Service Over the years, the number one driver of our growth at Zappos has been repeat customers and word of mouth. Our philosophy has been to take most of the money we would have spent on paid advertising and invest it into customer service and the customer experience instead, letting our customers do the marketing for us through word of mouth.

A great brand is a story that never stops unfolding.

Zappos is a customer service company that just happens to sell shoes.

Hopefully 10 years from now people won't even realize we started out selling shoes. They will just think about Zappos as a place to get the best customer service.

Most innovation comes from outside your industry applied to your own

I view my role more as trying to set up an environment where the personalities, creativity and individuality of all the different employees come out and can shine.

Business is all about learning to balance the short-term, medium-term and long-term and I think it's when things are going well it covers up a lot of mistakes and bad decisions because you're growing so quickly.