Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
The personal touch pays off
Paintings from online pet store Chewy to random customers are forging strong relationships
NEW YORK — Danielle Schwartz didn’t ask for an oil painting of her cat. But she loves the portrait of Stinky that hangs in her upstate New York home, a surprise gift from an unlikely place: an online pet store.
It’s one of the more than 1,000 free paintings that Chewy sends to select customers each week — even during the pandemic — tapping into people’s obsession with their fur children and, it hopes, winning customers for life.
In the cutthroat world of online shopping, that personal touch and a bit of kitsch is how Chewy is looking to stand out among the competition, which has only gotten stiffer as more people shop online and add pandemic pets to their families. Pet ownership was expected to grow 4% in 2020, the first increase in several years, according to the Petco Foundation.
Chewy’s strategy seems to be working on Schwartz, whose blue-eyed cat likes to rub up against the painting from his cat tree.
“I just want to buy everything from them,” she says. “They’re a big company. I was shocked that they did something so personal.”
The portraits have become a hit on social media, where people share images of them or beg for their pets to be turned into works of art.
Eric Sheridan, a sales specialist from Lee, Florida, asked for a portrait through the Twitter account of Gozer, his Boston terrier with more than 3,000 followers. A Chewy representative mess aged back :“My paws are crossed that we’ll be able to send you one.” It arrived a month and a half later.
“Christmas came early,” She rid an tweeted from Gozer’s account.
Not everyone is delighted by getting a mystery portrait — the company acknowledges that some confused customers send them back. But many who get a pet portrait document it for social media, giving Chewy free advertising — a trend the company noticed when it first started shipping them out.
“Customers were going bananas,” says co-founder Ryan Cohen, who helped come up with the idea in 2013 before leaving the company.
Chewy was founded in 2011, marrying the fast delivery of Amazon with the friendliness of a local pet store.
The company’s 2,500 agents are trained to answer pet parents’ questions, like which foods are best for older pooches or where to find a shelter. Chewy sends new customers handwritten notes and all shoppers get snailmail holiday cards. It even sends flowers to people whose pets died.
But it’s the paintings that have customers panting. There’ s no way to purchase one from Chewy, and the company doesn’t exactly say how someone will be selected. But it typically sends them out to those that have pet photos on their Chewy account or have shared one with a customer service agent.
For clues, look to 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. Kana’s likeness showed up three months later. Moore loved it so much she tried to purchase another through Chewy, but the customer service agent wouldn’t budge. Instead, the chemist from Dallas commissioned one for $36 on Etsy, and the paintings hang on a wall together.
Chewy doesn’t disclose the cost of making and sending the portraits. It has worked with hundreds of artists around the country who are emailed photos of their subjects by the company.