Zappos’s CEO on Going to Extremes for Customers

by Tony Hsieh

Tony Hsieh is the CEO of Zappos and the author of Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose (Business Plus, 2010), from which portions of this article have been adapted.

The Idea

In search of high-caliber employees to staff its call center, Zappos relocated the entire company from San Francisco to Las Vegas in 2004. Here’s why the move made sense.

In the 11 years since Zappos was founded, we’ve had to make some big decisions. One of the most significant came in early 2004, over lunch at Chevys, a chain Mexican restaurant in San Francisco. We hadn’t expected to make a life-changing choice over a plate of fajitas, but when you’re part of a fast-growing company, ...

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