Zappos Case

Zappos is known for its unique corporate

culture and focus on customer service,

can you give our readers a little background

on these two areas?

Sure. So let me start with a little bit of

history in terms of how we decided to

really focus on the culture piece, as well

as customer service, of course, and then

our core values in general. Our CEO, Tony

Hsieh graduated from Harvard and when

he hnished he started a company called

LinkExchange with a college roommate. It

did really well, and about a year into the

business they started getting offers from

other companies to purchase them. He

actually ended up selling to Microsoft for

just a small chunk of change.

Obviously there was a financial gain

there, but for him it was really less about

that and more about the change that

had occurred in his company. The initial

employees were friends of friends or

other people they had gone to school

with, all of whom tended to have the

same philosophy and values.

Ayear into it they had grown very

rapidly. They had gotten up to I think a

little over lOO people, and Tony realized

one morning, "God, I don't want to go

into work today" For him that was really

eye opening. If he didn't want to go

into work at a company he started, what

must the other employees be feeling?

And in hindsight looking back, trying to

figure out how this company that he created

- how it kind of went awry - he really

felt like the main problem was that

they hired folks purely based on who

could do a job and do it the best, which

is important, but didn't pay