The Niche E-Commerce World of Custom Pet Portraits
If you own a dog or cat, you’ve probably seen the slightly annoying ads like this…
Or maybe you’ve seen one from CrownAndPaw.com or WestandWillow.com. Maybe even one from CutePetPortrait.com like above. Maybe you’ve seen them all!
The thing you don’t know is that this is all a competitive e-commerce marketplace, filled with competitive factions, million-dollar enterprises, and HUGE margins. Capitalism harnessed on the back of the millions of US, Canadian, and UK pet owners.
In fact, custom pet portraits are a little niche market of the online e-commerce marketplace for pet owners, and it’s a story of competition, fulfillment, and Facebook.
The Race To The Margins, High Ones at That…
The thing about cute pet portraits, no matter how cute they are, is that they are profitable for business owners. Very profitable.
Take a look at Cute Pet Portrait. They charge $29.99 for a digital portrait and $50 ($80 total) more for an 8x10" small framed portrait. WestAndWillow charges $94 for the same, and up for their smaller-sized framed pet portraits, CrownandPaw charges around the same.
So let’s talk margins and competition.
Cost #1: Design
Hired from the Philippines, designers can produce a pet portrait in about 1 hour for about $5 USD. For a digital copy with no other shipping costs, that’s an 80%+ margin at this point.
Cost #2: Fulfillment
E-commerce businesses like this use printing fulfillment centers such as Prodigi and Printful to produce and ship physical products.
For our case of an 8x10" framed portrait, that costs the seller about $25 USD to produce and ship. Costs as of now are $5 + $25 = $30, so we’re still running a 60%+ margin.
Cost #3: Advertising
This is the BIGGEST cost for any e-commerce business, including this market. They’re having to compete for your attention on Facebook, and with it comes a hefty price.
If they’re lucky, they can get a cost per sale of around $25 USD. So now we’re at $55 total cost per sale on an $80 purchase. This takes the margins down to about 30%. Not bad, don’t you think?
Facebook & The Giant Attention Grabber
If you ever click through one of these ads to the website, trust me, you’ll know. They’ll know. Facebook will know.
How? Just check your Facebook after browsing. You’ll be hit with a TON of retargeting ads BEGGING you to finish your purchase.
Facebook retargeting is the main tactic behind getting those uncompleted orders over the finish line, and after I logged an uncompleted purchase on one of these sites, RIP my whole FB feed. #portrait-ads-galore
Facebook is one of the best ways to target pet owners based on their demographics, so these pet portrait companies take definite advantage of this.
In short, I hope you enjoyed this semi-deep dive into a niche Facebook/e-commerce world. Watch out for these companies as more and more will be popping up due to the margins and competition.
TL;DR — Pet Portrait companies are everywhere. They’re Facebook invasive, and they love their high margins.
