If you’ve ever shopped for shoes online, you’ve been to Zappos. If you’ve ordered, you’ve gotten great shoes and great service. If you’ve shoped there recently you may have gotten not only shoes but possibly a tent, apparel, outdoor gear and any of a number of other things from their ever growing variety of new shops.
I was fortunate enough to have a tour of their offices, see the playful atmosphere in the offices, get a photo taken in the VIP chair and met some great people there. It’s really a great company that thinks of people as people, not as assets. It shows.
Unfortunately, the financial turmoil took a toll on Zappos today. Tony from Zappos was very open about the situation and posted on the Zappos Twitter Account with a link to the email sent out. Zappos was generous with their employees, paying them through the end of the year and extending health benefits for a period of time. It just goes to show that even the most well run companies are not immune to downturns in the econonomy, though if any company can make it through the current economic climate, Zappos is one to bet on!
July 23, 2009
[...] held so all we can do is speculate on the direction of sales revenue and profit at this point. Zappos did lay off about 8% of staff in December 2008 so we can assume the either anticipated growth slowed or maybe there was a decline in [...]