Bark Inc

Unless otherwise expressly stated or the context otherwise requires, when we refer to “we,” “our,” “us,” or “BARK” in this annual report on Form 10-K, we mean BARK, Inc. and its consolidated subsidiaries.

Overview

Our mission is to make all dogs happy

We believe that dogs and humans are better together and we aspire to be the world’s favorite dog brand. We are a team of dog-obsessed people committed to delivering personalization at scale by satisfying each dog’s distinct personality, preferences, and needs with the best products and services. Since our founding in 2011, we have happily served millions of dogs and their people.

We are a vertically integrated, omnichannel brand serving dogs across two key categories: toys & accessories and consumables. All of our products are designed, developed, and branded BARK. We leverage an ever-growing collection of first-party data, customer insights, and machine learning to deliver personalized products and experiences tailored to the needs of each and every dog we serve. Our products are sold Direct-to-Consumer (“DTC”) and through our network of retail partners, which currently spans over 40,000 doors nationwide.

We began our journey with BarkBox – a monthly-themed subscription of toys and treats, tailored to the needs of each customer based on their dog’s size, play style, allergies, and more. By viewing each dog as an individual, and by creating magical experiences for our customers, we have been able to build lasting relationships with millions of dogs and their parents. Our customer service (“Happy Team”) proactively engages around 200,000 customers each month. We use the valuable data from these customer interactions to inform the design and development of future products, and we leverage it along with machine learning technology to recommend additional products to our customers through cross-selling and Add-to-Box (“ATB”).

More recently, we have entered exciting, and much larger categories in the consumables space, which include kibble, treats, toppers, supplements, and dental products. This expansion has significantly increased our total addressable market and the number of customers we can serve. We believe that our growing first-party dataset, strong brand, and loyal customer base afford us a meaningful advantage and opportunity to win market share in these newer categories.

Our Industry

Large, growing, and resilient market for pet products:

According to the American Pet Products Association (“APPA”), annual spend on pets in the U.S. was approximately $147 billion in 2023, an increase of over $10 billion, or approximately 7%, compared to 2022.

Dogs are the most popular pet in the U.S.:

According to the 2022-23 APPA Survey, dogs are the most popular pet in the U.S., with more than 65 million households having a dog as a member of their family. We believe we have an opportunity to significantly expand our customer base, both in the U.S. and globally.

An accelerating shift to digital and e-commerce:

E-commerce sales continue to grow faster than the overall retail sales market and are increasingly taking significant share from brick-and-mortar retail. Sales of dog-related products have mirrored this trend as dog owners increasingly shift a greater share of their dog-related purchasing to online options and subscription-based offerings across all categories. According to the market research firm Packaged Facts, an estimated 37% of all pet product sales occurred online in 2023. By 2028, Packaged Facts estimates roughly 44% of all U.S. pet sales will occur online.

Our Segments and Products

We operate two business segments: direct to consumer and commerce. Our DTC business drives the majority of our revenues and represented 89.0% of total revenue in fiscal 2024.

Our commerce business, which reflects the sale of BARK products in retail stores and other e-tailers, significantly broadens our customer reach and raises awareness for the BARK brand. Today, BARK products are sold in over 40,000 retail doors, including Target, Walmart, Kroger, Petco, and PetSmart. This segment represented 11.0% of our total revenue in fiscal 2024. We see a significant opportunity to grow our presence in retail. Today, the majority of our commerce revenue consists of selling our toys in retail. Recently, we began selling our new treat offering in over 2,400 Target and PetSmart doors nationwide. The Company anticipates further expanding its consumables presence in retail in the future.

Our Key Products:

Toys & Accessories (“toys”)—The majority of our revenue in the toys category is derived from BarkBox and Super Chewer, which are subscription products that feature monthly themed boxes of premium-quality BARK toys and treats that are delivered directly to a dog’s home. Customers have the option to subscribe to these products on a one month, six month, or twelve month basis. During the life of their subscription, we offer our customers incremental products via ATB, which allows us to cross-sell customers our full portfolio of products including kibble, treats, toppers, dental, and more. Over the years, we have become increasingly more effective at cross-selling to customers. Total cross sell revenue was $38 million in fiscal 2024.

We also sell toys through our network of retail partners. Today, the commerce segment accounts for 11% of total revenue. This distribution channel allows us to reach new customers and introduce them to the BARK brand.

Our toys & accessories category also includes revenue derived from the sale of other products such as beds, leashes, apparel, and other accessories.

