Company Profile Of Nick Swinmurn Company - 1372 Words

Nick Swinmurn founded Zappos in 1999 after he had spent a day shopping for shoes in San Francisco. After browsing online, Swinmurn chose to quit his job and start a shoe website that offered the best service and best selection. The website was originally called ShoeSite.com and it started as a middleman, transferring orders between suppliers and customers but not holding any inventory (a â€Å"drop ship† strategy). The website was eventually renamed Zappos, in reference to the Spanish word for shoes (zapatos). In 2000, entrepreneur Tony Hsieh was chosen as the company’s CEO. At 26 years old he was an early investor in Zappos, already making $265 million by selling his startup company to Microsoft in 1998. Tony wasn’t initially sold on the concept of an Internet shoe store. He notified Inc. magazine, â€Å"It sounded like the poster child of bad Internet ideas†¦but I got sucked in.† After Tony became CEO he made an unconventional decision to continue operating Zappos, even selling his San Francisco loft to afford a new warehouse and once making his salary at just $24. Zappos didn’t do well for its first few years, making sales but not producing a profit. The dot†com crash made Zappos lay off half its staff, but the company eventually recovered. By the end of 2002, Zappos generated sales of $32 million but still was not profitable. In 2003, the company decided that it had to control the whole value chain in order to offer the best customer service. They made the whole value chain fromShow MoreRelatedZappos Case Study1378 Words   |  6 Pagescould have imagined it would become. Nick Swinmurn founded Shoesite.com in 1998 and later changed its name to Zapp os in 1999; during that year Tony Hsieh came on board as an investor and then became co-CEO in 2001 along with Swinmurn, who eventually left the company after a while (Warrick, Milliman, and Ferguson, 2016). Swinmurn preferred to keep a low profile and Hsieh is very public, which is why most believe that Hsieh is the founder of Zappos. Like most companies Zappos was not an overnight successRead MoreZappos Case Study1578 Words   |  7 PagesZappos is an online retail company that started in 1999 with one goal of aiming to list the various locations of footwear in a centralized online location for buyers to have easy access of product browsing and purchasing. Gradually, the company moved into selling items themselves, starting with shoes and later with the expansion and incorporation of other items. Today, they are known as one of the biggest online retailers and they are most distinguished from their competitors based on their reputationRead MoreIntegrating Culture and Diversity in Decision Making Essay1138 Words   |  5 PagesIntegrating Culture and Diversity in Decision Making: The CEO and Organizational Culture Profile BUS 520 - Dr. Joy Lee Story August 3, 2013 1. Provide a brief (1 paragraph) description of the organization you chose to research. Zappos was founded in 1999 during the dotcom boom by Nick Swinmurn [ (Twitchell, 2009) ] on a quest to buy a pair of sneakers at a local mall. It has grown in to a 1.2 billion dollar subsidiary of Amazon.com and a leading on-line provider of everything from shoes