Korea pet show 2014

Today I went to the KOPET wish stands for Korean pet, is a fair specialized for companies trading with pet products mainly dogs and cats, it was held at the “aT Center” building in a small area compared with COEX or KINTEX. I found there that most of the brands were imported from USA, some companies focuses on one single brand, others with more than 2 and it was clear where were the most well established distributors of pet brands on the fair.

The products made in Korea on the fair were mainly clothes and accessories made of fabrics and few companies were technology based companies like: products to track your dog with a special necklace, 2 pet dry rooms companies and few other technology based companies. The rest of the companies were food and most of the brands not Korean.

Other aspect was the abundance of products designed for small dogs; maybe most people in Korea prefer to have small dogs since most people in Seoul live in apartments. From my experience is really hard to own a big dog here in Korea, I used to have a Rottweiler and when I went to the vet to ask about how much it cost to sterilize a dog, they say: Rottweiler? No. And I went to over 10 vets here in Korea, so I had to vaccine my dog myself and handle a frustrated big Rottweiler due to no sterilization.

Anyway this is one of the things I found different from other pet fairs, I like to learn about new business, new trends and unique markets like the pet market in Korea. With an increasing number of pet owners and with it more animal awareness this is an interesting market for pet companies. With most of the products designed for small dogs, imported products (including food) and from Korea the technology based companies they all were Koreans (but few), KOPET was a small but crowded fair.