Zappos

“Got her tampons into places like Princeton and Penn State. And over the next few years, they also picked up accounts for state office buildings in Ohio and Iowa, and even big tech companies like Zappos and Google.”

“Tony invested ten million dollars of his own money, but most of it was financed through being very, very creative, figuring out how to get merchants that we ordered from to give us credit and to increase the credit line. We had a, eventually got a line of cred…”

“Or in sales, and here's a company that basically raised ten million dollars, and it probably was undercapitalized, but it really did highlight that you can build a company by having CAC be profitable on the first order, by being focused on customer service, an…”

“The solution to pick back and ship in four hours was to solve a operations flow issue and not batch the operations, which I don't think anybody else figured out in e-commerce back then besides Amazon.”

“When we, on any given day, the orders that we had, 80% of it was from repeat customers, and we grew the business, some with marketing, but the majority was by providing great customer service, having high repeat rates, having high LTV, and having customers bas…”

“We then did this analysis and this is the type of analysis I really enjoy doing, like, let's take our best customers, and let's take our worst customers, and look at their return rates, and it turned out our best customers at the highest LTVs return the most”

“You want to keep the return policy as liberal as you can, but make the cost of processing as low as possible. And so, the first order issue there is exactly, going back to first order issue, the first order issue is not the return rate. The first order issue i…”

“I think we changed the whole industry, and it originally was just a competitive response. We had a liberal return policy in 30 days, other people copy 30 days, then it was 90 days, other people copy 90 days, and then we made it three 65 days.”

“Tony Hsieh had this experience at Link Exchange where we didn't define the values of the company. We started hiring people that were conventionally right for the positions in the job, and one day he woke up and realized the company that he had founded and buil…”

“The problem with 10 is that there are probably a handful of people that remember all 10. Most people remember the first one or two or three of them”

“At Zappos, it was, what do we do after nine-eleven when sales went to zero, what do we do during the financial crisis when credit became very, very difficult, and we were borrowing sixty million dollars, and we had sixty million dollars that we did nothing wro…”

“And if you decided not to invest in that time, you would have missed out on Google, Salesforce, PayPal, Zappos, OpenTable. There are a lot of great companies that were still founded during that time, and Paying market prices for those investments would have be…”

“By the next morning, Ron had done it. We got an eight-figure contract with that company that led to a nine-figure contract, all because of this desperate email, and eventually our company got acquired for eight hundred million.”

“So then second wave, we hedged our bets. We decided to go international, right? Zappos had called saying, Hey you know, we need fresh infusion of interesting shoes and USPs for our core audience. So we are opening up an international program. Would you be inte…”

“His approach was, you know, basically in a very empirical one, you know, it was like, well, I need like evidence, right? I need evidence that I will be happier married than not married. And you know, I didn't really know what to say to that because like the on…”

“Amazon made it a little easy in that they told us they would want to run us as an independent subsidiary and an independent brand, just like they run Audible and IMDB and Zappos and now Twitch, and they have a long list of track record of doing this.”

“Right now I'm wearing black Asics, and then I have a pair of flip-flops that I wear, and those are the only two pairs.”

“I'm actually not passionate about shoes at all. I'm passionate about customer service and company culture, so I can talk forever about those two things, but I can't say anything about shoes.”

“And for me, I really think of my role as more about being the architect of the greenhouse, and then the, all the plants inside will flourish and thrive on their own.”

“In order to test out the whole concept for real, Nick would actually just go down to the local shoe store, take pictures of all the shoes that were on the wall, and then put it on the website, and if someone bought something, then go down to the local shoe sto…”

“And basically as Zappos was growing, it was also losing more money and we also need more money for inventory. And so I ended up one by one selling off the apartments and it's kind of like when in Monopoly, when you buy a hotel or houses and then you have to se…”

“No, and also there were huge companies like pets.com that were e-commerce that were kind of imploding at the time, and so even if someone wanted to invest in an internet company, the last thing they wanted to do was invest in an online shoe company, because no…”

“You know, if we were just around trying to say maximize the profit margins, then we never would have gone down that path. And yes, we would have made more money in the short term during those days, but then we wouldn't have built our brand and reputation and s…”

“We're hoping, 1020 years from now, people won't even realize we started selling shoes online, and I can imagine one day there could be a Zappos Airlines or Zappos Hotel that, Is really just about the very best customer service and customer experience.”

