Innovation or Imitation? Inside Zoomark 2025

Jordan Tyler: You've all seen the buzzwords—natural, single-source protein, sustainable—but what do they mean? Do they actually represent innovation or are they just posers? And what happens when America's fast-paced pet food innovation meets Europe's demand for proof?

Today, we're taking you inside Europe's biggest pet industry trade show: Zoomark International in Bologna, Italy. But this isn't just another event recap. What unfolded over a six-week tour across the United Kingdom and several European countries turned into a revealing look between the European and American philosophies around pet nutrition and innovation. Our team saw it all—everything from transportation disasters to innovation claims that'll make you question what you're really paying for in your pet's food.

In the episode, we will explore why European companies demand proof before promises, while American brands lead more with emotion and storytelling. Whether you're a pet parent trying to navigate conflicting claims or an industry professional looking to understand global trends, this conversation may change the way you think about pet food innovation. Let's get into it.

Welcome to Barking Mad, a podcast by BSM Partners. I'm your host, Jordan Tyler.

So to really set the stage here, we're not just talking about Zoo A today. We'll also talk about the six-week European tour that Nate Thomas, co-founder and partner at BSM Partners, and his wife Amanda Olsen-Thomas, executive assistant at BSM Partners, embarked upon this spring.

day's focus, which is Zoomark: 2025

Today we're graced by several members of the BSM Partners team who actually attended Zoomark 2025. So with us today is Nate Thomas and Amanda Olsen-Thomas, whom I’ve already introduced. We also have Emilie Mesnier, vice president of European operations, who is based in Nantes, France. We also have Michael Johnson, principal of branding, strategy and marketing, as well as Eric Rittenhouse, business development manager for BSM Partners.

Now, I've heard some stories and snippets about the show here and there, but really looking forward to digging deeper with you all today to uncover some of the differences between the European and American pet markets and how that's reflected in the way that these industries operate and really cater to pet parents.

Now, a few notes about the show—it's a pretty big deal. The global pet industry tradeshow attracted nearly 31,000 visitors from all over the world, more than 64% of which came from outside of Italy, and it featured more than 1,200 exhibitors from 56 countries. So, this was a record setting year for Zoomark, which actually expanded the show by 32% this year to accommodate the growth.

And I want to spend just a second on that. So, the show spanned 90,000 square meters. Now, for those of us in the United States, that's nearly 970,000 square feet—that’s hard to visualize, but it’s the same amount of space as 17 football fields—American football, that is. To put that in perspective, Global Pet Expo and SUPERZOO, which are two of North America's most attended pet industry trade shows, are each at around 350,000 square feet, which means that Zoomark is bigger than those two shows combined.

Now, if you look at the coverage by any of the pet industry trade magazines here in the US or over in the EU, you'll hear nothing but rave reviews about the show, but that's why we're here today—to figure out what really went down. So, in reality, there were some major issues with transportation, which made it nearly impossible for people to get to and from the show in a reasonable amount of time. We're talking people waiting hours for an Uber, for a taxi, and some people even giving up and just walking back to their hotels. Michael, what was your experience of these transportation woes?

Michael Johnson: You mentioned that some people, you know, were essentially walking back from the show. We did that one day and it was interesting, but it’s not how you want to do a tradeshow. We basically contracted with a limo service, ultimately, and that turned out to be phenomenal—we were kind of the bell of the ball.

But the system was not conducive for doing the trade show. And one of the things I thought was interesting, we talked to somebody who ran another trade show about the transportation, and this particular person told us what this particular person would have done differently for their show. And it was a huge long list of, “Here are the things I would have had coordinated so it never came to this.” And again, I think we cannot overstate the incredible mess of traffic and inability to get a cab or to this show. I mean, it was really interesting, given you've brought the world to your doorstep and this is what happens.

Jordan Tyler: Now, to go a step further and coming back just to the sheer size of the trade show, attendees were presented with another logistical challenge inside the show of merely navigating the many halls and booth within the BolognaFiere Convention Center. But don't just take it from me. Michael, would you give us some color on what you thought of the show?

