Как вы наверное слышали, Amazon покупает интернет-магазин Zappos за 850 миллионов долларов.

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Интернет-компания Amazon в среду, 22 июля, объявила о покупке онлайн-магазина Zappos.com за 850 миллионов долларов, сообщает AFP. Планируется, что сделка будет закрыта к концу 2009 года.

В обмен на 100 процентов акций онлайн-магазина, специализирующегося на продаже обуви и кожгалантереи, владельцы Zappos получат 10 процентов акций Amazon, оцениваемых в 807 миллионов долларов. Еще 40 миллионов наличными и акциями будут выплачены сотрудникам Zappos.

http://www.lenta.ru/news/2009/07/23/zappos/
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мне стало интересно, в чем успех Zappos? НЕмного погуглив, нашел интересную статью.

резюме: Zappos работают с клиентом "напрямую". и засчет возвращающихся клиентов и такой успех. они сделали ставку на customer service. людям нравится и они возвращаются, и рекомендуют друзьям.

The Secret of Zappos Success

Marketing Sherpa has a great article on the top 10 reasons why Zappos online shoes is one of the biggest success stories in online marketing.

If you boil the 10 reasons down, it's basically: relentless focus on customers.

I'm going to excerpt a bunch:

Lesson #1. Customer retention

Rather than putting the lion’s share of their marketing budget into advertising, Hsieh and his team have allocated an increasing amount of dollars into customer retention, including three key tactics:

Free overnight shipping
Free return shipping
24/7 fulfillment operations (including order processing and customer care)

Lesson #2. Beta-test new products

When they first started to create brand awareness, they bought mass ads, including expensive sports stadium signage. But the tactic didn’t create enough conversions to justify either the often inaccurate response forecast or the unspecific ROI analysis once the campaign ended.

Lesson #3. Maintain accurate inventory

Until four years ago, they used drop-shipping quite a bit and suffered from the fact that 80%-90% of the product being displayed on the Web site was currently in stock. The data feeds going from retailer-to-manufacturer-to-fulfillment produced regular glitches in the pipeline.

“That means 10%-20% of our customers were finding out a couple days later that their item was out of stock, and they’d be extremely upset, creating a lot of negative word of mouth,” Hsieh says. “Drop-shipped orders were producing 25% of our revenue, and we walked away from it because we knew it was important to be true to our brand.”

Lesson #4. Service and selection over price

Shortly after joining the company in 2000, Hsieh had his marketing team test discounts and ecoupons for six months. What they discovered was that these tactics attracted too many price-minded, one-time customers rather than brand loyalists.

“In terms of the three major areas -- service, selection and price -- you can really only offer two of them at the same time,” he says. “Our brand [niche] was in service and selection.”

Lesson #5. Centrally located fulfillment

In 2002, Hsieh moved their fulfillment operations to a Shepherdsville, KY, facility, creating more expeditious delivery, as the United Parcel Service’s largest domestic shipping hub was just 20 miles away. And, the new fulfillment spot fell within 600 miles of two-thirds of the nation’s population. The relocation was crucial in allowing them to trot out an ongoing free next-day shipping offer.

Lesson #6. Do it yourself

[They decided to stop using a lot of consultants for advice...]
“You have to avoid falling into the trap of a consultant telling you that, ‘If you spend a large amount of money with us, all of your problems will be solved, and you’ll never have to worry about this again.’ In the end, they are outsiders and do not understand your business as well as you do.”

Lesson #7. CRM: investment or expense?

When balancing the books, Hsieh once ledgered CRM/fulfillment costs in the “expense” column rather than as an “investment” -- where categories like marketing dollars were accounted. Now, he and his team view customer service as an investment.

Lesson #8 Positive word of mouth

While many marketers have increased their focus on seeded viral efforts, such as videos on YouTube and through guerilla blogging, getting the best word of mouth is by having excellent customer service. Hsieh says traditional WOM -- when followed up with service that exceeds expectations -- produces better lifetime value than many trendier marketing mediums.

Lesson #9. Don’t fret the competition

Hsieh says he doesn’t keep a close eye on what other online shoe retailers do. Unlike other retailers who worry about potentially competitive data getting around, he lets his distribution vendors see exactly what is selling at all times.

Lesson #10. Keep core values intact

When the company began to rapidly grow, Hsieh knew that brand identity -- so reliant on company reps at all points of contact -- might evolve into a runaway train. So, they created a list of 10 core values that would help determine whether to hire someone -- for call center reps, order packers, marketing director or CFO.

Here’s the list they’ve followed:

Deliver “wow” through service
Embrace and drive change
Create fun and a little weirdness
Be adventurous, creative and open-minded
Pursue growth and learning
Build open and honest relationships with communication
Build a positive team and family spirit
Do more with less
Be passionate and determined
Be humble

Zappos has a unified vision - and it permeates their success (they will likely sell $1B worth of shoes in 2008). For example, you can see why they can have a large affiliate program - they pay a lot for that first sale, but the affiliates are doing the hard work of acquiring new customers. Zappos doesn't pay the affiliates much for the return business, because the customers remember the brand and go back directly.
http://gotads.blogspot.com/2007/08/secr ... ccess.html
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если вы дочитали/дпросмотрели до этого места, интересно ваше мнение по этому вопросу.

надо ли прям так "облизывать" клиента и делать все чтобы купил что-то не один раз или сделать ставку на то, что посетителей много, хоть кто-то что-то купит?

еще интересная инфа про корпоративный дух в Zappos.

они готовы платить людям, чтобы те уволились.

про корпоративный дух. готовы платить чтобы отсеять сомневающихся.


It’s a hard job, answering phones and talking to customers for hours at a time. So when Zappos hires new employees, it provides a four-week training period that immerses them in the company’s strategy, culture, and obsession with customers. People get paid their full salary during this period.

After a week or so in this immersive experience, though, it’s time for what Zappos calls “The Offer.” The fast-growing company, which works hard to recruit people to join, says to its newest employees: “If you quit today, we will pay you for the amount of time you’ve worked, plus we will offer you a $1,000 bonus.” Zappos actually bribes its new employees to quit!

Why? Because if you’re willing to take the company up on the offer, you obviously don’t have the sense of commitment they are looking for. It’s hard to describe the level of energy in the Zappos culture—which means, by definition, it’s not for everybody. Zappos wants to learn if there’s a bad fit between what makes the organization tick and what makes individual employees tick—and it’s willing to pay to learn sooner rather than later. (About ten percent of new call-center employees take the money and run.)