PetSmart is another big retailer that was destroyed by private equity. I only keep tropical fish which require many chemicals and additives to maintain the water chemistry. The products that most experienced fishkeepers use come from very reputable brands that have been around several decades and use patented, proprietary formulas that are scientifically tested like pharmaceuticals. PetSmart has replaced nearly all of the good brands with house brand products. I would never consider using noname, questionable chemicals in my aquarium. Something like a chlorine remover that doesn't work correctly would cause the near immediate death of all of my prized fishes, some of whom I have had more than a decade and due to size are worth hundreds of dollars each. Fish foods actually can and do affect the health of the fish, poor quality foods deliver less nutrition and the fish will lose color and become lethargic and prone to illness. I had trusted a food brand that apparently had nutritional deficiency and several of my prize fish literally started to experience malnutrition related disease where they were getting open sores on their body. Thus I'd never trust PetSmart brand food, or even entry level products from reputable brands like Tetra. It is very frustrating because PetSmart has put many quality pet stores out of business with what was a winning formula of the biggest and best selection coupled with lowest prices. Now they have SKU rationalized the selection down to the point where many stores have giant empty spaces between the walls and the aisles. The removal of brand name products means that now I'm forced to order most of my everyday need items from Amazon. Worse, some of the brands I buy are intentionally forbidden for sale on Amazon because their manufacturers want to protect brick and mortar stores - but those stores closed in many areas due to the impact of PetSmart. You could say they are worse than the impact Walmart has had. We know Walmart enters a market with low low prices and puts the competition out of business then has been known to raise prices back up. But at least Walmart doesn't remove all the product assortment once they're the only game in town. PetSmart has done exactly that and I am disgusted by their practices. Their private equity owners are shortsighted because they're forcing the customer to buy online from the competition, and thus accelerating their own demise.
Petco has the potential to be great. Their problem is that no two stores are alike, or even close to being alike. They change prototypes seemingly monthly. So you never know what you're going to find when you shop a Petco. It seems I'm lucky in that the store nearest me has a larger than chain average tropical fish department, and the assortment of accessories is very decent which has saved me a trip to specialty stores that are an hour or more away in San Diego. But other Petco stores may have little to no product at all. Standards are also inconsistent, but are improving greatly. My understanding is that Petco Financials are becoming very strong and stable with consistent growth every quarter for a few years now. I do believe they're taking share from PetSmart. I just wish they would settle on a working prototype then roll it out chain wide so that their stores are more consistent. In the past they have annoyed me because I've had to drive past two of their stores to get to one that carries the product I need, and in all of these cases store size/square footage was not a justification for the vastly different product assortment but rather prototype version. I really don't care what the store looks like if it's clean and well operated, but I do expect that when all your stores in the area are about the same 15K square feet that they're all going to have the same product for sale. Right now they aren't even close, which is a major advantage for PetSmart if they have what you need as all their stores carry the same stuff.
