Zappos.Com
Steven Ledington
BA283
Writing Assignment #1 Video Summary Tony Hsieh, CEO of the online shoe and apparel retailer. Zappos.com gave a presentation at Stanford School of Business on How to Build a Formidable Brand, Zappos.com. Tony’s main points he wanted to express about the online retailer was having a great company culture, wonderful customer service and through 1,500 different vendors a great collection of clothing shoes, and apparel.
During October 2010 Tony Hsieh toured 10 cities in the US promoting his book Delivering Happiness with nine other members of Zappos.com, Directly out of college he helped co-found the company, Link Exchange which 2 ½ years later sold to Microsoft. The reason being was that the company culture was gone. The company first started out with 20 employees that were hired thru friends of friends. When it grew to 100 employees their passion and vision were invisible. Tony sold to Microsoft and tried the investment market, but to Tony it was too boring. He is more of a constructive type person. While investing he come about Zappos and found it to be very interesting. At first Zappos just sold shoes then branched out into other clothing apparel. Hsieh took Zappos from zero sales in the 99 to over a billion in sales in 2009. He and Zappos implemented a two stage hiring process, one for skills, experience, qualifications and so on. The other hiring interview focused on culture fit as far as what the employees feel about their work. Tony Hsieh and Zappos developed committable Core Values for the employees to follow. There were ten, but the most important he said was #10 that said “Be Humble” because most employees that were very intellectual, experienced and qualified were very egotistical which didn’t fit in to their culture. He stated how all the core values were very important to Zappos because it kept everyone on the same page when it came to how to treat the customer or make sure to have fun and be happy with yourself
BA283
Writing Assignment #1 Video Summary Tony Hsieh, CEO of the online shoe and apparel retailer. Zappos.com gave a presentation at Stanford School of Business on How to Build a Formidable Brand, Zappos.com. Tony’s main points he wanted to express about the online retailer was having a great company culture, wonderful customer service and through 1,500 different vendors a great collection of clothing shoes, and apparel.
During October 2010 Tony Hsieh toured 10 cities in the US promoting his book Delivering Happiness with nine other members of Zappos.com, Directly out of college he helped co-found the company, Link Exchange which 2 ½ years later sold to Microsoft. The reason being was that the company culture was gone. The company first started out with 20 employees that were hired thru friends of friends. When it grew to 100 employees their passion and vision were invisible. Tony sold to Microsoft and tried the investment market, but to Tony it was too boring. He is more of a constructive type person. While investing he come about Zappos and found it to be very interesting. At first Zappos just sold shoes then branched out into other clothing apparel. Hsieh took Zappos from zero sales in the 99 to over a billion in sales in 2009. He and Zappos implemented a two stage hiring process, one for skills, experience, qualifications and so on. The other hiring interview focused on culture fit as far as what the employees feel about their work. Tony Hsieh and Zappos developed committable Core Values for the employees to follow. There were ten, but the most important he said was #10 that said “Be Humble” because most employees that were very intellectual, experienced and qualified were very egotistical which didn’t fit in to their culture. He stated how all the core values were very important to Zappos because it kept everyone on the same page when it came to how to treat the customer or make sure to have fun and be happy with yourself