I just ordered a big bag of dog food off Amazon, with free shipping, for less than the same brand costs at Petco. I'm not sure whether they're taking a loss on that, or maybe dog food is just extremely marked up in brick & mortar stores.
Pet water fountain at PetSmart: $50
Exact same fountain at Amazon: $25
But I've noticed that pet stores (or at least Petsmart) are starting to do price-discrimination by having online-only 'sales'. Purchase online at 25% off, pickup in store.
pets.com also went out of business by blowing a ton of money on Herman Miller chairs, doing everything in San Francisco (they later moved some warehousing to the midwest for a better distribution network and lower costs) and a rush to IPO too.
