BACE Blog

Highlights from Vegas/ CES 2010 trip :: Day 1

January 13, 2010 by Mel Lim | business, conferences | 0 Comments

I love ZAPPOS!
While many of us were excited about CES, I was excited about my Zappos tour.

Funny, how when it comes to anything related to shoes, no gadgets in the world can distract me (besides Apple of course!) But since Apple was not at CES this year or the last, I felt free to roam around outside of the super geek fest CES, Consumer Electronics Show.

Yes. I am one of the many geeks that found this CES show quite overwhelming but under-delivered. At least to me. I am sure many of you have read the highlights of the show from these great news sources: Cnet or CNN Tech. Hence my goal is to just share my own personal views and less of the products stuff.

Joe on the other hand, will have different insights than me, since he attended the Full Knowledge Track sessions at CES. He will have more hot notes to share, which we will on our next post.

Arrival:

Our first stop was a tour at Zappos:
I had read about this unique tour while reading an article about Tony Hsieh on Inc. magazine. Then peers of mine were giddy about their Zappos Insights courses. I could not afford the Insights, but I’d figured I could do a tour.

The whole process was just amazing. Firstly, I emailed them to inquire about the tour. In a few hours, Pam Cinko emailed back and asked if we needed a ride/ shuttle. I forwarded Pam our flight info but MGM Vacations kept making changes to our flights. The peeps at Zappos had no problems at all accommodating our crazy travel changes. They were keen on getting us there. When we arrived, we were picked up by the infamous Zappos van. We arrived at the HQ, they stored our bags, greeted us with bottled water and off we went.

The tour was about an hour, and we were given the history of Zappos, from how they run their fulfillment factory in Kentucky to handling customers at their call centers. We visited each of the merchandising departments and were encouraged to ask any questions personal or work related…it didn’t matter. Whatever happens in Zappos, stays in Zappos. Which led me to announcing through the loud speaker my True Confessions of the Day at Zappos: “Mel Lim is lactose intolerant, had cheese and is real gassy.” Yup! It was that honest, raw and uncensored. I’d figured heck, why not.

On the left: Pam Cinko our tour guide and me. On the right: Mel posing in the middle of Zappos HQ.

But as crazy as this place sounds, Zappos is a multi-million dollar business that has survived the dot com bust and has grown to almost a billion dollars in annual sales. (For those of you who are unaware, Amazon has acquired Zappos for somewhere between $850 and $925 million despite of the the recession)

So just because you see their office desks filled with candys, tchotchkes, hello kitties, and outfitted to look like a jungle enclosure, it’s a great, successful business, which many people may envy, hate or admire. I have nothing but pure admiration!

On the left: You can see COO Alfred Lin and Fred Mossler. On the right: Mel treated like a Queen at Zappos.

Our tour ended back at the main lobby, where it’s stocked with all great business books that Tony reads. Visitors are free to take/borrow. We were then dropped off at our hotel and that’s how we started our Vegas trip!