Chewy.com’s Make-or-Break Logistics Dilemma

In late 2013, Ryan Cohen, cofounder and then-CEO of online pet products retailer Chewy.com, was facing a decision that could determine his company’s future. Cohen was convinced that achieving scale would be essential to making the business work and he worried that the company’s third-party logistics provider (3PL) may not be able to scale with Chewy.com’s projected growth or maintain the company’s performance standards for service quality and fulfillment. But neither he nor his cofounders had any experience managing logistics, and the company’s board members were pressuring him to leave order fulfillment to the 3PL. What should Cohen do?