On February 23, 2022, MasterZoo was a successful regional pet-store chain with 101 shops and a dangerous concentration: about 90 percent of the parent group's assets sat in Kharkiv. Within weeks of Russia's full-scale invasion, only 40 of those stores could open. Warehouses were frozen. Customers, employees and their animals were moving west. A company built around being nearby suddenly found that “nearby” had changed.
The retailer moved too. It improvised warehouse space, restarted the flow of European goods, followed displaced customers into western Ukraine and eventually shifted its center of gravity toward Kyiv. By late 2025, MasterZoo had more than 200 outlets. The number is striking, but the more useful story is what those stores became: nodes in a system that combines ecommerce, same-day delivery, grooming, loyalty, advice, education and animal-welfare work.
The customer who cannot talk
Pet retail has an unusual piece of friction. The shopper and the user are different creatures. A dog cannot explain that a treat upset its stomach. A parakeet will not compare ingredient panels. The human customer has to interpret appetite, behavior, age, breed and health, often while worrying about making the wrong choice. Price matters, but confidence matters too.
MasterZoo's proposition is designed around that anxiety. Its stores carry food, treats, toys, hygiene supplies, veterinary products, apparel, leads, tanks, cages, smart devices and the odd novelty, including pet yogurt and alcohol-free “beer” for dogs. More than 10,000 items cover cats, dogs, birds, rodents, fish and reptiles. Range brings people in; trained advice makes the range navigable.
From the beginning, founder Polina Kosharna emphasized employees who could educate rather than merely point to a shelf. That sounds modest until one considers the alternative: an endless marketplace grid in which the buyer must become an amateur nutritionist. MasterZoo's stores turn knowledge into a retail service. Online chat and editorial guidance extend the same idea to ecommerce.
“We do not just want to sell goods, but to create a unique customer experience.”MasterZoo leadership, on the chain's direction
A store becomes a loop
The business makes money in familiar ways: it buys and sells products through shops and the website, while grooming contributes service revenue. Yet its advantage comes from how those parts reinforce one another. A neighborhood store solves urgency. Ecommerce supplies breadth and convenience. Grooming creates an appointment-based relationship. A shared discount program gives the customer one identity across stores, salons and the site. Delivery turns the local network into distributed fulfillment.
In Kyiv, orders placed before mid-afternoon can arrive the same evening through MasterZoo's own courier service. The chain also uses Glovo, Zakaz, Hotline and mono market. In 2025 it became mono market's first pet-category partner, with a planned listing of more than 5,500 products. Each channel answers a different version of the same household question: how quickly can the food, litter or medicine get here?
The loyalty program is deliberately plain. A first purchase unlocks a discount; cumulative spending raises it through 5, 7 and 10 percent tiers. What matters is not financial novelty but continuity. A grooming visit and an online order belong to the same relationship. For a category built on recurring consumption, that continuity is valuable.
From regional concentration to national coverage
pre-2022
March 2022
rebuild logistics
late 2025
The family behind the shelf
MasterZoo is part of Suziria Group, a Ukrainian family business founded by Tetyana and Sergiy Potapov in 1993. Their daughter, Kosharna, developed the MasterZoo concept in 2007 as the business expanded beyond Kharkiv. A shopping-center tender forced a loose collection of outlets to acquire one name, one format and a model that could travel.
The group now spans distribution, manufacturing and owned brands such as Savory, Half&Half, Priroda, Special One, ProVET and Pet Fashion. That structure gives MasterZoo something an independent shop cannot easily copy: visibility across suppliers, product development, logistics and retail demand. The shelves can inform the factory, while the distribution operation can keep the shelves supplied.
Vertical integration also creates a risk. A retailer must remain a trusted curator, not merely a showroom for related brands. MasterZoo counters that by carrying a wide mix of Ukrainian and international labels, including exclusive products. Its public position is that price tier should not determine whether an item passes quality checks.
A mall store without the smell
MasterZoo entered Ukrainian shopping malls early, at a time when pet shops often meant loose feed, cramped displays and an unmistakable odor. Clean merchandising and consistent service made the category acceptable to mall landlords and family shoppers. It was less a flash of invention than an accumulation of standards, which is often how retail formats change.
