If you’ve tried visiting drsfostersmith.com recently, you already know the answer. The site redirects straight to Petco. For longtime customers who relied on their catalogs, pet medications, or aquarium supplies, the closure felt sudden. But the full story is more layered than a simple shutdown.
This article covers exactly what happened — when and why Drs. Foster & Smith closed, what Petco’s acquisition had to do with it, what happened to employees and the catalog, which parts of the brand still exist, and where to find their products today.
Drs. Foster & Smith Closed in February 2019 — Here Are the Facts
Let’s start with a direct answer: Yes, Drs. Foster & Smith is permanently out of business as a standalone company. This is not a temporary pause, a rebranding, or a website glitch.
On January 28, 2019, customers received an email from Petco announcing the closure. Official operations ended the week of February 11, 2019. The warehouse shut down, the online store went dark, and the printed catalog was discontinued — all at the same time.
Today, drsfostersmith.com no longer functions as its own store. Typing it into your browser takes you directly to Petco’s website. No new catalogs have been mailed since early 2019, and as of 2026, there are no credible reports of the brand relaunching.
A Brief History of the Company Before the Closure
Drs. Foster & Smith was founded in 1983 in Rhinelander, Wisconsin, by two veterinarians — Dr. Race Foster and Dr. Marty Smith. It started as a mail-order catalog business and grew into one of the largest online pet supply retailers in the United States.
By 2002, the company was estimated to be doing around $170 million in annual sales, with roughly 600 employees at its peak in the early 2000s. That’s a significant operation for a company based in a small Wisconsin city.
What set them apart wasn’t just the product selection. The site paired pet supplies with veterinary-written advice and educational content — something most competitors didn’t offer. They also built a loyal following in the aquatics community through specialty segments covering fish, ponds, and aquarium supplies.
For many customers, the Drs. Foster & Smith catalog wasn’t just a shopping tool. It was a trusted resource written by actual vets.
Petco Bought the Company in 2015 — Then Shut It Down Four Years Later
Petco announced the acquisition of Drs. Foster & Smith in late 2014, and the deal closed in early 2015. From Petco’s perspective, the purchase made clear strategic sense.
Drs. Foster & Smith brought three things Petco wanted: an established ecommerce infrastructure, a large and loyal customer base, and a pet pharmacy operation. These were real assets, not just brand recognition.
For about four years, Petco ran both brands in parallel. If you were a Drs. Foster & Smith customer during that period, you likely didn’t notice much difference — the site kept running, the catalog kept arriving, and orders kept shipping.
But by early 2019, Petco made the call to consolidate. Running two separate ecommerce operations with overlapping inventory, logistics, and marketing was expensive and redundant. The decision was to fold everything into the Petco brand and retire Drs. Foster & Smith entirely.
This was a deliberate corporate strategy, not a financial collapse. There was no bankruptcy filing, no emergency shutdown, and no public record of the company being in serious financial distress on its own. Petco simply decided one brand was enough.
A useful analogy: think of a large grocery chain buying a popular regional supermarket. For a few years, they keep the regional name and let it run. Then, at some point, they shut down the old brand, redirect the customers to their own stores, and cut the overhead. That’s essentially what happened here.
What the Closure Meant for Employees and Rhinelander, Wisconsin
The human impact of this closure is easy to overlook when you’re focused on brand history and corporate strategy. But it was real and significant.
Approximately 289 employees lost their jobs as a result of the shutdown. Employment end dates were staggered over a period of 60 to 120 days following the January 2019 announcement, so not everyone left on the same day.
Drs. Foster & Smith was one of Rhinelander’s largest employers. Rhinelander is a small city — losing nearly 300 jobs there is a meaningful economic event for the local community, not just a line item in a corporate restructuring report.
Local news outlets covered the closure closely, and it hit hard for a region that had watched the company grow from a small catalog operation into a nationally recognized retailer over several decades.
