Zappos

Company Profile

Zappos operates today as an Amazon subsidiary with its own website and service-led culture, selling footwear - still the core of the business - alongside the clothing, handbags, eyewear, watches and children's merchandise it added in 2007. Because Zappos is itself a retailer, this page carries no marketplace shop box; the button above leads to the company's own store. The founding story and company description this directory has long carried are kept in the profile below as the record of how the company started and the idea it was built on.

It all began back in 1999 when Zappos founder Nick Swinmurn was walking around a mall in San Francisco looking for a pair of shoes. One store had the right style, but not the right color. Another store had the right color, but not the right size. Nick spent the next hour in the mall, walking from store to store, and finally went home empty-handed and frustrated. After returning home, Nick tried looking for his shoes online and was again unsuccessful. Back in 1999 the internet was off to a good start, but it was not even close to what it is today: although there were a lot of "mom and pop" boutiques selling shoes online at the time, there was no major online retailer that specialized in shoes. So Nick decided to quit his day job and start an online shoe retailer - and Zappos.com was born.

The founding idea was to create a website that offered the absolute best selection in shoes in terms of brands, styles, colors, sizes and widths. Since that time, the brand and its aspirations have evolved: in addition to offering the best selection, the goal became to be the company that provides the absolute best service online, not just in shoes, but in any category. Zappos has long held that the speed at which a customer receives an online purchase plays a very important role in how that customer thinks about shopping online again in the future, so the company put a lot of focus on making sure items are delivered to customers as quickly as possible.

In 2007, Zappos expanded its inventory to include clothing, handbags, eyewear, watches and kids' merchandise. In July of 2009, Zappos.com, Inc. announced its plans to join the Amazon.com, Inc. family, and the acquisition was completed later that year.

From ShoeSite.com to an Amazon Subsidiary

The company was officially launched online in 1999 as ShoeSite.com; the name was soon changed to Zappos, adapted from "zapatos", the Spanish word for shoes. Tony Hsieh and Alfred Lin invested $2 million through their investment firm Venture Frogs, Hsieh joined as co-CEO with Swinmurn in 2001 and led the company for two decades, becoming the public face of its service-first culture - summed up in its "Deliver WOW" philosophy - before retiring as CEO in 2020; he died later that year. Swinmurn had left the company in 2006.

Amazon acquired Zappos in 2009 in an all-stock deal announced in July of that year, and Zappos has operated since then as an Amazon subsidiary with its own website, buying and customer-service culture, headquartered in Las Vegas, Nevada. The assortment today runs well beyond the founding shoe range - clothing, handbags, eyewear, accessories and children's merchandise alongside footwear for women, men and kids - sold through zappos.com, the company's own store. Because Zappos is itself a retailer, this profile carries no marketplace shop box; the button in the snapshot above leads to the company's own website.