Pets.com was an American dot-com enterprise headquartered in San Francisco, U.S, that sold pet supplies to retail customers.

A high-profile marketing campaign gave it a widely recognized public presence, including an appearance in the 1999 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and an advertisement in the 2000 Super Bowl.

Its popular sock puppet advertising mascot was interviewed by People magazine and appeared on Good Morning America.

Although sales rose dramatically due to the attention, the company failed to become profitable and became known as one of the biggest victims of the dot-com crash in 2000.

[10] Pets.com spent most of the venture funding on large warehouses and other shipment infrastructures, as well as purchasing their biggest online competitor at the time, Petstore.com in June 2000 for $10.6 million.

[22] Pets.com lacked a workable business plan and lost money on nearly every sale because, even before the cost of advertising, it was selling merchandise for approximately one-third the price it paid to obtain the products.

[22][23] The company hoped to shift customers into higher-margin purchases, but customer purchasing patterns failed to change and during its second fiscal year the company continued to sell merchandise for approximately 27% less than cost, so the dramatic rise in sales during Pets.com's second fiscal year only hastened the firm's demise.

"[36] After the Pets.com website closed in November 2000, Pets.com donated more than 21 tons of dog food to help Mushers in Alaska's Interior in December 2000.

The puppet made an appearance on ABC's Good Morning America and Nightline, WABC-TV-produced Live with Regis and Kathie Lee, was interviewed in People Magazine, Time Magazine, Entertainment Weekly and Adweek and even had a 36-foot-tall (11 m) "falloon" made in its image for the 1999 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.

[47] The Pets.com sock puppet also had an “autobiography” of himself titled "Me by Me", which was released in 2000, a coffee table book featuring a compilation of photos with quotes.

Representatives from Robert Smigel sent letters, including a cease and desist demand, to Pets.com claiming that the puppet was based on Triumph.

Pets.com responded by suing Smigel in the U.S. District Court in San Francisco in April 2000, demanding $20 million in damages for defamation and trade libel.

[59] The publicity surrounding the Pets.com puppet, combined with the company's collapse, made it such a symbol of dot-com folly that E-Trade referred to it in an advertisement during the 2001 Super Bowl.

The commercial, which parodies the famous crying Native public service advertisement from 1971, shows a chimpanzee riding on horseback through a ruined dot-com landscape.