Dec 05 2010
How I Did It: Tony Hsieh, CEO, Zappos.com
In 1998, 24-year-old Tony Hsieh sold his company, Internet advertiser LinkExchange, to Microsoft for $265 million. A year later, he met an even younger entrepreneur, Nick Swinmurn, who had an idea no investor would touch: selling shoes on the Internet. But Hsieh (pronounced shay) was intrigued and invested $500,000 in ShoeSite.com (they soon changed the name to Zappos, after zapatos, which is Spanish for “shoes”). Within six months, he and Swinmurn were running the show together. Early this year, Swinmurn moved on, leaving Hsieh at the helm of a company that had sales of $252 million in 2005.
“We all sat around one day talking about what we wanted the Zappos brand to represent. We decided to be about providing the best service; we said, “We’re a service company that just happens to sell shoes.” But in order for that to happen, we had to control the entire customer experience.” -Tony Hsieh, CEO
Zappos places great emphasis on company culture and core values. In fact, the company publishes a “Culture Book” annually that is made up of contributions from employees describing what the company culture means to them. I found it very interesting that the company would offer new employees $3000 right after the 4 week training if they want leave the company. This is to ensure that the people are there for the love of the job and not the money. The company proves that focusing on culture and customer satisfaction not only leads to revenue, but also a good company reputation.
