Chewy ($PRIVATE:CHEWYCOM) got off to a roaring start as its shares debuted on the New York Stock Exchange at $36, nearly double their initial range when the company announced its offering earlier this month. 

The website was reportedly bought for more than $3 billion by PetSmart ($PETM) in April 2017. Under the midpoint the range shares were priced at in advance of the offering, Chewy has increased its value to more than $7.6 billion today, which helps to understand exactly how bullish the buyers were for the online brand. But Chewy's data goes even further. 

Web Traffic is On the Rise

When you're a pet products retailer dependent on the web for sales, web traffic is everything. And, everything looks good for Chewy.com as it heads for the New York Stock Exchange. Web traffic is up, signaling consumer interest and sales have been solid since 2017 - although our last data point was gathered in February. 

Staffing Up

Our first chart tracks staff as measured by employees changing or signing up for LinkedIn ($MSFT) accounts that correlate to Chewy's ID on the social network. It shows that headcount has both been growing and appears to have not declined over that timeframe. The second, tracks job openings listed at Chewy.com - and that has risen by more than 50% this year alone. Chewy's getting bigger. 

A Focus on Culture

This next data point, isn't anything but fun - and it has gotten tragically little coverage from the financial press that typically scours public offerings for key details, big and meaningless. This one, gears toward the latter category. Some organizations love to integrate brand with culture - and Chewy is no different - it went so far as to create a word to personify its staffers: "Chewtopians." 

An earlier version of this story appeared two weeks ago with data from that time period. We’ve updated the data in anticipation of Chewy's IPO.

Further Reading: 

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