Michael Johnson: I thought it was a compelling trade show, not for innovation, just sheer scope and size. It's roughly three times the size of Global, if you look at their square—I mean, that's a really big show across, what was it, Eric? 10 halls?

Eric Rittenhouse: Yeah, 10 halls.

Michael Johnson: And so, it's a massive show and I don't know if it's a function of that or just because they have so much space. I will say that, you know, particularly in some of the, not necessarily US Pavilion, but you know, like pavilions 29, 28/29, 30, just some magnificent booths. You know, I mean, just mind-blowing booths that, I mean things you'd more expect to see at like a fashion show or a consumer electronics show or something like that.

I mean, some of these booths put what we see I think in in the US to shame, and so clearly that's something that they do well as part of this show, not necessarily in our particular pavilion, but some of these booths, you know, I mean, were like full scale restaurants too. I mean, just, just—

Nate Thomas: Oh, yeah.

Michael Johnson: A magnificent job of some of that.

Nate Thomas: Yeah. They had chefs working some of these. Yeah.

Eric Rittenhouse: Oh yeah. Yes, they do. Yeah.

Jordan Tyler: Chefs for humans or chefs for pets?

Nate Thomas: Chefs for humans—

Michael Johnson: For humans, if you wanted to stop and to get some food.

Nate Thomas: They—some of these booths were like cafes. If you went in there, you could order all kinds of food and drinks and hang out and, yeah.

Jordan Tyler: Yeah, that's actually kind of crazy. I'm thinking back to Global this spring and SUPERZOO last fall, and sometimes it's hard to just find like a half decent lunch on the show floor, and either way it's going to cost you $20 or more. So, I would say that's definitely something different. And while there are definitely differences in the food selection, the way that the shows are laid out in general, and the transportation to and from, the team did see some parallels between the EU and US pet markets.

So, for example, we've seen a lot of imitation in the American pet nutrition space, and it seems like the same thing is happening in European markets as well. And I wanted to read directly from a LinkedIn post that Emilie shared with me from a French animal nutritionist who attended the show.

enwashing, and empty slogans.: 2025

A pretty scathing review, but perhaps not altogether inaccurate. Emilie, what’s your take on all this?

Emilie Mesnier: So, there's not much innovation happening, at least it depends on how you define innovation, right? So, to me, if it's been existing for 20 to 30 years, I can't call it innovation. I find this misleading and I don't know—what is it, innovation washing or greenwashing. It's just, it's wrong.

But with that being said, by digging deeper, there are some innovations happening. There are now kibble packaging [that are] 100% made out of paper. It exists right now in Europe. You can buy it in the store already. That's innovation, compared to the US at least.

I think a lot of the innovation was happening on a very, very tiny booths that were disseminated in different places. There was some nuggets that needed to be found there. I mean, formulating food with truly alternative, completely new ingredients that are being approved, you know, one month after the next in Europe and over in the US, and putting that in pet food is innovative, right? That definitely doesn’t, has not been existing for the last 10 years. Those are just brand-new ingredients.

The innovation I’d like to see would be a brand that finally takes a stand on doing a food that's putting the money into truly better innovation, without all the cost of added unnecessary marketing, or sometimes it’s just really branding. It’s marketing first, nutrition second, planet No. 10, I guess.

Jordan Tyler: Oh, wow. Yeah. Sustainability way down on that list. And Michael as our marketing guy, not to put you on the spot, but what's your take on this whole discussion of imitation versus innovation or, you know, what's just marketing versus actual advancements in pet nutrition and care?

Michael Johnson: I think there are pockets of innovation. You know, I think there are people that have a lot of really interesting ideas. But you know, I'm not trying to take a different position altogether from what Emilie is saying, but in the world of pet products, you also have to be able to sell it. And I think that's one of the reasons why there's so much imitation as opposed to true innovation. A lot of these things that we look at as innovative or the advent of a new product form or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah—if I can't find a market, I really can't do it.

Jordan Tyler: Right. So, we need marketing, but I think what we're all getting at here is when companies put marketing dollars ahead of research dollars, that impacts the innovation that we see in the market and the actual quality of what ends up in pets’ bowls.

