Zappos
Zappos was founded by Nick Swinmurn in 1999. The initial inspiration came when he couldn’t find a pair of brown Airwalks at his local mall. That same year, Swinmurn approached Tony Hsieh and Alfred Lin with the idea of selling shoes online. The company was officially launched in June 1999, under the original domain name "ShoeSite.com. A few months after their launch, the company 's name was changed from ShoeSite to Zappos so as not to limit itself to selling only footwear. In January 2000, Venture Frogs invested additional capital, and allowed Zappos to move into their office space. During this time, Hsieh found that he "had the most fun with Zappos" and came on board as co-CEO with Nick Swinmurn. After minimal gross sales in 1999, Zappos brought in $1.6 million in revenue in 2000 (Chafkin, 2006).
Culture of Zappos
Culture can be defined as the set of key values, assumptions, understandings, and norms that is shared by members of an organization and taught to new members as correct. Your culture or work environment will form based …show more content…
If few exit barriers exist, an industry leader might attempt to increase market share via aggressive pricing or promotion policies aimed at driving out weaker competitors. Or it might try to consolidate the industry, as Johnson Controls has done in its automotive components businesses, by acquiring weaker brands and reducing overhead by eliminating both excess capacity and duplicate marketing programs (Mullins. (2013). Alternatively, a firm might decide to harvest a mature product by maximizing cash flow and profit over the product’s remaining life. The last section of this chapter examines specific marketing strategies for gaining the greatest possible returns from products approaching the end of their life cycle (Mullins.