Illustrative data. Northpaw Pet Nutrition is a fictional company; every figure, product and retailer relationship on this page is generated for demonstration and describes no real business.

high severity

Hip & Joint declining at PetSmart — isolated, volume-driven share loss

Estimated exposure

$101,811over the next 4 weeks

1Revenue Action

Playbook

Momentum

Scope

PetSmart · Hip & Joint

Confidence

60%

Data through

2026-05-10

First detected

2026-05-11

Owner

Marcus Lee

Status

closed

2What happened

Hip & Joint revenue at PetSmart is down 21% YoY at L4W (-15% L13W), a pure volume decline (APPD flat) that is isolated to PetSmart — every sibling brand there is flat-to-up and Hip & Joint is healthy in all other channels. In-stock is steady, so this is a PetSmart-specific demand/share erosion.

Detected over 2026-04-12 to 2026-05-10, at week granularity.

revenue L4W

$525,429

vs $664,510

▼ -20.9%

volume L4W

991,290

vs 1,263,240

▼ -21.5%

revenue L13W

$1,982,950

vs $2,341,730

▼ -15.3%

3Why we believe it happened

Demand velocityscore 0.55

The most likely driver is a PetSmart-specific demand/share loss for Hip & Joint: the decline is volume-driven (rev -21% vs vol -21.5%, APPD flat YoY), isolated to this channel (Hip & Joint is roughly flat across all other retailers) and to this brand (Skin & Coat, Calming, Digestive are flat-to-positive at PetSmart), and it is a gradual worsening erosion rather than a sudden operational break. Availability is ruled out (in-stock steady ~96–98%). Distribution/facings loss at PetSmart and category softness cannot be tested for this client, so competitive shelf loss remains a plausible untested upstream cause.

Volume fell proportionally with revenue (vol -21.5% vs rev -21% L4W) with APPD flat YoY (0.530 vs 0.526), so units-per-buyer/rate-of-sale dropped rather than price or mix. It is isolated to PetSmart while the same sub_brand holds elsewhere and sibling brands at PetSmart are flat-to-up, so this is a channel-specific loss of consumer offtake/share, not a portfolio or macro effect.

What else we considered

The alternatives ranked below the leading one. Each says whether it was ruled out — the data was there and it says no — or not testable, meaning this client has no coverage for that cause, so it is neither confirmed nor cleared.

Distribution / delisting

A gradual YoY erosion widening from ~flat (Nov) to -20%+ (Apr/May) that is isolated to one channel is consistent with progressive loss of facings/SKU presence at PetSmart. Distribution coverage is not available for this client, so lost shelf presence could not be ruled out and is labeled untested; it may be the upstream cause of the velocity signal.

Category softness

Category data is unavailable for this client, so PetSmart-level Hip & Joint category contraction cannot be tested. Kept low because the same sub_brand is healthy in every other channel, which argues against a broad category-demand problem, but it cannot be formally excluded.

4Evidence

Weekly revenue vs last year

2026-02-15dashed = same week last year2026-05-10

Decline is volume-driven, not price/mix

L4W revenue -20.9% and volume -21.5% move together; APPD is flat YoY (0.530 vs 0.526 L4W), so each unit earns the same — the loss is units sold, not price or pack mix.

▼ -20.9%

Sibling brands at PetSmart are healthy

At PetSmart L13W, Skin & Coat +0.9%, Calming +2.8%, Digestive -1.3% — only Hip & Joint is down (-15.3%). Rules out a channel-wide PetSmart downturn.

Hip & Joint is healthy in every other channel

L13W Hip & Joint YoY: chewy -0.5%, petco -3.9%, walmart -1.8%, chewy_onetime +0.5%, amazon +0.5%, target +0.1%, costco -3.5% — PetSmart at -15.3% is a stark outlier, isolating the problem to this channel.

Availability is not the cause

In-stock rate steady at ~96–98% and weeks-on-hand steady ~4.1 across the entire 26-week window, including the detection window. The product was consistently buyable.

Gradual worsening erosion, not a sudden break

Weekly YoY gap widens from roughly flat in Nov/Dec 2025 to -20%+ by Apr/May 2026. A gradual erosion points to demand/share/distribution drift rather than a one-week operational cliff or promo artifact.

No upstream findings open on this slice

get_leak_context returned nothing open for Hip & Joint x PetSmart, so these dollars are not double-counted against an existing availability/distribution finding.

How the number was calculated. Provisional L4W exposure: L13W YoY decline rate (15.3%) applied to the matched 4-week prior-year base ($664,510) = ~$101,811. Sizing is stable (1.19x vs prior vintage, not flagged). The raw L4W YoY gap is larger ($139,081, -21%) but the 13W-rate basis is used to smooth the recently steepening trend; the annualized run-rate of this leak is ~$1.5M.

5Recommended next step

Audit PetSmart shelf presence and facings for Hip & Joint

Confirm SKU listing status, facings, planogram position and any recent assortment reset for Hip & Joint at PetSmart; distribution data is not in scope here, so verify manually whether shelf presence eroded.

Why this first: The decline is isolated to one Tier-1 channel and gradual — the leading testable-by-hand cause is lost/degraded shelf presence, which the tooling cannot rule out.

Suggested owner: Account Manager

6Your response

I’ve done something

Marcus Lee 2026-05-16

7What happened next

Monitoring window

2026-05-17 to 2026-06-14 · started when you told us you acted

revenue vs LY

-20.9% at detection → -13.5% over the window

Against normal variation

moved 3.9 band-widths. This slice’s ordinary movement over 26 prior weeks is ±1.9% across a window this long, so anything inside that is reported as inconclusive rather than counted as a win.

Recoveredevidence grade A · a decisive movement on a long history

Planogram reset held at the June shelf review; second facing restored.

Confirmed by Marcus Lee on 2026-07-30

Sections 1–5 are a frozen snapshot taken when this action was published, so the numbers on this page do not move under you. Sections 6–7 are live.
MagneticML · Northpaw Pet Nutrition · generated 2026-05-10