Blog #237 I talked about the Couture site gets a facelift. In this blog I want to talk about Zappos acquires 6PM and Nike goes live

July 2007 Zappos acquired 6PM.com from eBags.com. eBags.com had launched 6PM in 2005 and the premise was to find 6 perfect matches of shoes/handbags for the customer.  It was the first acquisition for our company. While our focus at Zappos was customer service with features such as free overnight shipping and free return shipping, 6PM would focus on a different model so we decided to have two separate sites for that reason.

Zappos sponsors the Two Ten Footwear foundation for a second year in a row. We tried to get Nick to come out but he had a prior arrangement. The golf course was beautiful, and we had a great time golfing as well.

We had the annual Vendor Party at Tao this year. They dressed a very large Buddha with an equally large Zappos t-shirt, it was pretty amazing. I hung out with Pam and Jerry at the party since I was a single guy this time around. Everything was really cool, a lot of different activities for people to enjoy.

We were trying to enhance the outlet store experience by having the Directors team up and work with one of the three stores in Vegas. We were to help hire, train, and merchandise the stores. Pam and I got teamed up to help the Safari outlet store. We went down there together and assessed what needed to be done. We made a few suggestions and would follow up the next week to see progress.

October rolls around and we had a trip planned for the end of October and another one in December. Fred was trying to convince me to move there for 6 months but with my kid’s over here I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to see them every month as was might visitation rights and didn’t want to give up that precious time with them.  Before the trip though we had a fund raiser for the Juvenile Diabetes foundation. Basically Fred, Tony and Alfred volunteered to have pies thrown at them for a fee. It was an auction style bid so Jeanne and I tied for Fred’s pie. We each bid $40. I think I threw it too hard and it had a whap sound to it. All in fun though. They were good sports for doing it.

October 21^st we take a large team to China for a tour. Scott my travelling buddy and Meghan who was recently hired for the private label team, Charles of course, Chris B from performance, Jen S. from couture, Andy and Erica from kids and Amara from planning. We took them through the factories then had some fun in Hong Kong before we left for home. Behind Richards back I started planning for the December trip because he would be turning 60 this year. I talked to some factory owners to plan a big dinner in his honor. It would be a total surprise.

We get back and the flowing week Nike went live. It was a long time coming. We had been talking to them for 8 years in a row and finally they would be on the site. Sales were tremendous from the opening bell. We all went to Claim Jumper to celebrate.

We all headed out to NYC for the Ffany show and just like the last few years we set a record 4 million dollar day on November 6^th. The following days we broke that too with a few more records and a big 5 million dollar day the day before my birthday.

December 3, 2007         $4.42 million

December 5, 2007      $4.67 million

December 11, 2007    $4.71 million

December 17, 2007    $5.01 million

It was a great way to finish the year. One more trip to China and 2007 will be finished.