One Year, 33 Events: How Le Bubu Pets Brought 20 Thai Pet Brands to the Philippines

Two years ago this month, Le Bubu Pets opened its doors in the Philippines. We recently shared the story of how it all started — two Bichon Frises named Skye and Binu, a frustrated search for pet products that actually delivered on their promises, and a Ghost Month-delayed launch on September 15, 2024. But origin stories only tell you why a brand exists. The numbers tell you what it actually did with that first year. So here's Year One, in numbers: 33 events, 20 Thai-exclusive brands, and one small studio that made it all possible.

A Roadshow, Not a Rollout

Most new pet brands in the Philippines pick a channel and stay there — online only, or a single retail counter, or a handful of paid ads. Le Bubu Pets did something slower and more stubborn: we showed up in person, over and over, at 33 events across our first year. Pop-ups, bazaars, community markets, pet fairs — if there were Filipino pet parents gathering somewhere with their dogs and cats, there was a good chance we'd set up a table.

That roadshow habit didn't stop once the first year ended. It's the same instinct behind our ongoing corner at Super Barket, 4th Floor Spatio, Opus Mall, and behind our recurring pop-ups with The Modern Market at venues across Metro Manila. It's why, this month alone, we've been co-presenting a pet food fair at SM Aura with the same community-first energy that got us started. Thirty-three events taught us something that no amount of online advertising could: Filipino pet parents want to smell the treats, ask questions about ingredients, and meet the people standing behind the brand before they trust it with their furbabies. So we kept showing up.

There's also a practical side to running that many events in a single year that doesn't always make it into the highlight reel. Every pop-up meant packing inventory from that same small studio, testing which products actually resonated face-to-face versus online, and learning in real time which questions pet parents kept asking so we could get better at answering them. A customer asking about a specific ingredient at a Sunday market booth taught us more about what to put on a product label than any amount of market research could. Adopting tools like GCash's PocketPay and SoundPay for pop-up checkout came out of that same on-the-ground learning — when you're running a table by yourself while chasing down a runaway sample tray, hands-free payment confirmation stops being a nice-to-have.

Why Thailand

The second number — 20 Thai-exclusive brands carried in our first year — is really a story about where that trust had to be earned first, by us, before we could ask pet parents to extend it to a shelf full of unfamiliar names.

When we went looking for products we could stand behind for Skye and Binu, we kept circling back to Thailand. Thai pet brands stood out for a specific reason: transparent ingredient lists, formulations that were consciously made rather than mass-produced, and products that held up when we actually tested them on our own pets. We didn't take anyone's word for it — we tried the treats, the sprays, the shampoos ourselves, on our own Bubus, before deciding anything was worth bringing home to the Philippines.

That testing-first habit became the vetting philosophy behind every brand we've carried since, from Hoya Barkery's single-ingredient treats to Pawrapy's dermatologically tested skin care line: if we wouldn't use it on Skye, Binu, and Max, it doesn't come in. Twenty Thai-exclusive brands in one year is a lot of samples to test, a lot of ingredient lists to read line by line, and a lot of "no" decisions for every brand that made the cut. We'd rather carry fewer brands we trust completely than a full catalog we're lukewarm about.

It's worth saying plainly what "Thai-exclusive" meant in practice that first year: these weren't international brands we picked up secondhand from a regional distributor. Most of the 20 brands we onboarded in Year One had no prior presence in the Philippines at all — we were the first to bring them here, which meant we also carried the responsibility of explaining, brand by brand, why a completely unfamiliar name deserved a spot in a Filipino pet parent's cart. That's a much harder sell than restocking a brand people already recognize, and it's a big part of why the in-person roadshow and the sourcing work had to happen together rather than one after the other.

From Pop-Up to Pantry: Where to Find Us Now

A roadshow only means something if it turns into somewhere pet parents can actually find you again. Two years in, Le Bubu Pets products are available nationwide online at lebubupets.com, at our ongoing corner at Super Barket, 4F Spatio, Opus Mall, and through a growing list of resellers across the country — including a real retail win at Luxuri Pets. We've rounded up the fuller list of stockists in a dedicated guide, Where to Buy Premium Thai Pet Treats in the Philippines, if you're hunting for a physical shelf near you.

If you'd rather shop by what your pet actually needs — sensitive skin, a picky eater, dental care, joint support — our Shop by Concern page was built to skip the guesswork and take you straight to the right category.

The Studio Behind the Shelf

Behind the roadshow and the reseller list is a single 16 sqm studio — stockroom, showroom, and packing space rolled into one. It's smaller than most people picture when they hear "distributor," and that's on purpose. Every order that goes out, and every new brand that gets tested before it's approved for the catalog, passes through that same small room.

Pet parents and prospective resellers are welcome to visit by appointment — you can book a studio visit here. If you'd rather just ask a question — about a product, a bulk order, or becoming a reseller — our team is reachable directly via Viber at 0976 139 2468 or by email at hello@lebubupets.com.

What Year Two Looks Like

We don't have a tidy milestone number for year two yet — that's still being written, one pop-up, one restock, and one honest product review at a time. But the pattern from year one is holding: show up in person, test everything before it earns shelf space, and keep the catalog small enough that "personally vetted" actually means something.

If you've shopped with us at a pop-up, picked up a Hoya Barkery treat at Super Barket, or found us through a reseller somewhere in the Philippines, thank you for being part of that first year of numbers. We're pet parents too. We get it — and we're just getting started on year two.