This category generated approximately $284.7 million of revenue in fiscal 2024, down 7% compared to fiscal 2023. The allocation between Toys & Accessories and Consumables includes estimates and was determined utilizing data on stand-alone selling prices that the Company charges for similar offerings, and also reflects historical pricing practices.

Consumables—The majority of our consumables revenue today is derived from the treats and chews that are included in our BarkBox and Super Chewer boxes. Over the past several years, the Company has expanded into new and larger consumables markets such as kibble, toppers, supplements and dental products. The Company sells its consumables products both DTC (through Bark.co) and through its retail footprint.

Treats— Includes treats and chews included in our BarkBox and Super Chewer boxes, as well as the sale of treats on our consumables website. Many of our treats feature monthly themes, similar to our toys. Today, BARK is one of the largest treat brands in the U.S. by revenue. The Company also began selling its treats in over 2,400 doors nationwide this year.

Toppers—Includes meal-enhancing sprinkles, broths, and bites that are added to a dog’s food to enhance the flavor of their food. These toppers are often single ingredient proteins that can be easily added to a dog’s existing meal plan. Toppers are particularly beneficial for picky eaters.

Supplements—Includes a variety of dog supplements such as hip and joint support, and skin and coat support. These products are often targeted at specific breeds that are prone to certain ailments.

Kibble—We sell a variety of kibble, priced to compete with the mass premium category. While our kibble can be purchased on an individual basis, we often recommend meal plans consisting of a mix of kibble, toppers, and/or supplements based on the characteristics and personalities of each dog. For example, because German Shepherds are prone to hip issues, we often recommend hip and joint support supplements with the purchase of their kibble. If that dog is also a picky eater, we will recommend adding one of our toppers. This increases our average order value and margin profile.

Dental—Also known as BARK Bright, this category includes a variety of chews and toothpastes aimed at improving your dog’s dental health. BARK Bright eliminates the arduous task of brushing a dog’s teeth while still effectively fighting germs and bad breath. Our BARK Bright dental kit provides an innovative regimen for dog dental care.

Overall, we see significant runway in our consumables category long-term, and anticipate the majority of our future growth may be driven by these product categories.

BARK Air—Announced in April 2024, BARK Air is a first-of-its kind air travel experience tailored to dogs. The Company partnered with a jet charter company to begin offering premium flights for customers and their dogs. Interested parties can book flights at dogsflyfirst.com. Our charter partner is responsible for all aircraft, crew, maintenance, and insurance, allowing BARK to focus on creating a great travel experience for dogs and their people worldwide. We believe this initiative exemplifies the Company’s dog-first approach to curating the best products and services.

Our Strengths

Ever-Growing Data Drives Personalization at Scale:

We know the names, age, breed, birthdays, play style, allergies, and more for over 6 million dogs. We believe that this is a key competitive advantage as it enables us to deliver highly personalized products and experiences for each and every dog that we serve. We are able to tailor our products to each customer by collecting proprietary product and customer data with each interaction. We also leverage our machine learning technology and first-party data set to compare dogs’ attributes against our available inventory when recommending products for purchase via cross-selling or ATB. In addition, we believe that personalization requires more than curation. We apply our data-driven customization approach to our product design and development as well, so that our products themselves, and not just our recommendations, are tailored to meet particular dog attributes that have been expressed to us.

Deep Customer Relations Drive Retention and Lifetime Value:

Our strong customer relationships are at the heart of what we do. Our Happy Team proactively engages hundreds of thousands of customers each month. We get to know their dog’s preferences based on breed, size, age, play style, allergies, and more. This allows us to personalize our products and experiences for each customer, which we believe drives stronger retention and lifetime value.

Vertically Integrated:

All of our products are designed, developed, and branded BARK, which drives higher margins, compared to companies that primarily sell third-party products. We believe that our data and insights have enabled us to design and make superior products for dogs as well as to create new products that dogs and their dog parents love. By employing an in-house team of world-class designers to design our products and having them made exclusively for us, rather than selling third-party products, we have created a collection of high-quality, unique, and cleverly-themed products, with strong brand association and higher potential for profitability. By designing our own products, we have the opportunity to achieve higher price points, therefore expanding our gross margins.

Omnichannel:

While the majority of our revenues are driven by our DTC business, we derived $54 million, or 11.0% of our revenue from the sale of BARK products in retail stores and other e-tailers in fiscal 2024. The Company currently sells products in over 40,000 retail doors nationwide, including Target, Walmart, Kroger, Petco, and PetSmart. We believe that these partnerships significantly broaden our customer reach and raise awareness for the BARK brand. We believe that this business also serves to introduce first-time customers to BARK who later could become loyal subscribers of our DTC business.

