From the standpoint of Hugo Galvao de Franca Filho, founder and director of Enjoy Pets, one of the most common mistakes among those who sell pet products online is planning for seasonality as if Brazil had a single climate. Seasonality is the predictable variation in demand for certain products throughout the year, driven by seasons, holidays, and special dates. In brick-and-mortar retail, it follows the climate of the city where the store is located; in e-commerce, it follows the climate of the buyer.
This difference seems obvious, but it disappears when it is time to plan campaigns, buy inventory, and allocate the advertising budget. The result shows up as products sitting idle in one region and out of stock in another. To show how this happens, this article follows an online store in the segment throughout a cold season. Before finalizing the plan for the next season, it is worth checking where this path goes wrong and how to correct it.
A winter campaign designed for the entire country
In this scenario, a pet products store based in São Paulo prepares its winter campaign months in advance. It buys dog clothing, heated beds, blankets, and throws in larger volumes, produces new photos, and sets aside a large share of its advertising budget for the coldest months. The sponsored ads are set up for the entire country because the store delivers to every state and does not want to miss out on any potential buyer.
In the first few weeks, sales in the South and Southeast respond well, and the decision seems right. According to Hugo Galvao, it is precisely this positive start that hides the problem, because total revenue goes up and no one looks at the performance of each region separately. The campaign is, in fact, spending money to show coats to pet owners in cities where the temperature barely changes throughout the year, and the cost of this mistake only becomes clear later on.
What the numbers reveal after the season
At the end of winter, a regional analysis tells a different story. The ads shown in the North, the Northeast, and much of the Center-West drew many curiosity clicks and few purchases, which drove up the cost of each sale. At the same time, there was leftover inventory of blankets and clothing, and part of it had to be sold at a discount to free up space. The campaign did generate sales, but fewer than the budget invested would have allowed.
There is a second, less visible effect. While the store focused its attention on cold-weather items, demand for flea treatments, tick treatments, and water fountains remained strong in the warmer regions, and some of these products ran out of stock. Hugo Galvao de Franca Filho considers this the costliest loss in the case, because a sale lost to a stockout does not appear in any campaign report. It simply never happens, and the pet owner finds the item from another seller.
A pet calendar for each region
The case illustrates a characteristic of the Brazilian market that e-commerce makes more evident. In the states of the Center-West, North, and Northeast, cold-related seasonality is almost nonexistent, since the heat persists throughout practically the entire year. For pet retail, this means that winter is a real opportunity in one part of the country and an ordinary period in another, with its own demands that do not change at the same pace.
Peaks can also shift over time. A survey of cat scratchers on Mercado Livre showed that the category, whose highest demand used to be concentrated in the second half of the year, recorded its sales peak in May. As Hugo Galvao reads it, this kind of change reinforces the need to review the sales calendar every season based on actual orders, rather than building it once and repeating it indefinitely.
How to adjust storefront, inventory, and ads to the buyer’s climate
The fix starts with the data the store already has. Sorting orders from previous seasons by state or ZIP code range shows where each category actually sells and in which months. In a company’s own online store, such as www.enjoypets.com.br, this information is in the order history; on marketplaces, it appears in each platform’s sales reports. With it, the store can segment sponsored ads by region and direct the budget to where the campaign has a chance to convert.
The same reasoning applies to inventory and the storefront. Instead of a single national campaign, the store can run two fronts at the same time: cold-weather items featured for the South and Southeast and parasite-prevention and hydration products for the warmer regions. Planning the season this way, Hugo Galvao de Franca Filho emphasizes, turns seasonality into several smaller, more precise opportunities in place of a single bet that only pays off in part of the country.
