From perfume to paw balm: Beauty chases pets

A dog can now be washed in Jo Malone London, scented by Rituals and dressed in Louis Vuitton, but the more consequential question for beauty companies is whether its owner will come back for the second bottle. Jo Malone London’s Orange Blossom & Cedarwood dog shampoo, developed with British pet-care specialist WildWash and launched in September, arrived alongside a much broader push from Rituals, whose new Dog Care collection spans 11 products including shampoo, dry shampoo, paw balm, dog perfume, oral spray and an air-and-fabric freshener. What might once have looked like a luxury-brand novelty is increasingly being built to resemble something beauty companies understand very well: a replenishable routine. Global pet-care sales are projected to reach $224.5 billion in 2026, according to Euromonitor data. While China’s urban dog and cat market reached 300.2 billion RMB ($42.1 billion) in 2024, up 7.5% year-on-year, according to the 2025 China Pet Industry White Paper cited by Daxue Consulting. The number of cats rose only 1.6% and dogs 2.5% over the same period, meaning market growth was substantially outpacing population growth as owners spent more on each animal. Food still commanded 35.7% of Chinese pet expenditure, but grooming, health, home supplies and treats were already expanding the spending basket beyond basic feeding. China’s pet parent is spending differently China is particularly revealing because the pet is moving deeper into the household at the same time that younger consumers are rewriting the meaning of ownership. Daxue Consulting’s report, which analyzed more than 55 million posts across Douyin, Weibo and Xiaohongshu (also known as RedNote) alongside interviews and focus groups, found that pets are increasingly described as family members, lifestyle companions and, for some owners, substitutes for children. Post-1990 and post-2000 consumers now make up the majority of Chinese pet owners, while the share represented by those born after 2000 increased 39.5% between 2023 and 2024. In 2023, roughly 6 million dogs and cats were adopted in China, equivalent to about two-thirds of the number of babies born that year. Sharon Adesola David, director at China market-entry agency S&M, sees that shift less as a pet trend than part of a wider reassessment of adulthood and aspiration. “Younger generations are facing rising housing costs and greater financial barriers to homeownership and raising children,” she said. “At the same time, pets are increasingly becoming a source of companionship, affection and emotional fulfilment.” The emotional shift is producing forms of consumption that once sat well outside the traditional pet aisle. Daxue’s social listening found dogs appearing in birthday parties, on holidays, at photoshoots and other everyday activities previously centered on humans; mentions of dog birthday celebrations were up 41.5% YoY (April 2024 to April 2025), while travel, sports and content creation have become part of a wider experience economy around pets. The rising spending has already pushed fashion houses into collars, carriers, furniture and clothing, with Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Dior and Tiffany & Co. among the brands extending luxury consumption from the owner to the animal. For beauty companies, grooming offers something a designer collar cannot: frequency. Shampoo runs out, paw balm gets used and fabric spray is reapplied, allowing products to sit in the same replenishment cycle as body wash, hand cream or home fragrance. In China, bathing and grooming accounted for 4.4% of pet expenditure in 2024, compared with 12.4% for home supplies and 13.5% for treats, leaving room for brands that can persuade owners to trade up from functional cleaning toward more specialised care. “The prime consumer group is known by marketers as ‘DINKWADs’ – double income, no kids, with a dog,” said Jack Porteous, commercial director at China marketing agency Tong Global. “They are buying for their own lifestyle, as much as for the pet.” His point helps explain why fragrance companies are moving in from several directions at once. A scented dog shampoo is not only about the animal’s coat; it sits inside the owner’s bathroom, home and ideas about cleanliness, comfort and taste. From pet perfume to the shared home The product architecture mirrors an approach beauty brands have spent decades refining with human consumers. A single shower gel can become a body lotion, mist, candle, diffuser and travel set; a fragrance can expand from skin into wardrobes, bathrooms and living rooms. Pet care creates another surface within the same household, and one that increasingly carries emotional weight. China’s pet market already shows the connection between affection and premiumisation: Daxue found owners using luxury pet products to express wealth, taste and lifestyle, while some interviewees compared standards for pet clothing and toys with those used for children, including seeking higher-quality fabrics and safer materials. David argues that this shared environment could become more valuable than pet perfume itself. “The future of luxury pet fragrance is not simply about making an animal smell like a human,” she said. “It is about creating a pleasant home environment for owners without compromising the comfort or safety of their animals.” The opportunity, she added, could stretch across pet-specific grooming, odour management and carefully formulated home-care products. Beauty retailers have already started testing how broad that basket could become. Harmay moved into pet care with as many as 40 grooming and hygiene SKUs in 2024, including ear cleansers and paw creams, according to Daxue, while Kiehl’s has developed cleansing products