[ad_1]
Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh is stepping down after 21 years at the helm.
Kedar Deshpande, the company’s COO, has assumed the role of CEO, according to an internal email obtained by FN.
“I reach out to share that Tony has decided to retire as CEO of Zappos. We would like to thank Tony for his 20 years of working on behalf of Zappos customers and employees and we wish him well in his next chapter, ”Deshpande wrote in the email. “Starting today, I will assume the role of CEO and work to make this transition a seamless one. As always, we strive to win over customers and the 10 core values that drive us every day. “
Hsieh, a tech visionary, built one of the most innovative and successful concepts in modern history, sold it to Amazon in 2009, and continued to develop it far beyond shoes.
“Much of our growth and innovation going forward will be based on thinking about what we do differently,” Hsieh told FN last year, when Zappos celebrated its 20th anniversary. “We used to say that we are a service company that just happens to be selling shoes, and now it has become: We’re a service company that just happens to be selling virgins.”
It’s been more than two decades since entrepreneur Nick Swinmurn hung on to the idea of selling shoes online and left a voicemail with Hsieh’s San Francisco venture capital fund Venture Frogs hooking him up. to a factoid: “It was the fact that 5% of a $ 40 billion shoe business was already done by mail order,” Swinmurn told FN in an interview in 2009.
Then, after another call to the Nordstrom department store in downtown San Francisco, shopper Fred Mossler jumped on board and the trio got to work. In those early years, Hsieh and his team focused on creating a unique corporate culture – and were pioneers in free delivery and returns, long before e-commerce took off in the rest. Of the industry.
Tony Hsieh (center), CEO of Zappos, and his team.
CREDIT: SHAYAN ASGHARNIA
In 2009, Zappos was acquired by online giant Amazon.com Inc. for 10 million shares of Amazon, which at the time of closing was worth around $ 1.2 billion.
While many market watchers celebrated the union, they also speculated that the new parent company could impose its own culture on the new division. But true to the original agreement, Zappos continued to operate separately from Amazon, retaining its own leadership team and uniqueness. (The only area of overlap is execution, as Amazon took over warehouse operations from Zappos in 2012.)
After several years of partnering with Amazon, Hsieh launched The Downtown Project, an initiative to revitalize downtown Las Vegas.
The goal, Hsieh explained at the 2013 FN CEO Summit, was to create a neighborhood that is walkable and community-focused. The Downtown Project is even investing in individuals, helping them realize their dream of starting small businesses. “We see the city as a startup,” he said. “We want it to be the anti-Strip – with bars and cafes.”
In 2015, the company eliminated managers in favor of a form of self-organization called holacracy.
In a blog post at the time, Hsieh wrote, “Like all of the bold steps we’ve taken in the past, it’s a little scary, but it’s also exactly the sort of thing that only a company like Zappos would dare to attempt at this scale.
Tony Hsieh in 2009
CREDIT: FN Archives.
Since its inception, Zappos has functioned as a sort of incubator to test theories about corporate culture and productivity – long before those ideas became the buzzwords they are today. Much of the credit goes to Hsieh.
Burned out from the experience with his first company, Hsieh used Zappos as a platform to advocate for connectivity and employee relations, and looked for ways to bring happiness to the workplace. – With the contribution of Jennie Bell
This is a developing story. Come back to find out more.
[ad_2]
Source link