Zappos is excited to continue its commitment to cleaner highways by renewing its partnership with Adopt A Highway for the ninth year.  When Zappos moved to Las Vegas in 2005, we were only able to sponsor three miles of highway. But every year since then, we’ve been able to adopt more miles with Adopt a Highway. Now in 2013, Zappos sponsors 158 miles of highway in the Las Vegas valley and we’re on the waiting list for 20 more miles! We are excited to say we’re the second largest sponsor of highway cleanup in the nation!

Adopt a Highway crews clean the right shoulders of these sponsored highways up to two times a month. In 2012, 9,300 bags of garbage were collected along the roadsides, equaling roughly 40 tons of waste. We don’t even want to imagine how things would be without this amazing program! Needless to say, we’re proud to continue our support of keeping Nevada’s highways clean.

Photos courtesy of Adopt a Highway

WOW! Zappos’ culture is unparalleled. I’m still trying to take everything in while finding my place in the HR dynamic, yet I feel like I’ve been here forever. It’s a strange sense of belonging you only get after years of dedicated relationship building at a “normal” company.

On the first day of work, our trainer Kelly knew all of our names and the individuals in the class soon became a close-knit group. As we finished on-boarding and started in our respective departments, it was bittersweet not seeing my new friends all the time. However, it didn’t take long before I was fully immersed in my department and now I cannot imagine myself working anywhere else. Where else do you receive a Shakeweight™ on the first day??

Now I’m sure you are jealous and wondering “What department gives their employees amazing Shakeweights?” Well, I am the first HR intern! During the course of the next 11 weeks I will rotate through each department, starting with the P.E.A.C.E. team. Each day is filled with wish-granting adventures, decorating and event planning.

My overarching project is to pitch two charities for the fall season representing men’s and women’s cancer advocacy and resources. On the surface, the team looks fun and spirited—although this is true, working on this team showed me the hard work and dedication the team puts forth in making the best events possible for Zapponians. The biggest challenge I am currently facing is balancing the projects I am working on and all the fun activities going on in the company. For instance, I am working on developing a visual for the employees of the office to see the progress Zapponians are making in raising money for a charity project. But I’m getting distracted with things like blog posts, decorating desks, throwing Jolly Ranchers at people and sitting in on meetings. Zappos has a crazy way of making life easier and yet more challenging at the same time.

Challenge accepted!

--Michelle V.

The One and Only HR Intern

I'm in a bit of a dilemma as I write this post because we were asked to keep these blog posts brief, but we were also asked to discuss the Zappos culture, and if my two weeks here has taught me anything, it's that those are conflicting requests. Why, you ask? Because the culture is unlike that of any other company I have encountered. In our culture class yesterday–a course taken by new hires here at Zappos, we were asked to write a single word to describe the culture. My first reaction to this request was disappointment, because I knew that of all of the words in the dictionary, any single one would not be able to do the culture justice. I considered inventing a word; something like "AwesomeFunWelcomingJoytastic" may have worked, but in the spirit of the exercise, I set out to find a word that exists in real life.

Imagine a work environment where you feel like you are getting to know the people that you work with, and not just their drone-like at-work counterparts. That's Zappos, which is why the word I chose to describe the culture is "ORGANIC". Not only because the employees are encouraged to bring their personality, quirks and all, to work, but also because the culture itself evolved organically from the bottom-up. Since getting to Zappos, I have been trying to figure out how they managed to scale the start-up feel to a company of more than 5000 employees, but the answer is simple; it all comes from the employees being themselves, not being forced to conform to their environment, but rather allowing, and helping their environment to conform to them.

After onboarding last week, everyone was excited to branch off and see what they would be doing with their respective teams. I'm on the Zeta team for the summer here at Zappos. I'll spare you the details of the multi-page, diagramificated email that my superhero, Patrick sent me, but simply put, my team manages tons of code that keeps the website's gears in motion. Because continuing to write in paragraph form is frustrating me, I'll leave you with a list of totally awesome things I have experienced in my short two weeks here that I don't think I would have experienced at any other company:

1. The other tech interns and I had lunch with the CTO, Arun Rajan yesterday.

2. I have been encouraged, on multiple occasions to stop everything I am doing and play a game of Zing Zong–a super intense game that can only be described as a hybrid of ping pong, volleyball, and soccer (or fútbol, if that's your thing).

