Delivering Happiness: Entrepreneurial History of Zappos with the Success of Online Retailer

We often believe that, if a company wants to achieve long-term growth, it must attract more customers by using various innovative marketing and expansion methods. However, without the use of any advertising, Zappos, an online shoe retailer established by Tony Hsieh, a Chinese American, has transformed from a company with zero sales into the "shoe king” of the footwear industry, with an annual sale of 1 billion US dollars and the world’s number one shoe-selling website. What’s more surprising, among every 100 customers of Zappos, 75 are willing to buy shoes from them again. In 2009, Amazon acquired Zappos for 1.2 billion US dollars, which created a new record of corporate acquisition in the United States’ e-commerce history.

So, as an ordinary person, how did Tony Hsieh successfully establish Zappos in what was the then bleak e-commerce environment? And, what kind of business model did he use to lead the employees to make huge profits, while enabling the company to achieve long-term growth? Today’s Bookey will answer these questions.

The author of the book, Tony Hsieh, is the co-founder as well as the CEO of Zappos. Under his business model of "repeat customer strategy”, Zappos has transformed from a company with zero sales into the "shoe king" of the footwear industry with an annual sale of 1 billion US dollars in just a decade. Tony Hsieh himself also got onto Fortune magazine’s list of “billionaires under the age of 40”, ranking number 27 with a fortune of 1 billion US dollars.

This book is a self-narrative of Tony Hsieh’s history of entrepreneurship. In the book, Tony Hsieh discloses Zappos' "repeat customer strategy”. In a sensible manner, he talks about how Zappos improves its customer service and experience to cultivate customer loyalty, and uses customers' recommendations and word of mouth as the company’s free advertising. Zappos’ experience not only applies to all business fields, but also helps company employees at different levels achieve growth both in their lives and careers.

Since its publication in English, the book has received positive acclaims from major media and ranks the top on the book list of the New York Times, USA Today, and so on. It has been translated into more than 20 languages and is a popular worldwide. Harvard has also used Zappos as a case study three times in its past courses.