Overstock goes to the dogs and cats
Animal lovers have a new ally in Overstock.com thanks to a new service that leverages the online retailer’s digital capabilities to find homes for unwanted animals.
The company’s new pet adoption service allows users to access real-time updates of adoptable animals in thousands of shelters nationwide. Searches can be conducted by types and breeds of animal and filtered by attributes such as gender, age, color and disposition in much that same manner as Overstock.com’s customers search for products.
"We realized that the same world-class technology we have built to enable shoppers to sort through millions of products on our site to find just the right item is technology that could also be used to enable pet lovers to sort through hundreds of thousands of animals in adoption shelters to find just the right pet for their family," said Overstock.com chairman and CEO Patrick Byrne. "We are an animal-friendly firm and are grateful for the opportunity to use our technology and resources to make a difference in the lives of so many animals and people."
Once a user finds a pet she would like to adopt, Overstock.com connects that person with the correct shelter to complete the process. Overstock.com is offering the service for free to all shelters across the U.S. and to everyone who is interested in searching for, and finding, an animal companion. The company emphasized that the service is for rescue animals only and it would not be working with puppy mills or other breeders.
"Millions of unwanted pets are euthanized annually. We can change that,” Byrne said.
Pet adoptions are found on Overstock.com's OVillage tab, which houses a collection of sustainable businesses that provide Overstock.com a way to give back to the community. In addition to pet adoptions, other departments within OVillage include Worldstock.com, Overstock.com's fair trade division, Main Street Revolution, which sells products made in America by small businesses, and a Farmers Market section which the company said is undergoing a significant expansion.