3. Every so often, in the middle of working, music begins to play and the search team, Patrick and I do push-ups.

4. As I was writing this post, Tony, the intern on the search team, turned on a laser machine he brought from home causing everyone to leap up in excitement telling him he can never turn it off.

5. We already experienced one of Tony Hsieh's legendary email messages that he talks about in Delivering Happiness.

6. Because I indicated that I like Swedish fish on a personality survey, I had 8 bags of Swedish fish waiting for me at my desk on my first day.

7. Last but not least....this:

Until next time,

-Luke

It's been a little over a year since we first announced our plans to relocate downtown. In a somewhat complicated deal, we announced a year ago that we were partnering with Resort Gaming Group (RGG). RGG will purchase the current Las Vegas City Hall and act as our landlord, and we will be leasing our future office space (City Hall) from RGG

Recently we passed a major milestone towards our goal of being in our new home by late 2013, and we're issuing a joint press release today announcing it. The press release is below.

The short version is that we've finalized the terms of the lease with RGG and are moving forward, full steam ahead, to collaboratively design our new campus with input from all of you as well as our new downtown community. Look for more details about our new campus in early 2012!

If you have any questions or need help locating a lost unicorn (newborns are smaller than sea monkeys, so can be easily misplaced), please let me know!

Thanks,

-Tony

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RESORT GAMING GROUP, ZAPPOS FINALIZE LEASE TERMS FOR CITY HALL

LAS VEGAS, NV --- Representatives of Resort Gaming Group (RGG) and Zappos.com, Inc. (Zappos) announce today the finalization of terms on the lease agreement for the existing Las Vegas City Hall in downtown Las Vegas.  The City Hall building and surrounding property is planned to become the corporate headquarters for the Zappos Family of Companies in 2013. In November 2010, RGG announced plans to purchase Las Vegas City Hall to lease the site to Zappos. The 2010 agreement between RGG and Zappos allowed for 16 months to finalize lease terms. The negotiations were completed in 12 months, four months ahead of the deadline.

The lease execution is contingent upon passage of a modification to RGG’s development agreement with the city of Las Vegas.  The modifications to the agreement are necessary to conform to legal points in the lease between Zappos and City Hall LLC, a Donner company managed by RGG. The modifications are not monetary and do not result in increased risk to the city.  The amendment to the development agreement is expected to be on the January 18 city council agenda.

“Finalization of lease terms with Zappos is a significant step in bringing to fruition a pivotal transaction for the redevelopment of downtown Las Vegas,” said Andrew Donner, owner and founder of RGG. “My partners and I are humbled to be a part of something so special and are excited about the future of our great city.”

Ranked the #6 Best Place to Work in America by Fortune Magazine, the Zappos Family of Companies intends to relocate its corporate headquarters to the current Las Vegas City Hall site in late 2013, after completing building renovations. Zappos’ plans for the site include adapting the site to accommodate up to 2,000 employees. 

About Zappos.com

Established in 1999, Zappos.com, operated by Zappos Development, has quickly become the leading destination in online apparel and footwear sales by striving to provide shoppers with the best possible service and selection.  The Zappos Family generates gross merchandise sales exceeding $1 billion annually. Zappos.com currently showcases millions of products from over 1000 clothing and shoe brands. Zappos.com, Inc. was recognized in 2009, 2010 and 2011 by FORTUNE MAGAZINE as one of the "100 BEST COMPANIES TO WORK FOR". Zappos.com is also proud to be rated ELITE by STELLAService and was named a J.D. Power 2011 Customer Service Champion, one of only 40 companies so named in the U.S. More information about the customer service philosophy, unique culture, and job openings can be found at http://about.zappos.com. More information about Zappos Insights and its business membership program can be found at http://www.zapposinsights.com.  

About Resort Gaming Group

Resort Gaming Group is a Las Vegas, Nevada-based hospitality management and development company founded in 2002 and wholly-owned by Andrew Donner. Currently, RGG provides management and consulting services to full service restaurants, casino gaming operations and taverns. RGG is currently focused on building up its development arm, Urban Development Group, to accelerate the development of other downtown Las Vegas projects.