Pets.com was losing money on every dog leash it shipped. But if you looked at the company’s bottom line at the time of the IPO, the biggest expenses, at $42.5 million—a whopping 76% of total operating costs—were for marketing and sales. Advertising. And that’s why we remember Pets.com, if, indeed, we remember it at all. Priceline might have had William Shatner, but Pets.com had the sock puppet.
