Blog #197 I talked about when about when Pam gets interviewed in San Francisco. In this blog I want to talk about when Zappos moves Headquarters to Las Vegas in 2004.

Zappos announces on January 7^th, 2004, that the headquarters would be moving to Las Vegas to expand the call center. A few different states were considered including Colorado, Kentucky, Texas but Nevada had the best of both worlds. We could expand our call center employees and the cost of living was such, people could afford housing as well. Plus, there was the entertainment factor.

The first initial group would move in April to the new location at 500 Warm Springs, Las Vegas. A secondary group could work out of the San Francisco satellite office for another year. I was part of the secondary group. I was trying to figure out my marriage at the time so had to do some soul searching. We were going through counselling, and I wanted to make sure everything was good before I uprooted our kids away from their friends.

There were quite a few of us in the Satellite office. Most of the Private Label team was staying, Pam and a bunch of people from assorted departments. We had 12 months to figure out what we wanted to do.

We were getting ready for the shoe shows in February. There was the FFANY show usually the first of the month and the WSA show middle to end of the month. My friend Terry, previously with Nickels, called me to say Sam Edelman was launching his Sam Edelman line and would be debuted at the show. Sam had so many great lines in the past most notably Sam & Libby that I was excited to see what he was up to.

We had tickets to Billy Crystal and a company dinner the end of the week. During the show I ran into a lot of my old friends and caught up with everyone. I go to the Sam Edelman booth and meet Terry there. The line looked amazing so I decided to bring them on to the site. I also was able to negotiate extended sizes in Franco Sarto at the show. My Naturalizer business was growing too so the previous experience certainly helped in making this a top ten brand for the company.

We launched Handbags in February and our Rockport rep Michelle joined Zappos to be the buyer. We reached 153 employees and launched two new categories in Kid’s and now Handbags. Things were changing every month and it was an exciting time for sure

Nick our founder & Gabby decide to tie the knot in Hawaii and invite a bunch of us to celebrate. I asked Stuart Weitzman to make up a shoe for the bride which was nice of them. They were married in Turtle Bay resort, Hawaii. We all had such a great time in typical Zappos fashion. Aaron and I hung out together with both of our wives too. We all got a shot glass as a souvenir which I still have today.