with professional pet groomers and Dolce & Gabbana entered dog fragrance with Fefé. The significance is less that prestige companies have discovered pets than that the assortment is moving from novelty accessories towards everyday skin, coat and hygiene needs. James Hebbert, managing director at Hylink Digital Solutions Asia-Pacific, sees the larger opportunity outside perfume. “The biggest opportunity lies beyond pet perfume, in everyday functional care,” he said. “In China, 64.7% of surveyed pet owners purchase functional shampoos, creating opportunities in skin and coat care, gentle cleansing and odour management.” China’s retail market is also beginning to normalise spending on pets in places that have little to do with specialist pet stores. Sam’s Club and Hema sold pet mooncakes around Mid-Autumn Festival this year, with Sam’s 69.90 RMB ($10.5) offering reportedly selling out at points during the holiday period. The commercial importance is not the mooncake itself but the context: pet purchases are entering grocery, gifting, travel and household consumption, turning the animal into another participant in occasions that retailers already monetise around people. Prestige does not equal pet-care credibility The harder question is how much authority a fragrance house can transfer from humans to animals. Consumers may trust Jo Malone London to make a room or body smell appealing, but canine skin, coats and olfactory sensitivity require a different form of credibility. Jo Malone London’s decision to work with WildWash is therefore more than a branding collaboration: it gives the launch specialist pet-care knowledge that the fragrance house does not automatically possess. “Authority transfer between categories is only partial,” Porteous said. “In terms of scent and aesthetic identity it moves across seamlessly, but safety credibility needs to be proven separately.” He said that pet-fragrance decision-making begins with safety and gentleness, whereas human fragrance purchases tend to be driven more by allure and personality. Allison Malmstein, strategy consultant at Daxue Consulting, identifies toxicity as an especially important purchase barrier. “The number one concern for pet care is toxicity, pet owners are willing to spend extra to know their pets are not exposed to harmful chemicals,” she said. Prestige can therefore support pricing only when the formulation gives owners a reason to believe that paying more also means exposing the animal to less risk. That dynamic makes premium pet beauty very different from simply miniaturizing human products. Aesthetic codes, packaging and familiar scent signatures can attract the purchaser, but repeat use depends on performance that is invisible on a social-media unboxing: cleaning effectively, controlling odor, avoiding irritation and fitting comfortably into an existing grooming routine. The person paying may enjoy the brand symbolism; the animal using the product has no interest in it. Malmstein argues that specialist endorsement will become increasingly important as the category matures. “If a premium pet fragrance can build partnerships within the pet care market, whether with groomers or official pet care brands, to show that the products are fit for routine use, then it can become a sustainable category rather than a brand building exercise,” she said. The second bottle is the real test Jo Malone London’s dog shampoo had sold more than 600 units on the brand’s official Tmall flagship store and entered Tmall’s top eight bestselling pet shampoos. At 200 RMB ($30) for 285ml, the product sits substantially above mass pet shampoo, but the more meaningful test is whether owners purchase it again once the launch novelty disappears. “A successful launch creates attention; repeat purchases create a business,” Hebbert said. “We’d look for customers beyond the brand’s existing audience, repeat purchases at full price and products becoming part of regular grooming routines.” Moving into groomers, specialist pet retailers or other professional environments would offer another indication that these products are being bought because they work rather than because their owners find the idea amusing or giftable. David’s second lens is aspirational rather than functional. “When traditional milestones such as homeownership become harder to attain, premium pet care can offer another way for consumers to express their aspirations and invest in something meaningful,” she said. That does not make a dog shampoo a substitute for buying a house, but it helps explain why pet spending can remain emotionally resilient even when consumers are more cautious elsewhere: the product is attached to care, identity and the quality of a relationship rather than pure personal indulgence. The opportunity may ultimately lie less in teaching consumers to perfume their dogs than in taking a larger share of the increasingly sophisticated household built around them. Chinese owners are already spending across food, medical care, grooming, home supplies, travel, fashion and entertainment; beauty brands can plausibly add sensory experience and personal-care expertise to that mix, but only where those capabilities solve an actual problem. For an industry built on turning everyday maintenance into ritual, the attraction is obvious. The pet adds another body, another set of routines and another emotional relationship around which products can be organized. Whether premium pet care becomes a meaningful beauty business, however, will be determined less by how convincingly brands can make a dog smell like their stores than by whether owners still reach for the same bottle after the novelty has worn off.

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From perfume to paw balm: Beauty chases pets