So Nate, I'd love to throw this over to you. Where do you think innovation in the European pet market is actually happening?

Nate Thomas: There are some functional ingredients that are actually taking off pretty well in Europe. So, there's a lot of ingredient innovation that's happening there, and I think a lot of times we poo-poo it because ingredients anybody can buy ingredients. Right? So, is it really going to do any kind of differentiation with the brand? I think the answer to that is, well, it depends on how they use it and how they market it. You know, kind of coming back to the marketing innovation.

Innovation is even here in the US, but it's hard to see because some of the innovation is elusive. It hides from us. It's not, it's hard to recognize, it's hard to see. So even though we, it's not necessarily as obvious to us that it's happening, I do think that pets are benefiting from that.

Jordan Tyler: Yeah, I think that's an interesting point, right? There could be ingredient innovation that contributes to product innovation, even if the product—in terms of format or packaging—doesn't really stand out as new or different in and of itself.

And another thing we've talked about in the past is making sure that innovations—whether they're around the product itself or around the ingredients in the product—are backed by scientific evidence. Now, Eric, I'm interested to hear your two cents on this based on what you heard and saw at the show. So, is this idea of substantiating product claims with research a priority among European pet owners?

Eric Rittenhouse: What's interesting, some of the conversations we're having—and I would say we're just at the emerging state of these conversations—are centered around maybe I do want some substantiation behind it or evidence behind some of these functionality claims. That appears to be coming up more so. That was one of my takeaways is, they're looking to position themselves differently versus saying, I'm just like everyone now on these claims, I'm going to go a step further and actually go do, you know, do the research and provide the substantiation. And I have to believe, again, where this is emerging, where this will lead to is this will now become a part of their sales and marketing strategy, so.

Before, I think it was a little bit, as we've talked about, the “Wild West”—they just threw whatever out, whatever else was out there. I mean, if my key competitor's doing it, then I'm going to do it. I think a few of them are recognizing I need to differentiate myself a little bit better. We’ve got to hope that trend continues, but we're having some good conversations about it, so.

Jordan Tyler: So, the market's being driven increasingly by brands and people within it wanting to truly differentiate by doing the research and substantiating their claims with data. And I definitely agree, I hope that trend continues. But I'm curious, what else was unique? So Nate, after touring Europe for six weeks, what were some of the things that you noticed?

Nate Thomas: You know, one of the things that that we noticed a lot in Europe is, you know, as compared to like a US trade show, a lot of the really successful companies in Europe are not targeting all the European market. So, for example, you might have a company that owns the lion's share of the market, over 50% of a market in a particular country, but they're not marketing it in all the other European countries.

And so, it's almost created in a way like these little pockets of competition where they're not broadly competing with everybody out there. And so, I don't think you're seeing a rush for the same kind of “me too” level things that you do in the US. But I think a lot of it's because the European companies don't seem to be wanting to participate in every single market in Europe.

Jordan Tyler: Yeah, that's fascinating. So, it's just the competitive landscape is vastly different than here in the United States. And I'd love to now get kind of into what we saw at the show in terms of actual products and some of the real innovations that we did notice. Emilie, let's start with your key takeaways. What's hot right now in the European pet market?

Emilie Mesnier: A very quick comparison that I saw with a few things that I've seen in the show between Europe and the US which were interesting. The US, if I oversimplify, you know: meat-first, high-protein, freeze-dried, natural, still the no fillers, right? And new format. In Europe, natural used to be not interesting at all. Fifteen years ago, there's so many companies using BHA, BHT, didn't care about natural antioxidants, for example. I'm seeing more and more natural claims in Europe. So, I feel like in the US it's losing traction—in Europe, it's gaining traction. So that's interesting.

But there is the same, you know, no fillers—in Europe, it's no nasties, which is cute. Same thing. And in Europe, compared to those American claims that we see almost everywhere now: organic, and then so many brands say “no sugar added.” I'm not sure why. I've seen the most very bad formulation in my last 17 years of doing pet food, added sugar have never really been a big problem, but maybe it was in Europe, I'm not sure.

