Chewy (company)

Chewy was founded under the name "Mr. Chewy" in June 2011 by Ryan Cohen and Michael Day.[4][5][6][7][8] The company hired former employees and executives from Amazon, PetSmart, Whole Foods Market, and Wayfair.[6] In March 2012, the company estimated a total yearly revenue of $26 million, despite losing money in its first half year.[7][4] In 2014, the company opened a 400,000-square-foot facility in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania to allow for overnight delivery in the Northeast. From 2014 to 2015, sales grew from $205 million to $423 million.[9]

By 2016, Chewy had received $236 million in venture capital financing over 5 rounds[10] from Volition Capital,[11] Mark Vadon, T. Rowe Price, New Horizons Fund, BlackRock, Allen & Co, Verlinvest and Greenspring Associates.[10][12] By 2017, the company had revenue of approximately $2 billion and 51% of online pet food sales in the US.[13][14] It spent heavily on customer acquisition and retention; in 2017 Forbes reported that its profitability was unclear.[15] Between 2017 and 2018, Chewy’s sales increased from $2.1 billion to $3.5 billion,[16] with 66% of sales coming from customers signed up for automatic recurring shipments.[17]

In February 2018, Chewy opened a new 100,000 square foot customer service center in Hollywood, Florida, which houses over 1,000 employees.[18] Also in 2018, Chewy.com opened a new 802,671 sq. ft. distribution facility in Goodyear, Arizona.[19] That year the company employed around 7,000 people in the United States.[20] Chewy received the Stevie Award for Favorite Customer Service in Retail in 2017[21] and 2018.[22] As of 2019 the company was valued at $10.2 billion.[23]

Chewy produces and retails an eponymous pet food brand, Chewy.[24] In 2018 Chewy created Chewy Pharmacy, an online pharmacy providing pet-targeted prescription medications.[25] Orders placed through the business are completed in coordination with a team of in-house veterinarians.[26] The site also houses pet care literature and care advice regarding pet health.[27] Items can be purchased a la carte online or delivered automatically.[28]

The first CEO of Chewy was cofounder Ryan Cohen. In March 2018, Cohen stepped down as Chewy's CEO, and Sumit Singh was named the company's new CEO.[29] Singh had first joined the company in 2017 as COO, having previously worked as an executive at Dell and Amazon.[30][31][32] The company’s CFO is Mario Marte[33] and the company’s Chief Legal Officer and General Counsel is Susan Helfrick. [34] Raymond Svider is the chairman of the company’s Board of Directors.[17]

In 2017, as Ryan Cohen prepared to take Chewy public, both Petco and PetSmart approached with merger offers. Petco's offer would be paid for in part using stock, whereas PetSmart offered an all-cash bid that would also allow Chewy to remain a completely separate business.[17] Chewy was acquired by PetSmart in May 2017 for $3.35 billion, which at the time was the largest ever acquisition of an e-commerce business.[35][36] Allen & Co. served as financial advisor to Chewy on the deal.[37] PetSmart later transferred 20% of its ownership stake in Chewy to private equity firm BC Partners, which has owned PetSmart since 2014, and also spun off an additional 16.5% of Chewy to an unrestricted subsidiary in 2018.[38] On April 29, 2019, Chewy filed an S-1 for an initial public offering, intending to trade under the ticker symbol CHWY. In its filing, Chewy reported a net loss of $268 million on total sales of $3.5 billion for its 2018 fiscal year.[39] Chewy went public on June 14, 2019, at $22 per share.[40]

• Official website

• Business data for Chewy, Inc.:
  • Google Finance
  • Yahoo! Finance
  • Bloomberg
  • Reuters
  • SEC filings