Blog #196 I talked about First WSA show with Zappos. In this blog I want to talk about Pam gets interviewed in San Francisco

In the last blog I mentioned Pam was going to come in  for an interview in our San Francisco office. She would be coming from Sacramento. I remembered fondly how she helped me as a kid’s buyer for Nordstrom. Between her and Gail they really helped me in my first official buy job.

Pam came into the office after driving from Sacramento. The way we interviewed people was we would each interview them and then meet as a group to discuss. She interviewed with Nick, Tony and Fred plus all the Buyers. Jerry even came with her but didn’t come into the office until people found out he was in town too. Bring Jerry in and have him say hi to everyone. It was like a mini reunion.

Everyone loved Pam so it was a no brainer. She was hired and was going to start in October. She would commute in with the group of Fred, Aaron and Eileen each day. They would start pretty early from Sacramento because Aaron and I would meet at the Crunch gym in the morning at 7:30. Jerry was hired later after the announcement I’ll discuss in Blog #198.

Kid’s launched in December and the site got an enhanced Kid’s page later in February. Pam brought on some big Kid’s brands like Stride Rite and Jumping Jacks proving once again how important brand relationships are. She had a very good reputation in the Kid’s world so  they trusted her on bringing the brands to a new internet site. Pam told Fred Stride Rite would legitimize our kid’s business.

Pam was pretty much solo for a while so Jerry helped her with all the orders she had to put together until we hired more people later in the year. Alesha  was the first Kid’s person we hired for Pam. Before Pam we just had the Heely’s brand which was super popular at the time. She rounded out the mix to create a Kid’s world which would eventually include clothing as well.

Galen was hired in December. He was pretty well known around the office being our Ecco rep. He previously worked in Men’s shoes at Nordstrom so he knew Fred pretty well too. Our team of six buyers was now 8.