PetQuest
Fetching new customers: a full-stack pet retail launch with built-in growth loops
PetQuest is a Canadian pet supplies retailer launching online into one of the most variant-heavy categories in commerce, with multiple species, sizes, life stages, dietary needs, and SKU dimensions per product. eSolve built the brand a complete Shopify storefront from scratch, with a variant architecture that scales, shipping automation that handles real-world complexity, and performance marketing wired in to drive customer acquisition from launch.
Services
- Full Shopify storefront build (from scratch)
- Product variant architecture
- Shipping automation & rate logic
- Performance marketing setup
- Conversion tracking
Tech Stack
The Challenge
Pet retail looks simple from the outside and is anything but underneath. A single dog food product line might span four life stages, three breed sizes, two formulations, and five bag sizes, which is 120 SKUs from one "product" before you have added a flavor variant. Multiply that across the catalog and the variant architecture becomes the make-or-break design decision.
PetQuest also needed to launch with paid acquisition switched on, because a pet retailer competing with chain stores cannot afford to wait three months for organic to mature.
The Solution
We built PetQuest as a launch-ready storefront with the variant model, shipping logic, and acquisition channels all engineered together rather than added in sequence.
A scalable product variant architecture
We modeled the catalog around the dimensions customers actually shop by (species, life stage, size, formulation) rather than the dimensions the supplier ships in. Variants are merchandised so customers can narrow down to their exact bag in two or three clicks.
Shipping automation that handles the messy reality
Pet products span tiny treat bags to 30-pound food sacks, with rate breaks, dim-weight rules, and carrier-specific quirks. We built shipping logic that picks the right rate, surfaces accurate delivery promises at checkout, and routes orders appropriately.
Performance marketing as a launch channel
We connected the Shopify catalog to Google and Meta merchant feeds with full attribute coverage (breed size, life stage, formulation) so paid campaigns could segment audiences and creative against the way customers actually search.
Storefront UX optimized for category-savvy shoppers
Pet shoppers know what they want. We designed PDPs and collection pages around fast filtering, clear feeding-guidance copy, and reorder-friendly account flows, because in this category, repeat purchase is everything.
The Results
PetQuest launched as a complete operating business: catalog, checkout, shipping, and acquisition all working in concert from day one. The variant architecture removed a class of friction that traps a lot of multi-SKU retailers.