And then, yeah, there's way more competition for the differentiator, while staying competitive in price, which we don't, I don't see as much in the US. And a lot of herbs and plants was a big thing in my first European project six years ago, it's still big. And if you see the brands that have been acquired and that continue to grow, they have a lot of those herbs and plants. This is not something we see in the US. That's a big difference. And I think, again, it's come from culture, right? Older culture, Grandma's remedy, when you're feeling nauseated or you have skin allergies or whatever, and they're putting a lot of those ingredients in the pet food—that's not innovative. It's been going on for a while, but it's still very strong and we don't have that in the US.

Jordan Tyler: Yeah, it could be innovative for one area of the world and not as innovative and another area of the world. I think that's interesting. Michael, Nate, what did you see that you thought was unique?

Michael Johnson: I will say I have never heard of more ingredients they're putting into things over there. And Nate, you run with it from there.

Nate Thomas: Yeah, there's just a—there's a lot of really interesting ingredients out there. You know, the reality is that they're doing a lot more research on ingredients in Europe. And that is a huge difference. And so, you're seeing a lot of ingredient innovation come through with on the European side because they're actually doing research there and they actually know things, whereas here in the US, any amount of research that's done, half of the stuff never even gets published because they could, these companies see it as a competitive advantage or maybe they don't like the results, you know?

Dr. Shoveller [Anna Kate Shoveller of the University of Guelph] says one of my very favorite things, I've heard her say it a million times, I'm going to say it again: There is no crying in research. There's crying in research when people aren't doing it. And I see that the US is, seems to be outclassed by research by the European market. You know, you talk about innovation washing, what about nutrition washing? Right?

But the US seems less concerned about the research, even though they're concerned about science, whereas the Europeans seem to be way more concerned about the research. They don't want to put things out and nutrition-wash things back to consumers. And we're more than happy to do that in the US. In fact, we built an entire industry, multiple industries, based on that.

Emilie Mesnier: Europe, exactly what you said, Nate, is: should me the proof first, I’ll listen to your story later, versus the US, it’s tell me a nice story that makes me feel warm, and then after that, maybe I’ll look at the data. Maybe… which, you know, it's also, I mean, it is also literally why there's way more innovation in the US in general in terms of what's being launched on the market. People don't overthink things, they just launch it.

Jordan Tyler: Yeah. And I wonder if any of this is influenced by the retail landscape. So, like how pet food and pet care products are like sold in the market. Is it vastly different as well in Europe compared to the United States?

Michael Johnson: The market is not nearly as mature or evolved as that in the States, and I don't throw that out as an indictment, you know, it's just, we've been much more accustomed to, you know, I guess pet product marketing, you know, over the past couple of decades than they have.

It's still largely a grocery-centric business in the EU, as opposed to, you know, largely specialty, you know, in the States. But because of that, you know, maybe it's more authentic?

Jordan Tyler: That is interesting, because in the United States, a lot of people prefer shopping for pet food and pet care items at pet specialty retailers—so independent pet retailers and even big box stores like PetSmart and Petco—whereas in Europe, most people are purchasing these products at grocery stores.

And another thing—there’s actually more people and pets in Europe compared to the United States, yet the market is smaller in terms of dollar sales—or rather, euro sales. It sort of depends on where you get the data from, but the American Pet Products Association clocks pet ownership in the United States at 64% of all households, so more than two-thirds of the American population owns at least one pet, whereas in Europe, roughly 50% of the population owns at least one pet, according to the European Pet Food Industry Federation or FEDIAF. But Michael, how much do people spend on their pets in Europe versus in the United States?

Michael Johnson: Off the top of my head, I think it's about half. The market population's actually larger. The dollar sales are, again, I want to say if you aggregate all the countries in EU, it's half the United States market, and so the spend is just not the same. I don't think that's a function of where they want to be. I just think it's a function of where they've been. Again, it's a grocery-driven marketplace.

