NEW YORK (AP) – Danielle Schwartz did not order an oil painting of her cat. But he loves the portrait of Stinky hanging in his New York home, a surprise gift from an unlikely place: an online pet store.
It’s one of more than 1,000 free pictures Chewy sends out to select customers each week, even during the pandemic, taking advantage of people’s obsession with their skinny kids and hopefully winning customers for life.
In the huge world of online shopping, this personal touch and a bit of kitsch is how Chewy wants to stand out from the competition, which has only become stiffer as more people shop online and add pandemic pets. to their families. Pet ownership is expected to grow by 4% by 2020, the first increase in several years, according to the Petco Foundation.
Chewy’s strategy seems to work for Schwartz, the blue-eyed cat who likes to rub paint on his cat tree.
“I just want to buy them all,” he says. “They are a great company. I was amazed that they did something so personal. “
Portraits have become a hit on social media, where people share images or ask their pets to become works of art.
Eric Sheridan, a sales specialist from Lee, Florida, requested a portrait via the Twitter account of Gozer, his Boston terrier with more than 3,000 followers. A Chewy representative responded with a message: “My legs are crossed and we can send you one.” He arrived a month and a half later. “Christmas came early,” Sheridan said he tweeted from Gozer’s account.
Not everyone is happy to get a mysterious portrait – the company acknowledges that some confused customers are returning them. But many who receive a pet portrait document it for social media, giving free publicity to Chewy, a trend the company noticed when it began shipping them.
“Customers went to bananas,” says co-founder Ryan Cohen, who helped get the idea out in 2013 before leaving the company.
Chewy was founded in 2011 and married Amazon’s fast delivery with the ease of a local pet store. It also aimed to grab a piece of the fortune Americans spend on their pets, which was expected to reach $ 99 billion by 2020, according to the American Pet Products Association. Pet store chain PetSmart bought Chewy in 2017 for more than $ 3 billion to grow its online business, but then turned Chewy into two years later to become a publicly traded company. it is now worth about $ 40 billion, though it has never made any profit.
Amazon and Chewy dominate the online pet supplies industry, with a market share of Amazon in excess of 50% and Chewy in 34%, according to retail consultancy 1010data. But the pandemic has been especially good for Chewy, as people avoid physical stores. Its share price tripled in 2020. Sales soared 45% during the August-October quarter. And it added 5 million new customers over the last year, which added its total customer base to nearly 18 million.
Phillip M. Cooper, a pet industry consultant, provides customer service. “He set the standard,” he says.
The company’s 2,500 agents are trained to answer questions from parents of pets, such as what foods are best suited for old dogs or where to find shelter. Chewy sends customers new handwritten notes and all shoppers receive holiday cards via email. He even sends flowers to people whose pets died.
“It helped relieve the pain,” says Jordan Redman of Norman, Oklahoma, who received a bouquet of flowers after the death of Bud, his golden retriever.
But it is the paintings that make customers pant. There is no way to buy one at Chewy and the company does not say exactly how someone will be selected. But he usually sends them to those who have pet photos on their Chewy account or have shared one with a customer service agent.
For clues, look at the experience of Danielle Moore, who said Chewy asked her to send a photo of her Australian cattle dog Kana during a call about returning an order. The resemblance to Kana appeared three months later. Moore loved it so much that he tried to buy another one through Chewy, but the customer service agent didn’t move. Instead, the Dallas chemist commissioned one for $ 36 on Etsy, and the paintings hang together on a wall.
Chewy does not disclose the cost of making and sending the portraits. He has worked with hundreds of artists across the country to whom the company emails photos of his tracks.
Josh Lawson, who paints 20 to 50 portraits a week, has made snakes, goats and even what he believes were bison. It can take two hours or more to make a portrait. Fluffy kittens, for example, need extra attention and a long-tipped brush to get the right amount of fluff. “I want them to look real,” he says.
There is pressure to do so. Chewy says he rejects works of art that don’t look like the pet enough or sends them back to work again. The goal is for people to talk about Chewy with others and get a prime spot on the walls of shoppers, which serves as a billboard for the company.
Annesley Clark, a law student at St. Louis, was amazed at how free painting looked like his pit bull mix, Willow. “I was next to me,” she says. “It’s her exactly.”
I couldn’t wait to show it. The next day, he took her to a socially distanced picnic with four more people and lifted the art. “I said,‘ Look at this. It’s perfect. ”His friends agreed.
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Follow Joseph Pisani on Twitter: @ josephpisani