Internet Pet Supply

In the late 1990's Pets.com, an Internet pet supply retailer was launched. This new company arose in the midst of thousands of other dot.com companies, each fighting their way for a piece of what looked to be a new and exciting way of doing business and posting large profits. The goal of Pets.com was to create a retail outlet, which was internet-based, and which provided an array of pet supplies, ranging from food to information regarding care of animals. Unfortunately however, Pets.com, as well as many other dot.com companies did not fare so well. On November 7, 2000, the CEO of Pets.com Julie Wainwright announced to the companies employees and the public that they would be shutting down the company and selling it's assets to competitor Petsmart.com. Pets.com became the first publicly traded dot.com company to close down. (Grenier, 1)

On the other hand, at the same time that Pets.com was founded, another company, Dell Computers also began to look for its nitch in the world of internet-retail. Today Dell Computers is one of the most respected computer companies in the market, and its internet-sales are incredibly successful. The difference between these two companies is not necessarily clear. Both made attempts to do the same thing, offer their goods to the public through the Internet, which was becoming increasingly more popular as each day passed. But as one compares the companies further, it can be seen that Dell Computers had major advantages over Pets.com in the areas of technology and management, and customer responsiveness.

Technology played a key role in weeding out the strong dot.com's from those that were weak. Dell made good use of the technology that was offered at the time, creating a web site that allowed users to customize their own computers. By doing this they made a task that could take hours in a store or on the telephone relatively fast and simple, as well as inexpensive. Instead of having to pay consultants to help customers "create" their computer, Dell created a web site that virtually walked the customers through the steps. For Pets.com this technology was not overlooked, but just not needed. This is not to say that Pets.com did not have an efficient web page, in fact they did, it was well designed and won them several awards (Chevron, 1). In the case of Pets.com the products that they were selling simply did not need the technology that a company such as Dell thrived on.

Another key aspect of dealing with technology lies in the people who run the company. The late 1990's saw huge advances in the field of technology, but unfortunately these advances did not always extend to the workforce. In some instances managers who were considered experienced because of their age were unable to keep up with the new technology and the changing times. In order for a company to run a business based solely on technology, they need to have a management team that is not only computer literate, but educated in marketing, advertising, and selling in an online environment. For some companies this would mean that they need to promote new workers to management who were trained in these areas, and older management staff who were taught to do things in more traditional ways would have to attend courses that teach them to understand fully the new technology. This learning has to be ongoing however because technology changes day to day, and all workers should be able to keep up.

Pets.com started out as a good idea, pet supplies for cheap over the Internet. They created a slogan "because pets can't drive" and invented a mascot (Mast 1). They got the backing of Amazon.com and 100 million dollars to fund their start-up (Chevron, 1). However, in hindsight many see that Pets.com had problems from the very beginning. One analyst notes that their first problem was their name. He states that companies with generic names tend to get lost in the crowd. For Pets.com this seems to be true. By late 1999, Pets.com was only a year old, and it was already competing with Petopia,