We are seeing pockets of premiumization, virtually every booth was premiumizing, you know. I mean, that's just where they want to head. Humanization a big buzzword over there. Premium's a big word over there. And so, I think they're heading in that direction, it's just a matter of how do we tap into that.

Jordan Tyler: Yeah. So, it sounds like the markets are just structured differently, you know, in Europe you have more of a siloed industry, kind of country by country, that's focused more on substantiating product claims and doing ingredient research. And in America you have more of a national industry with a handful of big players that kind of dominate across the entire market.

Nate Thomas: You know, one thing that's really kind of interesting, we talk about kind of a lack of, you know, what we’d call like a continental brand. Because in the US market there are a couple of brands that are just leading the market everywhere, right? Interestingly enough, most of those brands are actually leading the market from the grocery store shelves, right? Because by the time you get to that level of continental brand, of a global brand, at some point you, it's hard to be ultra-premium on it across the board because now you're attracting the largest swath of consumers.

And I'm seeing a lot of brands—in fact, we visited with several that are actually outperforming on the direct-to-consumer side. And so, I think a lot of this premiumization that we saw when the US market was maturing and evolving, is maturing and evolving in a market segment that wasn't really active when the US market was growing into this level. So, premiumization seems to be happening more on the direct-to-consumer side. How that rolls back out into the standard pet industry? Once those brands really start to get large enough that they'll have to actually start selling in brick and mortar as well, it'll be really interesting to see how that evolves.

It's not that companies want to charge the most amount of money they possibly can, so much as there's a price point that consumers are going to be comfortable paying as long as there is some associated benefit that they're going to get from that. And there are pet consumers that are willing to spend just about anything if they can get the benefit they want.

Because remember—I mean, we consumers, we're values-based as well. We're buying things based on our values. So, values innovation is something that we don't think about and talk about, but building your product and your brand based on the values of your company seems to have a lot of strength no matter what markets you're in.

Emilie Mesnier: I just wanted to jump in with this value and this culture. And also, maybe the Europeans are not as gullible with new things that are advertising a lot of benefits and they're not sure they're real. But in terms of the value and the culture, we Americans put pets first and we wear that as a badge of honor, and I've been discovering that in Europe, when you get excited to pet a dog in the street, people look at you like you're weird. So, it's quite different.

And so, I think in the US, we're almost proud to be spending a lot of money on our pets and we want to do the best that we can. And I'm not sure, without having studied this subject, that this is valued or ingrained in the culture here, where if a food was good enough for years, what justifies the need to spend twice more money, for example? Right? And on top of that, because you talked about the claim and the marketing, Michael, people being more suspicious, especially when claims, whether they're true or not, seems too good to be true.

Michael Johnson: So it's a great point. I think the two things that really drive that, again, would be wherewithal and education. If I have money to spend and you can educate me, chances are I'm going to premiumize.

Just to put a point on it, and going back to your earlier point, Nate, you know, while you were talking, I just referenced the numbers because I like to be pinpoint accurate. From a population perspective, they're twice the size of the United States in terms of human beings. From a pet spend, it's less than half of what's going on in the States.

And so, the market could be primed for explosive growth. But again, I think they just haven't found a way to hit that critical mass yet. That said, I think they will—I don't know when, but if you are, again, a company that is interested in a big burgeoning market, I would be looking hard at Europe.

Jordan Tyler: Yes. Definitely a market to watch—or rather many markets to watch, as it sounds like each country, more or less has its own thing going on. But this has been really interesting and I'm personally looking forward to sharing more insights about the European market and hearing from more of our friends in Europe about how it's growing and evolving.

But I'm also curious to hear a little bit more about this six-week tour that Nate and Amanda went on, and maybe some of the fun that you guys had there at the end in Bologna.

Michael Johnson: I think it's important to get on the call. So, Nate kind of introduced us to porticos. For example, there, there's no city in the world that has more porticos than Bologna. So, let's put that down as the tip of the hat.

Nate Thomas: Yeah. Bologna has 50 kilometers of shopping and eating under porticos. You could walk all day long and get all kinds of shopping and eating that you'd never seen. Plus, you know, anywhere you go in the Old World, especially in Italy, you're going to see some really amazing architecture and some really interesting and really old, you know, things from antiquity.

