Beyond selling directly to the end pet owner, part of the online pet market also serves physical pet shops that buy in larger volumes to resell, a model that requires operational logic quite different from unit sales on a marketplace. Hugo Galvao de Franca Filho, founder and director of Enjoy Pets, believes mixing both audiences without separating processes tends to create confusion in both customer service and pricing across each channel.
Deciding whether it’s worth serving this B2B audience, alongside the end consumer, depends less on the desire to grow and more on the operation’s real capacity to sustain two sales models at once, each with its own timeline, volume, and commercial relationship requirements that differ significantly from one another.
Higher volume per order calls for a different stock structure
Selling to a partner petshop means handling orders with much higher volume than an end consumer typically buys, which requires different stock planning to avoid compromising product availability meant for unit sales on marketplaces while serving that larger, occasional demand.
Hugo Galvao de Franca Filho reinforces that keeping stock reserved separately for each channel prevents a large corporate order from wiping out product availability for those buying in small quantities day to day. Without that clear division, a single B2B order can trigger unexpected stock-outs across several end-consumer sales channels at once.
Different pricing requires a clear rule from the start
Selling wholesale for resale requires a lower margin per unit, offset by the total order volume, a completely different logic from unit sales, which sustain a higher margin precisely because they serve smaller, occasional demand. Mixing the two price tables without a clear criterion tends to create losses on one side of the operation or the other.
Enjoy Pets, featured at www.enjoypets.com.br, keeps a separate price table for corporate orders, with a clear minimum volume rule to access that differentiated condition. According to Hugo Galvao, this separation keeps end consumers from questioning price differences and keeps partner petshops from receiving worse terms than their purchase volume would actually justify.
B2B commercial relationships call for closer follow-up
While the end consumer usually decides alone, with no direct contact with the store, a partner pet shop requires a closer commercial relationship, including negotiating payment terms, recurring delivery conditions, and support for technical questions about products that the pet shop will resell to its own end customers.
Hugo Galvao notes that this kind of relationship requires dedicated time that doesn’t exist in direct-to-consumer sales, and underestimating that effort tends to compromise service quality on both channels. Building a specific commercial process for B2B accounts, with a dedicated point of contact, tends to sustain that relationship better over the medium term.
Is it worth serving both audiences at the same time?
The answer depends on the operation’s real capacity to sustain separate processes, stock, and pricing without compromising quality on either side. Small operations that try to serve both B2B and B2C without that clear separation often suffer more than they gain from diversification, because neither channel gets enough attention to run well.
For Hugo Galvao de Franca Filho, expanding into the B2B audience is only worth it once the operation already has a solid grip on the direct-to-consumer channel, with a process mature enough to sustain the added complexity without hurting the experience of those who already buy regularly through the marketplaces.
