How do I choose a location for a pet shop or vet clinic?
Pet owners make a planned trip for food and supplies, and pet businesses are few and far between. Here is how to find the corridors that have the owners but not the shops. The worked example is a pet shop in Mandurah; the same method applies to vet clinics, grooming and boarding.
Choose a pet shop or vet clinic location by counting the households within about a 15-minute drive, especially in houses with yards, then the pet businesses already serving them per 10,000 residents against the council, the state and Australia. Pet businesses are thin on the ground, so one well-placed store can serve a whole growing corridor.
Which pet businesses does K-Stra map?
K-Stra splits pet care into four sectors: pet shops, veterinary clinics, grooming, and boarding and other pet services. Each has its own share of ABS household spending and its own reach, and each is analysed on its own.
All four are small next to most trades — fewer vet clinics in Australia than bank branches — so a single new business can change the map of a whole corridor. That makes the count per resident, and where it is lowest, the first thing to read.
| Sector in the app | Locations | What it counts |
|---|---|---|
| Pet shops | 3,237 | Pet shops and pet supply stores. |
| Veterinary clinics | 3,525 | Veterinary clinics and animal hospitals. |
| Pet grooming | 3,392 | Dog groomers and pet grooming salons. |
| Pet boarding & services | 2,025 | Boarding kennels, catteries, dog daycare and training. |
Source: the Pets & Pet care group in the sector list of the K-Stra app on 1 November 2026, with the names the app uses; business catalogue of 23 October 2026, built from public online business listings. The counts here are the whole catalogue, as on the Australia pages; the national figure in the per 10,000 table of the example below counts only the locations K-Stra can place on an Australian address, so it can be a few places lower, which moves its rate by at most a hundredth.
Which numbers matter most for a pet business?
Households within a 15-minute drive
The K-Stra model measures pet shops on a 15-minute drive: owners make a planned trip for food and supplies, and bulky bags travel by car. The 15-minute drive is how far K-Stra assumes customers usually travel to a pet shop when it models demand and competition; the 10-minute drive of the example is the area chosen to look at. The first sets the model, the second sets what is counted.
In the app: the Where step and the Demand map, which counts the spending reachable from each point.
Houses rather than apartments
K-Stra has no pet ownership data. The kind of home is the closest signal: suburbs of separate houses with yards and young families tend to keep more and larger animals.
In the app: People & Economy, Housing: dwelling type and tenure, from the ABS Census 2021.
Pet businesses per 10,000 residents
Australia has 1.17 pet shops per 10,000. Below that, owners are driving elsewhere or buying online and at the supermarket.
In the app: the density table: catchment, council, state and Australia side by side.
Spending on pets within reach
Residents of the Mandurah example spend about A$160 a head a year on what pet shops sell, from ABS household spending for 2024–25.
In the app: the Demand map and its table of resident spending by band.
Opportunity in new estates
New housing estates fill with families and animals before services arrive. The opportunity map shows where the spending within reach meets the least pull from existing shops.
In the app: the Opportunity and Market gap maps, and the five best locations at least 500 m apart.
What data do you need to assess a pet business site?
Pet businesses, households, housing and spending, already loaded. Nothing needs uploading.
Every pet business
Four pet sectors from public online business listings, with category, address, rating and number of reviews.
Business and competition dataHousing
Dwelling type and tenure from the ABS Census 2021: the closest signal to where pets live.
Housing dataResidents and households
ABS population estimates at 30 June 2025, spread address by address.
Population dataSpending on pets
Household spending from the ABS national accounts for 2024–25, assigned to each pet sector.
Work, income and spending
How do you analyse a pet business site in K-Stra?
Type the address, keep a 10-minute drive or widen it, open Markets & Brands and pick Pet shops — or Veterinary clinics, Pet grooming, Pet boarding — as a whole sector.
- WhereThe address and a drive time. The size of the area does not change the price.
- WhatMarkets & Brands, whole sector, the pet sector you work in, with estimated sales switched on for shops.
- ReadDemand, competition, opportunity and market gap on the map, every business in a table, and five best locations.
