zappos Kevin Wang

History Founded in 1999 by Nick Swinmurn Tony Hsieh invests $500,000 Grew quickly Joined Amazon in 2009

Corporate culture 1. Deliver Wow through Service 2. Embrace and Drive Change 3. Create Fun and a Little Weirdness 4. Be Adventurous, Creative and Open-Minded 5. Pursue Growth and Learning 6. Build Open and Honest Relationships with Communication 7. Build a Positive Team and Family Spirit 8. Do More with Less 9. Be Passionate and Determined 10. Be Humble

customers first 1. Deliver Wow through Service 6. Build Open and Honest Relationships with Communication 10. Be Humble Give the customers what they want - Focused on retaining customers

engaged and happy workplace 2. Embrace and Drive Change 3. Create Fun and a Little Weirdness 4. Be Adventurous, Creative and Open-Minded 5. Pursue Growth and Learning 6. Build Open and Honest Relationships with Communication 7. Build a Positive Team and Family Spirit 8. Do More with Less 9. Be Passionate and Determined 10. Be Humble

Profits Zappos focuses on helping the customer find exactly what they want, so that they will buy the product Free shipping - free returns Sacrifices a portion of the profits to make the sale Makes it easy to find shoes online and reduces customers’ buying axiety

Holacracy A new organizational management system no job titles, no managers, no hierarchical decisions New corporate culture designed to remove the “command and control” dogma

a single, autonomous, self sufficient unit dependent on a larger unit like a cell in the human body observe errors and inefficiencies propose solutions no boss - easier communication with people at different levels

tony hsieh 1993 ACM Programming Contest winner founded LinkExchange online advertising network sold to Microsoft for $265 million founded Venture Frogs he found Zappos here through an investment

development "We're a service company that just happens to sell shoes.” focused on controlling the customer service experience 24/7 warehouse - not cheap or efficient, but faster delivery

Training Choose employees based on culture fit Untrain call center employees’ bad habits from previous jobs teach them to spend more time on the phone with the customer 4 week training program for new employees to orient them with the culture at the end of the 4 weeks, the employees can take $2000 to leave if they don’t want to work for the company

Exit strategy Acquired by Amazon $1.2 billion in 2009 Similar companies - Both are online merchants

Developing a corporate culture is the key to building a successful workforce