The company refreshed its identity in 2023 with creative agency Taktika. The update kept the recognizable purple and green while adding custom typography and deliberately naive marker drawings. The strategic language shifted toward animals as personalities and owners as “pet parents.” Underneath the whimsy is a market thesis: as animals move from yard occupants to family members, spending shifts from subsistence toward health, comfort, services and expression.
The shift changes the arithmetic of the basket. Food remains the dependable center because it runs out on schedule. Around it sit higher-consideration purchases: supplements, dental care, travel gear, breed-specific grooming and devices that promise to monitor or entertain an animal. A broad specialist can merchandise those needs together and notice when a novelty becomes a routine. It can also serve the long tail that general stores struggle to justify, from aquarium equipment to products for decorative rodents.
Ukraine's pet population makes the opportunity substantial. Industry figures cited by the company put the 2025 total near 17.7 million animals, with cats and dogs accounting for roughly two thirds. Cats are present in more homes, but dogs tend to command greater spending. For MasterZoo, that creates two different retail rhythms under one roof: high-volume essentials for a broad feline base and larger service, accessory and food baskets around dogs. Birds, fish, reptiles and rodents add specialist depth, even when they contribute less volume.
MasterZoo's reported share at the start of 2024 was 10.1 percent in specialist retail and 6.5 percent online. Those figures describe a leader in a market that remains fragmented, not a monopoly. Competitors range from Pethouse and Fozzy Group's E-ZOO to Epicentr's Lapki, ZooBonus, marketplaces, clinics and thousands of local shops. General retailers can compete on traffic and price. Online specialists can compete on range. Local stores can compete on familiarity.
MasterZoo's answer is to be several of those things at once. Dense physical coverage offers proximity. The website and marketplaces offer reach. Suziria supplies category depth. Grooming brings professional care into the store relationship. The differentiation lives in the connections.
The hardest connection is digital. A physical adviser can ask follow-up questions and notice the elderly dachshund standing beside the shopper. A product page has to encode that judgment in filters, descriptions and recommendations without becoming a wall of specifications. MasterZoo's ecommerce rebuild is therefore more than a checkout project. It is an attempt to translate specialist service into software while letting the store network handle urgent fulfillment and human exceptions.
Care as public infrastructure
The same footprint can be used for more than sales. Since 2022, MasterZoo and UAnimals have run Lapka Turboty, or Paw of Care, a checkout-based fundraising campaign. Customers buy a low-cost sticker, digital paw or dog biscuit; the money supports shelters and veterinary missions in frontline communities. By May 2026, the partners said the program had raised almost UAH 8 million and helped more than 8,000 animals.
The mechanism is easy to steal in the best sense: make participation small, visible and native to the purchase. No separate donation journey is required. A virtual product in the cart becomes vaccines, sterilization and treatment where veterinary infrastructure has been damaged or disappeared.
MasterZoo also works on adoption. More than 170 animals found homes through its initiatives in 2024. A later partnership with Kyiv Digital gives welcome boxes to people who adopt through the city app, combining treats and toys with vitamins, a shopping code and practical guidance. Here, commercial logic and welfare align. Successful adoption creates a customer, but it also makes responsible care easier during the fragile first days of a new household.
What the next store must do
Scale alone will not settle the market. MasterZoo has to make two hundred stores feel like one system, complete its digital rebuild and preserve specialist trust as it grows. Grooming salons must be consistently good. Delivery has to be dependable. Advice must remain useful even when the answer does not maximize today's basket.
There is also a broader contest over who owns the pet-care routine. Food is frequent but easy to compare. Health products require confidence. Grooming adds service. Education earns attention before a purchase. Adoption begins the relationship at its emotional origin. The retailer that connects those moments can become the default without needing to win every item on price.
MasterZoo's wartime expansion is the dramatic part of the story. Its quieter achievement is more instructive. The company turned a chain of shelves into a network that observes, advises, delivers, grooms and occasionally helps an animal find a home. When the map of its customers changed, the network changed with them.