At Zappos, we take “Creating Fun and a Little Weirdness” very seriously, my friends. Let me tell you about one man and his way down this path.



We know him as EL IT for he works in our Information Technology department. He strolls between both buildings bringing good cheer and swift problem resolution to all who need him…and they are many! But EL IT is not alone, he works with 3 others – Josue del permanente malo, Stacey la boca de furia and Justin el caballote. None of them have fun costumes so you do not see them here.

It was Winter when he was born, in Southern California so you know how harsh that is. And it was also Winter here in Vegas de Las when he became EL IT. It was a day of epiphany – an unfortunate slip in the men’s room, a cranial commode collision you see – then darkness and stars. But upon awakening, EL IT was born.

His guitar is named El Sancho – it came to him in a vision. It is also the name of a famous Taquería in Distrito Federal, near the bus terminal. He has but one golden pink guitar pick – it belonged to his father, and his father’s father before that. The guitar was given to him by the man in black. His favorite food is Tosada de pulpo. Yes, pulpo – in English you call it octopus. EL IT sings many different songs but his favorite is La saca-punte del amour (the pencil sharpener of love for you gringos)

And that my friends is the story of EL IT. I must go, there is cold fried chicken in the lunch room.

I work in the Product Information Department at Zappos. The role of this department is sometimes misunderstood. The reality of our role is so varied and that makes it difficult to describe.

Where it concerns product, we sort of have our hands in a little bit of everything. In the buying and merchandising phase, we research and learn about the products being purchased by the buyers for sale on our site. Merchandisers have meetings with various vendors that we attend, and we often accompany them to trade shows to see the new lines of merchandise.

We then work with merchandising in loading our software systems with all the products that they wanna buy. One important step here is the loading of product UPCs into our system which are usually provided by the vendors and transmitted to us in different ways, from electronically to faxed! Fast forward a bit, to once the items are shipped by land, sea, and air (mostly by boat) and received by our warehouse, and have been photographed, it's up to us to write their descriptions and do a final check to ensure everything looks good for the customer. After this sequence, that can take 6 months or more, below is what you get! This is a shoe description I wrote today and approved to go 'live' - rsvp pump.

Now that’s an oversimplification because there’s a few other things we have our hand in and some things you might not expect. Because we’re‘product people’ it falls on us to address the multitude of issues that pop up with the almost 3 million products we sell. Issues range from product questions customers have that can’t immediately be answered.

Also our great warehouse team may have questions for us concerning shoes that were damaged in shipping that require some resolution, or boxes that came in without labels.
And the merchandising team itself may have special requests to have product photographed a certain way or to communicate with the warehouse that they need to prepare for receiving everything from jewelry to MP3 players! So it’s up to us to relay a lot of these questions and requests. We go through hundreds of E-mails in a day!

But that’s not all. We help Zappos and our thousand-plus brands communicate via Electronic Data Interchange (EDI – electronic transmission of purchase orders, and invoices). We help Accounting and Merchandising enter information into certain SAP (a German based business software and consulting company) programs as a way to manage our various databases.

We also help in training employees on our various programs since we use them so much and know them well. We even help make those customer reviews go ‘live’. Right now we are becoming more involved in doing our part to optimize the way Zappos is searched for on search engines like Google. And there are yet more duties we have taken on.

Safe to say, if the task or issue involves a product we sell, it will invariably involve one or more of our 50 team members.

I've never personally been one of those butterflies-in-the-stomach, cuddle-loving, super mushy romantic types. I've had great loves, to be sure, but some aspects of love have always been beyond my comprehension. For example- having never experienced it first hand, I've always viewed such concepts as "love at first sight" with a somewhat skeptical eye.

Not to mention, I'm a creature of habit. It's not that I'm afraid to try new things, I'm just stubborn in my tastes and don't often venture outside of my box. Basic observation of the world around me, and the people therein, has lead me to the belief that when it comes to fashion, I'm a far cry from the minority in that respect. I know the brands I like, and tend to loyally stand by their side through thick and thin.

Although I don't think these are inherently bad traits, they're not exactly things to brag about. I've been working on the self improvement section of my brain. I'm trying to open myself up to new and exciting possibilities on all fronts, and working at Zappos has certainly helped in that regard (see Core Values 2, Embrace and Drive Change, 4, Be Adventurous, Creative and Open-Minded, and 5, Pursue Growth and Learning). Since Zappos.com carries so many brands (1,175 and growing!), we will occasionally have brand representatives come in to familiarize us with their products- supplying information about any new merchandise, new styles, new avenues into which they may be venturing.

Yesterday, I met our Camper representative. Admittedly, I didn't know too much about the brand going into the meeting, so I wasn't sure what to expect.

How do I explain what I saw, what I experienced? I'm still trying to process it, to be honest. They say a picture is worth a thousand words...



I never thought I'd say it, but it was love at first sight. I fell hard and I fell fast. It was my first time experiencing the sentiment, and I wasn't sure how to respond... and with Camper the hits just kept on coming.



It was unnerving at first, but it didn't take long for me to give in to the wanton, uncontrollable, fantastic, wonderful, all-consuming enthusiasm that filled my heart. And it took even less time for my favorites page to grow exponentially.

What I've come to realize is that although loyalty and caution are certainly valuable sentiments, it is worthwhile on occasion to break out of routine and try new things. Have you looked through our brands list lately? You may be surprised by how quickly the love bug can come up and bite you!

Yesterday was book fair day at Zappos, wherein half of our cafeteria was transformed into a small book shop. It really brought some of us developers back to the days of elementary school where such events were not uncommon. Perhaps this feeling was strongest of all for Shane, who discovered a gem of a book entitled High School Musical : All About Dancing.

Part story book and part instructional dance manual, nobody had seen anything quite like it before. It's true that one can get away with a great many things by saying "It's for my daughter", but I happen to know for a fact that Shane is a man who loves to dance! As soon as the recess bell sounded, Shane grabbed Becky and the two started cutting a rug- with director of development Brent calling out dance moves from the book. I was pretty surprised, but the three of them managed to pull off a pretty good show for not having had any rehearsals!

Incidentally, 10% of Shane's book purchase (and all of the other books sold that day) will be donated to the Nevada Childhood Cancer Foundation. Thanks to Suchi for the great action shot!