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Tag: best practice

zapposinsights.com – monetising the lessons of success

zapposinsights.com

Well well – this is a fun idea. Zappos, a US$ 1 billion etailer that’s done for shoes what Amazon did for books, has created a ‘club’ for the “Fortune One Million” group.

The club, c$40 a month membership, is a mix of video content, happy-clappy employee indoctrination videos and general bigging-up of the company culture. It’s all very ‘can do’ (and more importantly ‘have done’).

In addition there’re knowledge base articles, interviews with key staff and execs, and opportunities to post questions.

Although a little ‘American’ at times, it’s an interesting approach from a company that clearly believes in values of staff and customer engagement, delivering great service and in sharing insights. After all, it’s one thing to be given an insight, but an entirely more difficult thing to interpret and then implement the requirements of that insight.

Having worked for years in best practice publishing, training and indeed the structured, state-supported business development sector (with Business Link for London, formerly Europe’s largest enterprise support agency) this initiative is to be welcomed.

That they’re clearly going to monetise the One Million is simply an elegant example of that commercial spirit 😉

Please let me know your experiences if you join.

Google Retail Summit – moderating “Scaling and Managing the $1bn Online Business”

Retail Summit

Google UK have convenened an interesting and senior morning on etail and ecommerce. You can see the list of speakers at the website – quite a gathering.

I’m pleased to be moderating a session on “Scaling and Managing the $1bn Online Business”. I do this with some humility since the last ecommerce business I ran (while Group eCommerce Director at Littlewoods Shop Direct) was “only” £405million. The current £:$ rate is flattering of my efforts though – $800m sounds like a lot more – but failing a slump in the value of the dollar (!) I currently do not qualify for membership of the $1bn-club. Not yet, at least 😉

The panellist will include Bruce Fair (MD, Kelkoo), Matthew Hardcastle (MD, Shopping.com) and Peter Fitzgerald (Retail Industry Leader, Google UK).