Petsmart buys online site that provides pet adoptions

PetSmart Inc.said it has purchased an online business that helps match pets up for adoption with suitable families.

The Phoenix-based retailer of pet supplies didn’t disclose terms of its acquisition of AllPaws, an online and mobile adoption platform. Roughly 5,000 animal rescue groups and shelters across North America utilize AllPaws.com to publicize animals available for adoption. The website currently lists more than 200,000 animals, including cats, dogs, birds, rodents, horses and reptiles.

“The acquisition of AllPaws offers a smart technology platform to accelerate our in-store adoption program even further,” said Michael Massey, PetSmart’s president and CEO, in a statement. Animal-welfare groups and others “will be able to use AllPaws as a digital hub to promote adoptable pets, which we believe will result in even greater success in finding forever homes for pets across North America,” he said.

Animal-welfare groups can use the PetSmart AllPaws platform to create and update profiles of adoptable pets to increase their exposure and chance of being adopted. Prospective pet parents can search for animals, for free, by breed, age, gender, energy level, training stage, temperament, geographic location and more. AllPaws, created by a team with online-dating expertise, claims 800,000 to 900,000 visits per month and 850,000 registered users.

Privately held PetSmart has 53,000 employees, 1,400 of them in Arizona. It offers adoptions through nearly 1,480 stores and claims to assist in the placement of 1,400 animals into new homes daily. PetSmart has facilitated the adoption of 7 million pets since its instore adoption program began in 1994, Massey said.