Growth Opportunities

We strive to be a dog parent’s partner from those first days with a puppy throughout their dog’s entire adult life. BARK seeks to be there every step of the way serving dogs with the best products and services. Our ambition is to grow BARK to be the world’s favorite dog brand. We are focused on several key areas that we believe will be significant drivers to our business, long-term.

Growth across our consumables products:

While we are one of the largest treat companies in the U.S. by revenue today, we have only just begun to tap into the broader consumables opportunity. With the introduction of innovative new products across kibble, toppers, supplements, and dental products, we have significantly increased our addressable market and the number of customers we can serve. In the near-term, one of our biggest opportunities is to grow our consumables presence in retail. We currently sell our treats across 2,400 Target and PetSmart doors, and aim to expand our consumables presence across our retail footprint. We are also seeing healthy growth in our newer consumables categories across our DTC segment. While these product lines are relatively small for BARK today, we see significant a opportunity to grow these products, long-term.

Unified Customer Experience Expected to Enhance Cross-Selling and Awareness:

Historically, BARK operated five siloed businesses and customer experiences – BarkBox, SuperChewer, BarkBright, BarkFood, and BarkShop. Each of these businesses had distinct websites, dashboards, and logins. We are currently in the process of unifying our brand under the bark.co domain so all of our products are sold under one roof. This will improve the customer experience, raise awareness of our full suite of products, and enhance our cross-selling capabilities. We anticipate migrating all of our platforms to bark.co this fiscal year.

Our People and Culture

The Team

As dog people, BARK employees join the company because they are aligned with our mission to make all dogs happy. The work we are doing is inherently joyful, optimistic, and humorous because our primary customers, dogs, possess those same characteristics. To that end, our company culture is centered around service, creativity, and a high level of ambition to serve all dogs and their humans.

At the end of fiscal 2024, BARK employed approximately 708 full-time and part-time employees, with 377 employees based in the U.S. and 331 employees based in the Philippines. Our employee population includes approximately 393 BARK Happy Ambassadors and their leadership, 76 engineers, data scientists, and technology staff, 59 designers and creative team members, 81 operations and fulfillment center employees, and 101 marketing, general, and administrative employees. As of March 31, 2024, 68% of our employees, 38% of our management team, and 43% of our Board of Directors identified as female or nonbinary.

Employee Engagement

Team communication is frequent and direct, allowing for a high level of transparency and feedback. We engage with employees through periodic surveys to measure employee engagement, receive feedback, and respond to employee concerns effectively. We leverage these data points to continuously evolve our policies and practices to meet employee needs and align with BARK team values. Though most of the team has worked remotely since March 2020, we currently use our offices in New York, New York and Columbus, Ohio for regular team collaboration, all hands meetings, workshops and more.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

At BARK, we recognize that people, like dogs, should be celebrated for their differences and the diverse life experiences they bring to work each day. We advocate for and celebrate a culture of inclusiveness for all people regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, family status, religion, ethnicity, national origin, physical ability, veteran status, age, or love of cats as we work toward one common goal: to make every single dog as happy as they make us. We do this by focusing on four key areas:

•Diversity Sourcing & Recruitment: Promote an inclusive approach to hiring diverse talent through our recruiting processes and sourcing pools.

•Continuous Learning & Communication: Make diversity and inclusion everyone’s responsibility by providing training and educational opportunities.

•Employee Resource Groups: Provide employees with opportunities and resources to build a shared, supportive community while also advancing the team’s Diversity Equity and Inclusion mission.

•Accountability: Ensure accountability while committing to focus on retention, advancement, and equity.

BARK is committed to paying employees fairly for their work. Our Total Rewards team determines and regularly reviews all compensation based on a leveling and benchmarking system guided by market insights from third-party experts and tools. On a regular basis, we review all grants of equity for parity across gender and race to ensure that we are taking a consistent approach to compensation for all team members based on market data, role, and level.

Manufacturing

BARK purchases substantially all of its merchandise directly from third-party manufacturers. Some of these suppliers operate their own manufacturing facilities and others subcontract the manufacturing to other parties. BARK’s manufacturers generally agree to terms that are substantially similar to its standard manufacturer terms, which govern its business relationships. BARK has long-standing relationships with a base of vendors that BARK believes to be mutually satisfactory.

All of our exclusive products are required to be produced according to BARK’s specifications, and our manufacturers warrant that such products will perform in accordance with BARK’s specifications. Our manufacturing and supplier contracts are generally on multi-year terms and provide BARK with the additional right to terminate the agreement for uncured material breaches. We require that all of our manufacturers comply with applicable laws and BARK generally has the right to audit the suppliers’ facilities.

