The pet store that became a brand once it stopped depending on discounts

Picture an online pet store that had spent two years selling food, cat litter, and toys, always competing on the same ground as every other seller in the marketplace: whoever posted the lowest price. Hugo Galvao de Franca Filho, the entrepreneur behind Enjoy Pets, often points to situations like this one as an example of what happens when a pet business competes on price alone. It works for a while, until the next competitor cuts further, and whatever margin remained disappears along with the brand’s differentiation.

In this scenario, the turning point came when the store stopped only advertising products and started explaining why it existed. Instead of another discount post came the account of how the founder started the business after failing to find suitable food for their own dog with a dietary restriction. The story didn’t sell anything directly, but it made customers remember the brand before comparing prices anywhere else.

Why price alone never sustains a pet brand long-term

Low prices attract the first order, but they don’t build memory. Any competitor with enough financial room can match a discount within hours, and the customer who came only for the promotion moves on to whoever offers the next one. What remains once the promotion ends is the question every pet store should ask itself: Why would this pet owner come back here rather than anywhere else carrying the same product?

Hugo Galvao reinforces this point when discussing operations that grow fast early on, then stall as soon as they stop sustaining continuous promotions. Without a reason beyond price, the customer base never becomes loyal, only opportunistic, willing to buy from whichever brand offers that specific moment’s advantage, with no real connection to the store that sold to them before.

What changes when a brand starts telling a real story

Storytelling, in pet retail, doesn’t mean inventing an attractive narrative with no substance behind it. It means showing the real reason behind the business: why the founder chose that niche, what personal or professional problem led them there, and how the operation handles the products it sells day to day. This kind of content connects because it feels true, not because it was well written.

In this case, the most shared content wasn’t any offer at all; it was the account of how the team selects suppliers for sensitive products, like food for pets with allergies. That kind of behind-the-scenes detail builds trust that no coupon can build on its own, because it shows judgment, not just intent to sell one more unit that month.

Where to apply storytelling without forcing it into the operation

The common mistake is treating storytelling as a single isolated campaign, published once and forgotten soon after. It works better spread across the routine: in a product description explaining why it made the catalog, in the answer to a frequent question, in the content that follows up after a customer’s first purchase.

Enjoy Pets, featured at www.enjoypets.com.br, treats part of its content this way, prioritizing an explanation of how products get selected over simply announcing a price. Hugo Galvao de Franca Filho considers this kind of content just as relevant as the sales campaign itself, because it’s what sustains repeat purchases once the month’s promotion ends and prices go back to normal.

A strong pet brand isn’t born from a discount; it’s born from the reason behind it

In the scenario described here, the store didn’t stop selling on price; it just stopped depending on it exclusively. Discounts remained a useful tool for specific moments but stopped being the only reason for someone to choose that brand among dozens of similar options on the same marketplaces.

Telling the real story behind a business costs time, not media budget, and that’s exactly why few competitors do it well. Whoever manages to sustain that narrative over time builds something no competitor reproduces overnight: a genuine reason for the customer to come back, even after finding the same product cheaper somewhere else.