What Happened to the Catalog, Website, and Products
If you used to receive the Drs. Foster & Smith catalog and it stopped showing up, now you know why. The printed catalog was permanently discontinued in early 2019. No new issues have been mailed since then.
If you receive any mailing today that references “Foster and Smith,” it’s likely Petco marketing that carries the Foster and Smith name on specific private-label products — particularly in the aquatics category. That does not mean the company is still operating. It means Petco still uses the branding on some of its own product lines.
The website situation is straightforward: drsfostersmith.com now redirects to Petco. All customer traffic, all old bookmarks, and all search results pointing to that domain land on Petco’s site instead. The standalone store is gone.
Many of the product categories that Drs. Foster & Smith carried — pet medications, flea treatments, aquarium supplies — are still available through Petco and other online retailers. But the curated, vet-authored experience that made the original brand distinctive is not something Petco has replicated in the same way.
What About LiveAquaria? It’s a Different Story
If you used Drs. Foster & Smith for aquarium supplies and also ordered live fish or coral through LiveAquaria, you may have panicked when you heard “DFS is closing.” Here’s the important distinction.
When Petco announced the February 2019 closure, they explicitly excluded LiveAquaria from the shutdown. LiveAquaria — including its Divers Den section, which sells individual pieces of coral and livestock — continued operating out of the same Rhinelander facility even after Drs. Foster & Smith closed.
Aquarium hobbyists who followed this closely noted the split: the Drs. Foster & Smith retail site and warehouse closed, but LiveAquaria kept running as its own brand. For reef and freshwater hobbyists, that was a relief.
If you’re searching for LiveAquaria today, it operates separately from the old Drs. Foster & Smith storefront and is not part of the same closure story.
Was This a Bankruptcy or Just a Business Decision?
This is a question worth answering clearly, because the word “closure” sometimes implies financial disaster.
The closure of Drs. Foster & Smith was not a bankruptcy. There is no public record of a bankruptcy filing associated with this closure. Petco, as the parent company, made a deliberate strategic decision to retire the Drs. Foster & Smith brand and consolidate everything under its own name.
The factors behind that decision included competitive pressure from Amazon, Chewy, and other large online retailers, as well as the operational cost of running two separate ecommerce brands with overlapping products and audiences. Running one brand is simply cheaper and more efficient than running two.
For entrepreneurs and business managers, this is a useful case study. A mid-sized, niche-focused retailer with genuine expertise and a loyal customer base can still be absorbed and retired by a larger parent company — not because the brand failed, but because the parent company decided consolidation made more business sense.
If you’re tracking similar dynamics in your own industry, One Business Click covers business strategy, acquisitions, and industry consolidation in practical terms worth reading.
Is There Any Chance Drs. Foster & Smith Comes Back?
As of 2026, there are no official announcements, credible reports, or public signals that Drs. Foster & Smith will relaunch as a brand. The domain still redirects to Petco. The catalog is still discontinued. No former leadership has announced plans to revive it.
It’s possible for a retired brand to come back under new ownership — that does happen in retail. But there’s nothing concrete to suggest that’s on the table here. If you’re waiting for the catalog to start arriving again, that’s unlikely based on everything currently known.
The Bottom Line
Drs. Foster & Smith permanently closed in February 2019. The catalog stopped. The website redirects to Petco. About 289 people in Rhinelander, Wisconsin, lost their jobs. The brand, as a standalone business, is gone.
The closure wasn’t a sudden bankruptcy. It was the predictable end result of Petco buying the company in 2015 and eventually deciding to absorb it entirely rather than maintain two separate ecommerce operations in a market dominated by giants like Amazon and Chewy.
LiveAquaria survived the closure and continues to operate. Some Foster and Smith branding still appears on Petco private-label products, especially in aquatics. But Drs. Foster & Smith as the vet-founded, catalog-driven pet supply company that generations of pet owners knew? That chapter is closed.
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