According to the executive director of Ornimundo, Jorge Moura, the growth ‘online’ has been very large since the state of emergency was declared on 18 March.

“The online store skyrockets, grows a lot. It reflects the spirit of people to go out as little as possible on the street,” the official responsible said, indicating, on the other hand, that there has been “a very big drop in sales” in physical stores.

With 25 physical stores across the country, the franchise has focused on food.

“We sell to all animals. Everything to feed living beings continues to come out,” he said, adding that hygiene products - shampoos - have also had a lot of success, because “now a lot of people bathe animals at home”.

However, Jorge Moura pointed to a decrease in sales in accessories, toys and sweets.

To Lusa, Ornimundo's executive director also said that people have not been looking for animals during the covid-19 pandemic period.

The national manager of the Maskokotas Group in Portugal, André Jorge, said that they registered “a 100 percent increase in online sales” in March, with the “biggest peak in the week of 14 to 20”.

On the occasion, consumers sought to supply themselves with essential products for animals, with a behaviour identical to what happened in the food retail, according to the leader.

Following the boom in online commerce, the group, which represents Petness.pt (physical and online) and Miscota.pt (online), has yet to “readapt” and has doubled “operational capacity and the warehouse team”.

Without predicting an increase in online sales, André Jorge said that people have been looking for more “food [dry and wet], antiparasitic, hygienic sands [in the case of cats], hygiene products and also toys and snacks [products that have aim to keep the animals more entertained and busy]”.

The leader also recalled that there was an increase in sales in physical stores, in the week before the state of emergency was decreed, but now they have been stabilizing to normal values.

In turn, the manager of Pet City, Luís Bastos, said that there has been an average increase in orders on ‘online’.

“The average volume of orders has increased and we have attracted many new customers because the various physical stores are closed. People have turned to ‘online’,” he stressed.

Luís Bastos also noted that there are "delays in supplies and delays in deliveries by carriers".

Paulo Rodrigues, owner of the company Patinhas Mimadas, on the other hand, considered that the market “is looking forward to the future”.

“We are one of those businesses that allows us to have our doors open. For better or worse, things are going on. Pet stores are also better equipped to solve the problem [of demand],” he said.