What Any Catalog Success Reader Should Learn From Zappos.com

Upon completing his presentation, one of the first questions Hsieh got was about how Zappos can afford free overnight shipping. He said that the company started out like most dot-coms in the late 1990s with expensive heavy media advertising.

“We started with ground delivery,” Hsieh said. “But we later decided to put more money toward customer experience than marketing. What we would’ve spent on marketing, that money goes into our free overnight shipping. We don’t just recklessly go out of our way to lose money; we spend our money as much as it makes sense. It’s another form of marketing, because we’re relying on that customer for word-of-mouth.”