The pet industry used to move slowly — the same kibble giants, the same tag-engraving machine at the hardware store. Not anymore. A wave of young companies is rethinking every corner of pet care, from what’s in the bowl to what’s on the collar. These are the new(er) pet companies we think are actually worth watching — including, in full transparency, our own.
Fresh and modern food
Sundays for Dogs cracked the “fresh food without the freezer” problem with air-dried recipes you pour like kibble. Maev brought raw feeding to the mainstream with vet-formulated frozen raw. Jinx modernized kibble itself for millennial shoppers with better ingredients and better branding. None of them have dethroned the giants yet — but all three have changed what pet parents expect from a bag of food.
Pet tech and safety
Fi keeps pushing GPS collar batteries from days to weeks. Whisker turned the Litter-Robot from a curiosity into standard equipment for multi-cat homes. Crumb is playing an audacious game: giving away free scan tags to build a giant lost-pet network. And YIP hooked pet tags into Apple’s Find My network so your dog shows up on a map like your keys do.
Design-first gear
Wild One, Fable Pets, and Little Beast proved pet gear could sell on aesthetics without sacrificing function — walk sets in gallery-worthy colorways, crates that look like furniture, dogwear that gets street-style photographed. We break the whole scene down in our 2026 design trends guide.
And us — Shiloh’s House + Lohji
We’re in this story too. Shiloh’s House started with a simple frustration: pet ID tags were either ugly and dumb, or smart and uglier. Our answer is a designer acrylic tag with NFC inside — anyone who finds your pet taps the tag with their phone and instantly sees your pet’s profile, no app or scanning required — plus engraving as a physical backup. The free Lohji app behind it stores medical records, vaccine history, emergency contacts, and voice notes, and works in 54 countries and 16 languages. New company, old-fashioned obsession with doing one thing right. Here’s why we think NFC changes everything.
What the new generation gets right
- Pets are family — products are designed with the same care as things you’d buy for yourself.
- No middlemen — most of these brands sell direct, so quality goes up instead of shelf fees.
- Software matters — the best new pet products pair hardware with genuinely useful apps.
- Design is respect — good-looking gear gets used every day; ugly gear ends up in a drawer.
Get Your Tag
See what a new-generation pet company does with the humble ID tag — NFC smarts, designer looks, free Lohji™ app.