“Amazon had actually approached us several years before 2009. They just wanted to acquire us, and then basically the company being acquired ends up joining the mothership, and kind of loses its original identity, and so we said, Know very quickly. And then they…”

“They approached us again and said, okay, we will let you guys be your own separate subsidiary with your own separate culture and own separate way of doing business. And happy to report seven years later, they've remained totally true to their word. And we've b…”

“Amazon was the only large company that I saw or felt When they bought companies truly like brought it to the next level. Like I, you know, with audible and IMDB and Zappos and I mean, you look at Twitch, like you look at all the, they've just kept founders and…”

“The first real customer we got was Zappos. The CMO of Zappos actually responded himself, introduced us to his ad agency, introduced us to someone else at Zappos, and they signed up for, I think it was a small deal at the time, 5000 dollars for a year license, …”

“I'm actually not passionate about shoes at all. I'm passionate about customer service and company culture, so I can talk forever about those two things, but I can't say anything about shoes.”

“I'm probably different from a lot of typical CEOs where I like to use the analogy of imagine a greenhouse where maybe at a typical company, the CEO might be the strongest and tallest and Most charismatic plant that all the other plants strive to One day become…”

“And then the other interesting fact was that at the time, mail order catalogs, those paper catalogs, that was actually the fastest growing segment of the footwear industry in the U.S., and that represented five percent, so two billion dollars a year and growin…”

“Yeah, I mean, so, in order to test out the whole concept for real, Nick would actually just go down to the local shoe store, take pictures of all the shoes that were on the wall, and then put it on the website, and if someone bought something, then go down to …”

“And basically, as Zappos was growing, it was also losing more money, and we also need more money for inventory, and so I ended up, one by one, selling off the apartments, and it's kind of like when in Monopoly, when you buy a hotel or houses, and then you have…”

“No, and also there were huge companies like pets.com that were e-commerce that were kind of imploding at the time, and so even if someone wanted to invest in an internet company, the last thing they wanted to do was invest in an online shoe company, because no…”

“When you actually want your brand to stand for something or to have some sort of purpose, and in our case, it's about to be about the very best customer service and customer experience. You do things that are kind of nonsensical in some ways and that your comp…”

“Amazon had actually approached us several years before 2009. They just wanted to acquire us and then basically the company being acquired ends up joining the mothership and kind of loses its original identity. And so we said no very quickly.”

“They approached us again and said, okay, we will let you guys be your own separate subsidiary with your own separate culture and own separate way of doing business. And happy to report seven years later, they've remained totally true to their word. And we've b…”

“I think there's the best way to beat Amazon is with heart. I think Amazon doesn't create the emotional connection with a brand that, say, a Chewy's did, or a Zappos did.”

“Right now I'm wearing black Asics, and then I have a pair of flip-flops that I wear, and those are the only two pairs. I'm actually not passionate about shoes at all. I'm passionate about customer service and company culture, so I can talk forever about those …”

“One was that footwear at the time was a forty billion dollar a year industry in the US. Yeah. And I'm not into shoes at all, so that was News to me. And then the other interesting fact was that at the time, mail order catalogs, those paper catalogs, that was a…”

“So in order to test out the whole concept for real, Nick would actually just go down to the local shoe store, take pictures of all the shoes that were on the wall, and then put it on the website. And if someone bought something, then go down to the local shoe …”

“And so I ended up, one by one, selling off the apartments, and it's kind of like when in Monopoly, when you buy a hotel or houses, and then you have to sell them, but you lose money on the sale.”

“No, and also there were huge companies like pets.com that were e-commerce that were kind of imploding at the time, and so even if someone wanted to invest in an internet company, the last thing they wanted to do was invest in an online shoe company, because no…”

“And so I think, you know, when you actually want your brand to stand for something or to have some sort of purpose, and in our case, it's about to be about the very best customer service and customer experience. You do things that are kind of nonsensical in so…”

“We're hoping, 1020 years from now, people won't even realize we started selling shoes online. And I can imagine one day there could be a Zappos Airlines or Zappos Hotel that Is really just about the very best customer service and customer experience.”

“Amazon had actually approached us several years before 2009. They just wanted to acquire us, and then basically the company being acquired ends up joining the mothership, and kind of loses its original identity, and so we said, Know very quickly.”

“Happy to report seven years later, they've remained totally true to their word. And we've been able to continue doing our own thing and our culture is very different and distinct from Amazon's”