Receipts, United States pet care services
2022, businesses with payroll
Grooming professionals across North and Central America deserved a better standard.
ACADA was built to support the people already doing serious work in pet grooming, and to broaden what their businesses can do with the tools we build: public profiles, credential history and pet records.
We studied published safety, veterinary and industry practice to write the ACADA Standard, and we keep that guidance open to community comment. The ACADA Standard is built to be practiced, referenced and cited. We wrote foundational curriculum so that apprenticeship, the method this trade has trained by for generations, is strengthened and documented.
We built portable profiles and credentials so a salon's work history and an individual's can be documented, published, and used by the clients deciding who serves their pet. Modern digital tools carry all of it, which is how ACADA protects the spirit of industry self-governance.
Pet grooming is a major industry, and it is still growing.
By the late 1980s and through the 1990s, pets became more central to household life. Grooming gradually moved from occasional luxury to routine care, creating a larger profession with a wider range of members, employers, mobile operators, salons and schools.
Growth in receipts since 2017
Same source, same definition, both years
Businesses with payroll, 2022
Up from 18,464 in 2017
US Census Bureau, 2017 and 2022 Economic Census, NAICS 812910, pet care except veterinary services. Includes boarding and other pet care alongside grooming, and counts businesses with payroll only, so owner-operator businesses are not in this figure.
ACADA provides a framework for teachable, documentable best practices.
The pet grooming industry includes tens of thousands of professionals who have learned through hard work, mentorship, experience and care. ACADA supports them with a clearer structure: baseline safety expectations first, curriculum guidance to fortify apprenticeship, proof of their progress, and public records employers, clients and schools can review.
Built by the ACADA founding team, from inside and around the trade.
ACADA was built with input from grooming operators, mobile grooming professionals, skilled trainers, technical builders and pet owners with outside experience in biotech, hospitality, systems development and customer trust.
The founding team loves pets, respects the grooming industry and believes serious education should be available without pushing members into debt.
ACADA is independent by design.
ACADA's standards are open for commentary, challenge, improvement and discussion. The standard is designed to live, improve and remain independent.
ACADA is not owned or controlled by any one grooming brand, franchise, supplier, retailer or school.