Last night the B shift photo department had a going away party for our beloved Jeremy I. and Travis A.

Luckily, Zappos is not losing these fine boys completely, but our shift will have some big shoes to fill now.

Jeremy has been working at with us in the photo department for around 11 months. He has been an asset to the apparel department during his 9 months on B-shift Photo. Next week he is transferring to A-shift Photo!

Travis, has been working at Zappos for almost a year. He has been working as a very helpful photo assistant in the apparel studio for the past 3 months on B-shift Photo. He will be venturing back out to the FC as a C-shift Receiving team member.

One of our apparel photographers, Abby, had an opportunity to ask them a few questions during the party:

Q: What are you going to miss the most about B-shift photo?

Jeremy: I am going to miss pranking A-shift with the annoy-a-tron. Since I will be on A-shift, I won't be able to play pranks on them with the annoy-a-tron, but I will miss working with the B-shift crew, and 11 o'clock trivia!

Travis: I will miss everyone's sense of humor and inside jokes with random people!

Q: Are you excited about your new position?

Jeremy: I'm nervous about waking up so early, but excited to have my nights free!

Travis: Yes! It presents me with new opportunities to better myself.

Q: Tell me a memory from working in B-shift photo.

Jeremy: Winning the annual photo Beard Off! (After 12 weeks Jeremy won the beard off and donated his winnings to Dreams with Wings.)

Travis: The going away party with great food, especially the awesome queso and dirty rice!

Q: Do you have any parting words of advice as you venture onto your life outside of B-shift photo?

Jeremy: In the words of our old pal Joe C. "Liquor before beer never fear. Beer before liquor never sicker."

Travis: Make sure when you are in the LS, (the apparel studio) everything is straight, steamed, and ironed or there will be heck to pay, HECK I TELL YOU!!

GOOD LUCK GUYS WE"LL MISS YOU!!

Just about every month, the photo and imaging teams try to go out and do something in public! Most recently we all went to Cherokee Park for a little cookout. We brought our spouses, friends, children and puppies for some fresh air, food, and even a few different ball games for the real adventurous folks. If you weren't there you missed out, it was perfect weather. Good times for good people!!

Here is a group shot of us who came with our furry friends:

from left to right:

andi with zeus, myself with danger, maggie with penelope, and kaya with lola.

So a group us from the KY Content team decided to participate in a weight loss competition of sorts. We call Fat Loss '08. Fat Loss 08 is whole other blog in itself that we will be posting in a couple of weeks, but this story would have never happened if it wasn't for Fat Loss '08.

In the first week, Jon, (I know Jon is the star of our department) had lost 5 pounds! He lost 5 pounds, by not exercising, counting calories, or drinking shakes. Instead, he ate like 15 Popsicles a day. He ate a few other things as well, but nothing you would consider a diet item. Then he constantly insisted it was good for you. Not the sugar-free kind either. He does NOT like the sugar-free, hands down!

Lisa, another senior in the Images department, found the perfect shirt for Jon. A couple of us pitched in and got him the polar garden tee shirt. (a garden of popsicles) The best thing about doing this for him is he never would and didn't expect it. That also makes it the best part, because he thought it was another trick waiting to happen, as we handed him the brown package. He totally deserved it, because we do give him a lot of trouble at times. Putting him on the spot and embarrassing him all the time. Yay Jon! Keep it up with your funny ways.

Thursday at 3:30pm we all walked into the training room, which had been transformed into an awesome art show! Some rad people in the photo department put together our second Creative Services Art Gala. Some team members in our KY Content team put in their art masteries for all of us to see. I was truly amazed by everyone's talent. There was so much more than just photography and paintings. People also displayed sculptures, drawings, mixed media, and even fashion! They also provided delicious snacks for us. Sparkling grape juice, meats, cheeses, crackers, and desserts! The desserts ranged from chocolate covered strawberries to pineapple cake. We love food.

Quite a few people from the photo department put in their work. We did however, have one person from our very own images team submit work. I know, it's sad we didn't all participate, and we're lame.. losers.. L7 weenies..I know. We are our own worst critics, and we don't think our work is great, yadda.. yadda... except for Erin Ryan (our supervisor). Her piece was amazing and she does awesome work. Way to go Errrin! Her piece is a painting of sorts. She's been writing poems since she was little and thought she would give life to them by taking actual tangible things from the poems and putting them on canvas and using her favorite art medium, Liquitex Gloss Medium and Varnish. This particular piece titled, "The Woman," is based on a poem she wrote about a 1920's prostitute. She used almost all vintage pieces to construct a collage of sorts to give life to the poem. For example a few vintage portraits, a handkerchief, jewelry, and a powder case are just a few of the items that represented the life that this fictional character endured. This is just one of a series of these types of "paintings." We look forward to seeing more of Erin's work in the future and maybe work from the rest of us as well...yes.. ?

