2005 comes to an end and another China trip

My Journey in the Footwear Industry that lead me to Zappos #230

Blog # 229 I talked about Meanwhile back in Las Vegas then off again. In this blog I want to talk about 2005 comes to an end and another China trip.

So 2005 was a crazy year for me. I ended a 20 year marriage and traveled all over the world extensively. I went to Italy, Germany, and China. Plus throw in 4 Ffany trips to NYC and 2 Vegas shows as well. I did get to take my son James to China which was a good experience for him to see other countries and cultures.

Zappos was recognized by Inc. 500 magazine as the 23rd fastest growing private companies. There was a nice write up about our company and crazy culture which was cool to see in print. On top of that, Footwear news awarded Zappos the E-Tailer of the year award while we were all in NYC for Ffany. We recorded another record day while we were there by breaking 2 million dollars in a single day. We did the usually Irish Pub celebration with countless beers and shots and regretted it all the next day at Fred’s 7am breakfast meeting. “You have to answer the bell” Fred would say, which is tattooed in my mind forever. Good times though.

January and the new year comes around and we left for China on the 4th. Tommy was going with us this time to help develop our men’s business. He had an amazing flair for fashion and I was excited to bring him with us. He is Jon’s brother and just a great guy. I really enjoyed him being on the team and adding a men’s fashion take for us.

While I was in the Fashion area, we used to buy the brands Men’s & Women’s with one sales plan. I suggested we break it out by gender to see if it would increase business. My thought was, if you focus on Men’s separately instead of mixed in with Women’s you would have better results.

I thought the people with Men’s background would support this idea, but they thought I was crazy. “We are a women’s site primarily “I would hear. I did it anyways and our Men’s business had 50–60% increases that year.

I wanted to continue this thought process for our private label area as well. We went to several factories that specialized in men’s product and Tommy’s eye was definitely helpful. With…