Pets.com became a famous casualty of the dot-com crash. The online retailer sold pet supplies and became a symbol of the era’s extravagant marketing, rapid growth, and weak profitability.
Founded in 1998, Pets.com attracted major attention through a high-profile advertising campaign featuring its sock-puppet mascot. It appeared in the 2000 Super Bowl and the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, while Amazon.com backed the company. The publicity helped sales rise, but the business still could not become profitable.
Pets.com completed its initial public offering in February 2000, near the height of the technology bubble. As Internet stocks collapsed, its share price plunged and the company announced that it would stop taking orders on November 9, 2000. Its brief life made it one of the best-known failures of the crash.
Petco and PetSmart are traditional pet retailers, not the failed dot-com company referenced here. Chewy later built a successful online pet-supply business, but it was founded years after Pets.com and is a separate company.