Of course, it's a great place to be, so you're right. All those porticos—what those porticos really result in is a whole bunch of great shopping and eating, and some really great sightseeing and some good photography too.

Jordan Tyler: Alright! Writing that down for my future trip to Italy. Thanks for the rec. But Amanda, what was your favorite part of the trip?

Amanda Olsen: I really enjoyed like meeting a lot of the people, a lot of the, you know, meeting people from companies we had meetings with and stuff like that. Honestly, I thought one of the best parts of the trip was going to Nantes. That was amazing. Nantes is an amazing city. And of course going to Venice with you, Michael.

Michael Johnson: Well, that goes without saying, but—

Nate Thomas: You know, I think that the best part of the trip for me was meeting our clients and our partners and the new people and the things about Europe, because it was really clear to me that, you know—and I'll just talk about BSM real quick—what we did in the US to dynamically change the consulting environment is what the Europeans seem to be very thirsty for right now. And I've got to tell you, it was really, really affirming for me to sit down with people and talk about things that are important to them, and they happen to be the same things that are important to us.

You know, culture and values, you know, where we see ourselves in the world, what we aspire to as a human being, not necessarily as business people but as human beings. We're all the same. I think that was really one of my favorite aspects is we're culturally different, but we are all values-based. We're all doing things based on our values. And you know what guys? We share values with people all over the world. We just don't necessarily always recognize that, but sit down and have a conversation with somebody from a foreign country and have a real honest conversation with them, and I think you'll find out the values are the same.

That was really, I think, the best part of the trip. It's not that we didn't know that. It's just that getting into it and meeting people we've never talked to and being able to identify and see them in the dark because we all have the same light—to me, that was really amazing and I really, I loved that, and I look forward to the next time we go back because of that.

Jordan Tyler: Yeah. So, it wasn't perfect, but it was an adventure. And do you think you'd do it again?

Nate Thomas: We would definitely, we would do it differently, but we would do, we would—

Amanda Olsen: We would do it differently, I would not pack nearly as much stuff. You know who never wanted to backpack through Europe? Me. I'm not a backpack through Europe kind of gal. Guess who was wishing they were backpacking through Europe? Me. That suitcase was heavy.

Emilie Mesnier: No pain, no gain.

Jordan Tyler: There you go. #NothingIsImpossible.

Eric Rittenhouse: That’s right.

Michael Johnson: Well, on my end, it was a delight to be there with all of you. So again, thank you for that.

Nate Thomas: Well, we really looked forward to, uh, you know, coming into Nantes. We were like, “Oh, we can't wait to see Emilie!” You know, and then coming into Bologna: “Oh my God, we get to see the rest of the team!” We were so—it was like we were starving of seeing all you guys. It was really good to see the team and it was really great to have gone through a great experience, and then at the end of the day, the light that you see at the end of the tunnel is your team. Pretty, pretty special.

there's your scoop on Zoomark: 2025

And the last thing I think I'd say is, you know, while market structures and strategies may differ from culture to culture, region to region, the heart of the pet industry is the same across borders. It's about doing what's best for our pets no matter where we live, what compels us to buy something, or how we see our furry companions as part of our lives, the desire to care for our animals with integrity and good intention is absolutely a shared value across the American and European pet industries.

Thanks again for tuning into Barking Mad, a podcast by BSM partners. If you'd like to learn more about us, please visit www.bsmpartners.net. If you found today's conversation enlightening, share with a friend and don't forget to subscribe to keep up with the pet industry's latest trends and conversations.

A huge thank you to Nate Thomas, Amanda Olson, Michael Johnson, Emilie Mesnier, and Eric Rittenhouse for lending their time and insights to today's episode. We'd also like to thank our dedicated team: Ada-Miette Thomas, Neeley Bowden, Kait Wright, Cady Wolf and Dr. Katy Miller. A special shout out to Lee Ann Hagerty in support of this episode. See you next time.

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