Whats not working at Zappos?
We relocated to Las Vegas four and a half years ago. The reason we moved is because in the Bay Area it’s hard to find people who want to do customer service. Part of it is the cost of living and part of it is a different culture out there. In Vegas, we’ve had a lot of people showing up at our job fairs. The cost of living is lower. People can work in a call center and buy a house. What’s been challenging for us is hiring technical talent out here and some senior positions in accounting and finance. We end up having to relocate a lot of people. David Vanderpoel on Facebook asks: How do you compete when your cost of service is much higher than competitors? For us, it’s the repeat customers and word of mouth. The free shipping both ways is very expensive. On the P&L, it shows up as a cost of goods, but we think of it as a marketing cost. We spend most of the money we’d spend on paid advertising and put it into the customer experience and let them do the word of mouth marketing for us. Twi
