than installing a real or invisible fence and the device can also be used on holidays.
Growing the market
One potential growth avenue comes from integrating the wearables market with insurance. By providing data on a pet’s activity levels, the devices can help insurers develop policies tailored to an animal’s profile, bringing down premiums for healthier pets.
For example, Tractive launched an insurance product this year, in partnership with the insurer Covéa. Invoxia also partners with insurance firms to market its GPS trackers for motorbikes and cars, and is exploring similar arrangements in the pet space, says Moreau.
“Partnering with insurance companies is a good strategy, because insurers are really keen on prevention,” he says, adding globally, the market for pet trackers is growing in tandem with insurance. “What we see today is that North America, the UK and the Nordics are very interesting markets for us. Southern Europe is a little bit behind.”
But breaking into regions which spend less on pet care takes work, admits Moreau.
“We need to go geography by geography, to help people understand that they can help their animals achieve a healthier life,” he says. “It will take some time, but we know it’s important to do that.”
Overcoming investor concerns
Despite the segment’s rapid growth, some investors express caution about pet wearables.
Most investors invest in software, not hardware. So that is the first challenge.
“Most investors invest in software, not hardware. So that is the first challenge,” says Daria Voronina, chief product officer of Buddy, a smart collar startup headquartered in Thailand. “You need to explain the problem, you need to give a lot of validation, because this is not a hype market.”
The second challenge is that the round amount is very important. “Most investors prefer to invest in small amounts,” Voronina adds. Buddy is currently fundraising a bridge round for its collar, which is still under development, and aims to provide GPS location, activity tracking and health assessments.
Functionality has been another challenge for many wearable brands, Voronina says.
“We did deep research on the market, and we found a huge gap between what many of the key players promise, and what they deliver,” she says, giving the example of GPS locations that are not precise enough to locate missing pets. Buddy’s machine learning model, which is still being refined, has an accuracy of 81% for activity monitoring, according to Voronina.
“Many of these groups are under pressure from investors to deliver right away, and they just don’t have enough budget for proper development, or the time to deliver a better experience,” she adds.
Read the orginal article: https://sifted.eu/articles/future-of-pet-wearables-brnd/
