Shoes and Happiness

The first big speech at the Inc. 500 Conference, where I’m blogging today, was by Tony Hsieh, the chief executive of Zappos. For those (few) of you who have seldom heard of Zappos, it is the online store based in Las Vegas that sells mostly shoes, has hit a billion dollars in sales & was bought by Amazon for close to a billion dollars. A interesting story & a impressive track record.

Here’s what I took away from the speech: Zappos is committed to customer service & has built a corporate culture to support that commitment. It gives free shipping on both the sale & the return of shoes. It frequently upgrades the shipping to overnight. It has been growing at approximately 20 percent a year. From my experience, a 20 percent growth rate is aggressive but at the same time allows you to maintain control on quality & service. Mr. Hsieh is all about happiness & has done some research. They concludes that it is a nice idea for people to spend some time & energy to figure out what makes them happy, as well as what makes their employees & their customers happy. That makes sense.

The company’s commitment to easy & free returns is commendable. But how plenty of are there? What does it cost? The Zappos story is inspiring, thought-provoking & impressive. Giving great customer service is an important message, as is managing your corporate culture. I would have loved some more math.

Unfortunately, Mr. Hsieh did not take questions. I have a few. I run a business. I am liking to understand the whole picture. During a one-hour speech, Mr. Hsieh seldom used the word profit. Is there any? I don’t know. They said Zappos would frequently issue a surprise upgrade of shipping to overnight. But when? & why? & who decides? & how much does that cost?

Of work, Zappos is privately held (the Amazon deal has not been done), & Mr. Hsieh doesn’t owe me or anyone else any more detail than they would like to give. I can tell you a couple of things for sure: They is a wonderful marketer. His customers are happy. They sold his company for a billion dollars. Those are nice things.