What does a pet shop analysis show?
Pet shops within 10 minutes by car of 2 Mandurah Terrace, Mandurah WA: 6 shops for 69,869 residents, 0.86 per 10,000 against 1.17 in Australia. None shows an estimate of annual sales. Residents spend about A$11.2 million a year on what pet shops sell.
| Area | Pet shops | Residents | Per 10,000 residents |
|---|---|---|---|
| Catchment | 6 | 69,869 | 0.86 |
| Mandurah (council) | 8 | 106,827 | 0.75 |
| Western Australia | 351 | 3,044,382 | 1.15 |
| Australia | 3,236 | 27,613,654 | 1.17 |
Sources: K-Stra analysis of 1 November 2026: pet shops within a 10-minute drive in average traffic of 2 Mandurah Terrace, Mandurah. Businesses: K-Stra places catalogue, October 2026. Residents: ABS population estimates at 30 June 2025. Spending: ABS national accounts, 2024–25.
Is Mandurah short of pet shops?
Yes, against the rest of the country. The catchment has 0.86 pet shops per 10,000 residents and the Mandurah council area 0.75, both below Western Australia at 1.15 and Australia at 1.17: 6 shops for almost 70,000 people.
The opportunity map points away from the centre: the best locations are near 4 Atherton Close, Greenfields; 113 Steerforth Drive, Coodanup; and 63 Templetonia Promenade, Erskine. In the centre, the highest market gap is near 3 Mandurah Terrace, Mandurah, at 131 against 100 for the typical spot.
Density · MandurahHow much does a pet business analysis cost?
The Mandurah example cost 40 credits. The whole Peel region would cost the same, because the price follows the sector, not the size of the area.
- Markets & Brands, one pet sectorper sector, any area40 credits
- Maps, tables and exports of the resultsFree
- Total= 40 credits
- ≈ A$61 at the Single report pack rate of A$1.53 a credit; less with larger packs and monthly plans. A new free account’s 40 welcome credits cover it.
Optional, not in the total
- People & Economy, Housingper topic+ 2 credits
- Compare candidate sitesper candidate site+ 20 credits
The estimate appears before the run starts, and a run that fails costs nothing.
What do people opening a pet business ask next?
How big is the pet market here?
Residents within a drive time, what they spend on pets each year and how many businesses already share it.
Market potential analysisWhich of my candidate sites is stronger?
Run the same model on one to five addresses and compare the residents’ spending each could capture, and from whom. It counts residents’ spending only, so use it to compare sites in the same sector and area: the absolute value is an order of magnitude, and workers, commuters, tourists and passing trade are not in it.
Retail site selectionWhere do my customers come from?
Put customer counts by postcode on the map, without names, and see how far owners already travel.
Customer mapping
What else do people ask about pet business locations?
How many pet shops are there per resident in Australia?
3,236 pet shops for 27,613,654 residents: 1.17 per 10,000, or one for every 8,533 Australians. Vet clinics, grooming and boarding are separate sectors, each with its own count.
Does K-Stra know how many pets people own?
No. There is no pet ownership data in K-Stra. The closest signals are households and the kind of home they live in — separate houses against apartments — from the ABS Census 2021, in the Housing topic of People & Economy for 2 credits.
Are supermarkets and online stores counted as competition?
Not in the pet shop count, which holds specialist pet shops and pet supply stores. Supermarkets sell pet food too, and they can be added as a neighbouring category. Online sales are inside the ABS spending figure, not on the map.
Can I analyse vet clinics instead of pet shops?
Yes. Veterinary clinics, pet grooming and pet boarding are sectors of their own, each with demand, competition and best locations. A vet clinic is a service, so it never has estimated sales; pet shops have one only where the estimate is reliable enough.
What else helps a pet business?
Being on the way to the weekly shop. The neighbouring categories of a pet analysis count the other pet sectors, supermarkets, DIY stores and pharmacies around the site, for 2 credits.
Find the owners
without a pet shop.
Type an address, pick your pet sector and read households, competition and the gaps on one map.
Open the app — free to exploreExploring the map is free; you pay only for the analyses you run