Chinese Guys Sell Shoes In The US Shop For Over $Eight Hundred Million A Year.

In the United States, the online shoe store opened by a Chinese kid is known as a household name. Its sales in 2007 exceeded 800 million dollars, accounting for 1/4 of the total value of the US footwear network market of 3 billion dollars. It is known as the "Amazon selling shoes".

The Chinese boy named Xie Jiahua, who opened his online shoe store, was called "Zappos".

　　哈佛大學的天才少年

As a founder of Zappos, Xie Jiahua, 33, is currently the chief executive of the Internet marketing empire.

His parents moved from Taiwan to America in the early years and gave birth to Xie Jiahua in Illinois.

Xie Jiahua is the eldest son of his family. He showed great superiority from his childhood. His talent was intelligent and his thinking was agile. This provided his congenital condition for the creation of network marketing empire.

Xie Jiahua's childhood was smooth sailing.

He grew up in San Francisco and was admitted to Harvard University for computer science. At the age of 19, he got his diploma and became a famous figure in the student circle.

During his study at Harvard, Xie Jiahua kept improving professionally, won the champion of computer competition many times, and opened a pizza shop in his spare time.

In spite of his usual business, he accumulated the first business experience in his life.

　　小程序員締造大公司

At the age of 21, Xie Jiahua gave up the hard won opportunity to read and became an ordinary programmer.

This is a pity for friends and relatives.

Xie Jiahua used his unique vision and excellent achievements to dispel all doubts of his relatives and friends. LinkExchange, the small online advertising company he founded, developed into a large company with 200 employees in only two years.

In 1998, LinkExchange committed $265 million to Microsoft, and Xie Jiahua dug into the first pot of gold to provide sufficient financial support for the creation of Internet marketing empire.

In 1999, by chance, Xie Jiahua became acquainted with Nick, more young and more enterpriser than himself.

After a long talk, SW proposed an idea: selling shoes online.

According to swell knows, the market size of online shopping is 40 billion dollars, only mail order to reach 2 billion dollars, to be a network shoe store, revenue exceeds the mail - order business is not a problem.

Xie Jiahua suddenly began to fill the roof and quickly injected $1 million into Swaim's online shoe sales company ShoeSite.

Since then, ShoeSite has been renamed Zappos.

6 months later, Xie Jiahua and Swaim jointly operated Zappos, and soon invested an additional $10 million.

In 2000, Xie Jiahua became chief executive of Zappos company.

　　硬功夫和軟功夫扭轉乾坤

Surprisingly, Zappos did not win the battle, but started badly.

When Zappos was opened, no one was interested in it. When it was difficult to get the order, there was a failure to fulfill every 10 orders, either wrong goods or shoes out of stock.

Zappos has been unable to make ends meet and is always at risk of bankruptcy.

However, Xie Jiahua did not let Zappos go bankrupt, but let the young company grow into a network marketing empire step by step.

In this process, Xie Jiahua has done "hard work".

In order to facilitate customers to choose shoes of different styles and colors, Zappos took photos of every shoe in stock from 8 different angles.

In the warehouse of Kentucky, Zappos has 1 million 300 thousand pairs of shoes of 58 thousand styles. The task of photographing is extremely arduous, but Zappos is finished.

In order to ensure timely delivery, Zappos installed his home near the airport of UPS, where the warehouse was operated for 24 hours.

Zappos not only makes customers satisfied, but also makes them overjoyed. The company promises to deliver within 4 days, but in most cases, customers can get the goods within second days.

Then, Xie Jiahua took out the "soft skills" of the housekeeping: free return.

This does not sound new, but at the end of the 90s, online shoe stores could not do much of this because shoes were not like the books sold by Amazon, and customers easily bought the wrong ones.

The job is really difficult. The key is that customers feel that the shoes they buy are not appropriate. How can they be changed to the right ones at once?

On the one hand, we should ease the irritability of customers, and on the other hand, control the cost of goods replacement.

At this point, Xie Jiahua's computer talent came in handy.

Through a set of software, he designed an e-mail system for Zappos, which can automatically reply to customers' e-mail requests for replacement.

In operation, Zappos promises customers, if shoes are not fit, delivery and return are free of freight.

To this end, Zappos paid $one hundred million in freight costs.

Although the return rate is as high as 1/4, the average amount of each order is US $90, which still leaves enough profit margin for Zappos. After deducting the cost of delivery and return, the gross profit can still reach 35%.

Customer satisfaction and loyalty have finally achieved Zappos, and its sales have increased by leaps and bounds in the past 7 years.

At present, 60% of Zappos's 5 million customers are "repeat customers", and 25% are constantly introducing new friends to buy shoes.

Zappos's popularity attracted $15 million of venture capital, and Zappos soon added new products, such as sunglasses and leather bags.

In 2007, Zappos's first direct selling store opened in Las Vegas, Garth.

The goal of Zappos is to achieve annual sales of US $1 billion by 2010.

(source: competitiveness magazine, author: Tan Moxiao)

　　相關報道

　　Zappos“鼓勵”新員工辭職

Zappos has a unique way of finding suitable employees.

Zappos has mastered the skills of telephone service, or even "art", which is still a blank for most online sellers.

Zappos displays free phone numbers on every page of the website. Its call center witty and smart operator can create a relaxed shopping atmosphere for customers.

The operator's job is very hard, and a customer's phone call may take a few hours.

The call center of Zappos will provide a 4 week training after recruiting new employees, so that new employees can immerse themselves in the company's strategy, culture and dedication to customers.

A week after the start of training, it was time for Zappos to call it "bid".

The person in charge of the company will say to the new employee: "if you quit today, we will pay the full salary according to your working time, and you can also offer a bonus of 1000 dollars."

About 10% of new employees choose to take money away.

On the face of it, Zappos's approach is somewhat unthinkable, but it is quite meaningful to think it over.

For new employees, if they are willing to accept the company's offer, they do not have the dedication that the company needs.

Zappos, by spending money on encouraging new employees to resign, recognised the company's values and the suitability of each new employee as early as possible.