Zappos Buying Team 2003

My Journey in the Footwear Industry that lead me to Zappos #189

Blog #188 I talked about how Size and width brands is my focus. In this blog I want to talk about the Zappos Buying Team 2003

So at the time of my hiring we had 6 Buyers in Merchandising me included in that number. As I mentioned in the last blog my focus was developing the Size & Width category. We didn’t have portfolios broken out this way yet , it basically was close to that with exceptions depending on who you knew in the industry.

I had 60 brands to manage ranging from Juniors to Salon by the Nordstrom standards. I even had some Men’s brands mixed in because we didn’t separate Men’s out being a small portion of the business overall. With me coming on board we mixed up a few things to get closer to a category type thing but not exclusively.

Aaron

Aaron basically had the number one portfolio. Dr. Martens was huge at the time and he previously worked there so had a strong business going with them. My goal was to beat his volume but wouldn’t happen right away. He gave me a few of his brands including Born which was a fun brand to buy. I was really proud how Aaron had evolved over the years and now running a big area for Zappos. He was a good coach on getting me up to speed and still fun to hang out with.

Eileen

Eileen’s focus was fashion brands so she was more than happy to give me brands that didn’t fall into that category. I was equally happy to take brands she wasn’t wild about as I saw it as an opportunity. When Eileen worked with me in Arden Fair you may remember her moving over to the Women’s/Salon floor as she was more passionate about that product. This was equally her passion at Zappos.

The big question for me this week was I wanted to order Chinese food for lunch next week and it wasn’t part of her “food group”. I wonder if I could just get her a burger somewhere and get everyone else Chinese food?

Jon/Matt

Jon was our Skate buyer. He was really passionate about growing that business and had a few athletic brands outside of the Skate world as well. He was friends with Nick our founder before Zappos was founded. Matt was also his friend and was involved with a lot of…