Distribution and Inventory Management

BARK currently utilizes global third-party logistics providers to warehouse and distribute finished products from their distribution facilities to support BARK’s domestic operations. These logistics providers manage various distribution activities including product receipt, warehousing, assembly, certain limited product inspection activities, and coordinating outbound shipping.

BARK manages its inventory levels by analyzing product sell-through, forecasting demand, analyzing product ratings, and placing orders with our manufacturers before BARK receives firm orders from customers to ensure sufficient availability.

Trademarks and Other Intellectual Property

We believe that our rights to our intellectual property, including trademarks and domain names, as well as contractual provisions and restrictions on access to our proprietary technology, are important to our marketing efforts to develop brand recognition and differentiate our brand from competitors. BARK owns a number of trademarks that have been registered, or for which registration applications are pending, in the United States as well as in certain foreign jurisdictions. These registered or pending trademarks, standardized and stylized, include, among others, “BARK,” “BARKBOX,” “BARK BRIGHT,” “BARKEATS,” “BARK SUPER CHEWER,” “SUPER CHEWER,” and “BARKPOST.” The current registrations of these trademarks are effective for varying periods of time and may be renewed periodically, provided that we, as the registered owner, or our licensees where applicable, comply with all applicable renewal requirements including, where necessary, the continued use of the trademarks in connection with similar goods. We expect to pursue additional trademark registrations to the extent we believe such registrations would be beneficial and cost-effective.

In addition to trademark protection, we own numerous domain names, including www.bark.co, www.air.bark.co www.barkbox.com, www.barkshop.com, and www.dogsflyfirst.com. We also enter into, and rely on, confidentiality and proprietary rights agreements with our employees, consultants, contractors and business partners to protect our trade secrets, proprietary technology and other confidential information. We further control the use of our proprietary technology and intellectual property through provisions in both customer terms of use on our websites and in agreements with our vendors.

We believe that our intellectual property has substantial value and has significantly contributed to BARK’s success to date. We continually engage with manufacturers to develop and market better quality dog products under our brand names to better serve our customers at a lower price.

Competition

The dog products industry is highly competitive, fragmented, and spread across four primary segments:

•supermarkets, warehouse clubs, and mass merchants;

•specialty pet store chains;

•traditional or neighborhood pet stores; and

•subscription service businesses and e-tailers.

We believe that the principal competitive factors in BARK’s market are product selection and quality, customer service, price, brand awareness and loyalty, reliability and trust, convenience, and speed at which orders are delivered to our customers. We believe that BARK differentiates itself from our competitors by the strength of our brand, customer relationships and engagement, proprietary branded products, data-driven design and marketing, and achieving a high level of performance with regard to these competitive factors.

Government Regulation

Our business is subject to foreign and domestic laws and regulations applicable to companies conducting business on the Internet. Jurisdictions vary as to how, or whether, existing laws governing areas such as personal privacy and data security, consumer protection or sales, and other taxes, among other areas, apply to the Internet and e-commerce, and these laws are continually evolving. Related laws may govern the manner in which we store or transfer sensitive information, or impose obligations on us in the event of a security breach or an inadvertent disclosure of such information. International jurisdictions impose different, and sometimes more stringent, consumer and privacy protections. Additionally, tax regulations in jurisdictions where we do not currently collect state or local taxes may subject us to the obligation to collect and remit such taxes, or to additional taxes, or to requirements intended to assist jurisdictions with their tax collection efforts. New legislation or regulations, the application of laws from jurisdictions whose laws do not currently apply to our business, or the application of existing laws and regulations to the Internet and e-commerce generally could result in significant additional taxes on our business. Further, we could be subject to fines or other payments for any past failures to comply with these requirements. The continued growth of and demand for e-commerce is likely to result in more laws and regulations that impose additional compliance burdens on e-commerce companies.

In addition, we are subject to a broad range of federal, state, local, and foreign laws and regulations intended to protect public health, natural resources and the environment. Our operations, including our manufacturing outsourcing partners, are subject to regulation by OSHA, the FDA, the USDA, and by various other federal, state, local, and foreign authorities regarding the processing, packaging, storage, distribution, advertising, labeling and import of its products, including food safety standards.

Public Filings

Copies of the our annual report on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, current reports on Form 8-K and amendments to those reports are made available free of charge at https://investors.bark.co/financials/sec-filings/default.aspx as soon as reasonably practicable after being filed electronically with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”). Our reports are also available free of charge on the SEC’s website, www.sec.gov. Information on our website is not incorporated into this Form 10-K.