Here is Erin's work and a video of us walking around and looking at art!


Artsy We Are! -Posted May 2nd 2008

If your in the Kentucky warehouse anytime between now and May 9th, you should stop by.


Thanks to everyone who put this show together, it looked great! I cant wait until next year!

Here's Erika (in front of very tall Fred) and Rena forming the front of our symbolic bridge. The smaller but equally important faces in the back are Terry, Dave, Valencia, Andrea and Latrira, the program committee contact.

Being able to handle the rapid growth at Zappos but still preserve our close, “small company” culture is a constant challenge. Another promising step that has just been taken today is the new Bridge the Gap program. Basically people can apply with a brief essay to participate in an overview program of either the Merchandising or newly renamed Content groups. The plan is to eventually have all the departments offering overview programs that give people from other areas a strong sense of what that group does. This not only helps our culture but it also gives a big picture perspective on how Zappos runs and how actions by other groups can keep things in sync vs disarray.

At today’s kickoff event in the lunch room, there were reps of the program explaining the details and also offering “decorate your own” cupcakes. Naturally I showed up soon (but how often?) and made a rather peculiar cupcake. And there was a spectacular closing event – there was a cup cake eating contest with the surviving cakelets. Graham has the video of this “neck to neck” frosting packed contest! Over to you Graham!

Derby is a fun time of year for Kentucky. We have a lot of festivals that start a few weeks before the big day in May. My favorite festival event that has started in the last year is the Happytail Hour! Metro Animal Services (MAS) hosts HappyTail Hour, which is the only "pet inclusive" cocktail event. This event allows people to bring their pets along to have a bite to eat, some good drinks and to socialize. It provides a fun opportunity for the pet loving community to come together to listen to the music, mingle, play games with their dogs and hang out at Waterfront Park. They also have S.P.O.T. (Stop Pet Overpopulation Today), which is MAS's 34-foot mobile adoption unit on hand with adoptable animals! It was great seeing MAS reaching out to the community in this way to help awesome dogs find great, loving homes. I hope many people have a new addition to their family today.

A group of us went out there Monday night, and the weather was really chilly and rainy. Despite the weather, there were a few pet owners who came out anyway to support Metro Animal Services. I'm sure if the weather would have been better, there would have been much more of a turnout. I brought my two dogs, Charley and Molly. Charley is still a puppy at 9 months old, and it was her first time out in public with other dogs! She did very well, and I learned she's afraid to walk over the bridges at the Waterfront park! We had to carry her each time. They had Frisbee games and treats for all of the doggies. There was also a band jamming out some live music.

We walked around and visited other dogs and the Chow Wagon. If you don't know what the Chow Wagon is, I think you're missing out! Everyone should visit this delight if you get a chance at Derby time! Basically it's a lot of booths that serve all kinds of carnival food... All kinds! Corn dogs, BBQ, cotton candy, funnel cakes, frozen custards, frozen lemonade, and so much more! Yummy!

Anyways, back to the dogs! So we walked back to the car all cold and wet, dried the dogs and left. Soon as we pull out of the parking garage, the sun came out, bright as it could be! That was a bummer, but, at least we had a nice drive home! On the way home we passed a couple of the Gallopalooza horse statues that are all over Louisville. I took a picture of one for you! Happy Derby everyone!

There has been a pretty big change here at Zappos.com. What was once known as Product Information, Photo and Imaging has now officially made the change to the Content Team. It makes sense when you look at the inner workings of the site.

Here’s a quick breakdown of what each area is responsible for:

Product Information (PI) is in charge of all product descriptions on the site. Yes sir, that means every piece of leather, canvas, nubuck or tweed that is on the site must be described by Product Information first. PI is also in charge of creating the brand “about text” which gives the customers a quick rundown of the brand history and what they bring to the table. PI reads every single customer review as well. No simple feat might I add. There is so much more, but Ash touched on that stuff in his past blog here.

The Photo and Imaging teams in Kentucky and Las Vegas have also fallen under the Content Team umbrella. Photo is in charge of all of the product shots that we have on the site. They make sure the customer gets a good idea, visually, of what they are getting. After Photo takes the pictures, the Imaging team makes sure the pictures are in the right places and that the blue you see is blue and the pewter you see is pewter. How many of you guys would order something with out seeing it? It’s important that we all work hand-in-hand, since I would never buy anything without being able to read about it either.

That’s just the quick nuts and bolts of it all. In short, say hello to the Zappos.com Content Team.

LV Content Team

Look out for the KY Content Team coming soon!