Chewy, Inc. is an American online retailer of pet food and other pet-related products based in Dania Beach, Florida. In 2017, Chewy was acquired by PetSmart for $3.35 billion, which was the largest ever acquisition of an e-commerce business at the time. The company completed its initial public offering in 2019, raising $1 billion.
History
Chewy was founded under the name "Mr. Chewy" in June 2011 by Ryan Cohen and Michael Day. The company hired former employees and executives from Amazon, PetSmart, Whole Foods Market, and Wayfair. In March 2012, the company estimated a total yearly revenue of $26 million, despite losing money in its first half year. From 2014 to 2015, sales grew from $205 million to $423 million. By 2017, the company had revenue of approximately $2 billion and 51% of online pet food sales in the US. At that time, Ryan Cohen prepared to take Chewy public as 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. 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. Allen & Co. served as financial advisor to Chewy on the deal. PetSmart later transferred 20% of its ownership stake in Chewy to private equity firmBC Partners, which has owned PetSmart since 2014, and also spun off an additional 16.5% of Chewy to an unrestricted subsidiary in 2018. Between 2017 and 2018, Chewy’s sales increased from $2.1 billion to $3.5 billion, with 66% of sales coming from customers signed up for automatic recurring shipments. Chewy received the Stevie Award for Favorite Customer Service in Retail in 2017 and 2018. In 2018, Chewy created Chewy Pharmacy, an online pharmacy providing pet-targeted prescription medications. Orders placed through the business are completed in coordination with a team of in-house veterinarians. 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. Chewy went public on June 14, 2019, at $22 per share.
Corporate affairs
The company's founder and first CEO, Ryan Cohen, stated that he used Jeff Bezos's 1997 letter to shareholders as a roadmap for how to grow Chewy by using Amazon's guidelines on the convenience of shopping online and customer service. Sumit Singh was named the company's CEO in March 2018 after working as its COO since 2017 and as an executive at Dell and Amazon. The company reported to have employed around 7,000 people in the United States in 2018 and more than 12,000 by 2019.
Locations
In June 2011, Chewy was founded in Dania Beach, Florida outside Fort Lauderdale. It opened a 400,000-square-foot facility in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania to allow for overnight delivery in the Northeast in 2014. In 2017, Chewy announced that it would open an office in Boston, Massachusetts, which the company called its second headquarters. In February 2018, Chewy opened a new 100,000 square foot customer service center in Hollywood, Florida, which houses over 1,000 employees. Also in 2018, Chewy.com opened a new 802,671 sq. ft. distribution facility in Goodyear, Arizona. It has 12 fulfillment centers and three customer service centers.
