Blog # 222, I talked about Our first Quality Control tour. In this blog I want to talk about Back in Vegas for a hot minute.

I get back to Vegas and am extremely jet lagged. It’s a 15-hour flight and a time change to boot so it takes a toll for a good three days. I would usually take a Ambien when I would get home to help the sleeping pattern get back on track. This would cut the lag by a day.

The office was a buzz when I arrived the next day because we had the first “Bald or Blue event. It was a charity event that Zappos would donate to, based on people either shaving their head or dying their hair blue. I buzzed my hair with a level 1 clipper and dyed it blue as well. Fred would just dye his hair but tony would shave it completely. The dye was temporary btw. This became an annual event.

In the meantime, I had been staying with a guy named Nick who was in our IT department. He was a pretty laid-back guy with a heart of gold. We got along really well and I was grateful he let me stay with him until I found a home to purchase. He pretty much ate out most of the time but there were a few times I would BBQ’d some nice steaks for us.

I found a house pretty quickly through a referral by my favorite realtor I used in the Bay Area. It was in Henderson about 20 minutes from the office. It was a quiet neighborhood, and I bought the house before it was built so I had my choice on a lot of the stuff for the house. It would be ready in July right before my next trip. The kids were going to visit me for the first time after the divorce, so I decided to stay in a hotel for that weekend. It was a good time, and they were able to see the house as it was being built too.

Meanwhile back at Zappos, I get a call from Tom our Clarks rep. He was giving me a recommendation for Jeanne who he worked with at a local shoe store. “She used to work with Rob down in Southern California, she’s really good”. I give her a call and set up the interview with the rest of us in Merch. It went really well but she didn’t end up joining us until 2006.

Another FFANY show to go to beginning of June and while we were out there Galen becomes the Director for CLT (Our Customer Loyalty Team). An announcement is made that all employees going forward must go through CLT training for 5 weeks as well as warehouse training in Kentucky before they start their position. Everyone currently in the company had to also go through this training.

The CLT course walked us through all the systems we needed to know to answer the phones properly. The bulk of it was how to handle different situations and then navigate through them actually answering with a CLT shadow to help out. The last week you were on your own and armed with a flag in case you needed help. The flag was my friend…I went through the training with Richard, so it was nice to do that together. Tony, Alfred and Fred also participated in the training.

I get a call from Joe at Titan. He was involved with the Two Ten foundation that helps people in the Shoe industry. They have many wonderful programs to help people in need which I have seen first-hand. He wanted us to sponsor a golf tournament in Southern California. It would benefit Two Ten so I asked Fred if we could do this. He thought it was a great idea, so we put it together signing up different brands to participate. Fred, Matt and I, as well as a close Vendor went down to participate.  It was successful which inspired our Zappos “Zalloween” event for years to come. With that event which I’ll go into more detail in a future blog, let’s just say we “Zappafied” it.