Published on 25 Mar 2024 on Motley Fool via Yahoo Finance

E-Commerce Giant Chewy Is Opening Physical Spaces -- but They're Not What You Might Expect

With over $11 billion in fiscal 2023 net sales, Chewy (NYSE: CHWY) is an e-commerce giant serving the pet industry. The company has amassed over 20 million active customers by offering fast shipping, focusing on customer service, and selling a wide range of products and services.

Chewy isn't a subscription service, per se, but it does provide an automated way to place repeat orders. This option is extremely popular. In the fourth quarter of its fiscal 2023, more than three-quarters of its net sales came from autoship orders.

Chewy was built to be an e-commerce platform. However, management is pushing to build some physical locations in Florida in the coming year. It's not uncommon for e-commerce companies to do this. For example, Amazon now owns brick-and-mortar convenience stores and grocery stores. And in 2016, Etsy experimented with a store-within-a-store concept in a Macy's.