Sven Moen, Founder Of The Zappos: From The Conductor To The CEO

< p > according to foreign media reports, many people may think that Zappos CEO Xie Jiahua (Tony Hsieh) founded the largest footwear retailer in the United States.

But this is not the case.

It is Nick Svenmon (Nick Swinmurn), an obscure entrepreneur, who really put forward the idea of entrepreneurship and persuaded him to invest.

After Amazon bought Zappos for $1 billion 200 million, he will be fully rewarded for his desire to achieve self-worth.

The following is his life story.

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< p > Nick Svenmon was born in England and moved to the United States with his parents at the age of 7.

His father is an engineer in a company and has worked in the company for 30 years, and his mother is a teacher.

They didn't know where his interest in business came from, but his parents encouraged him to do business.

When he was at University, his parents offered to sign a lease agreement to help him open a salad, but the owner of the house wanted him to pay 35 thousand dollars in equipment debt, so he refused the agreement.

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P. He majored in film studies at University of California at Santa Barbara and graduated in 1995, but he didn't know what he wanted to do.

So he went to the San Bernardino Stampede baseball team for a $12 thousand annual ticket sales job and then went to San Diego Padres to do the same job.

A year later, he thought the job had no future and moved back to the bay area.

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P, who tried to start a leisure sports league, responded to the online recruitment service Autoweb's recruitment advertisement, which is only one year older than the founder and chief executive of the company.

In 1997, everyone was excited about the emergence of the Internet.

I voluntarily provide all the materials to help those who do not learn how to do things themselves.

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11 months later, he left the company and founded 4students.com, a student portal that helps users send e-mail and shopping to other students. P

Studentadvantage.com wanted to hire him and rename the website into his name, but he decided that the student's affairs were not in line with what he could do, so he shut down the website directly.

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P, one day, he was looking for a pair of Airwalk desert Airwalk in the mall, but he didn't find it.

So he thought, why not open an online shoe store? He went to Footwear Etc. of Sunnyvale in California and said, "I want to take some photos and put your shoes on the Internet. If someone buys them, I will buy them from your full price."

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< p > the shop agreed that he had received several orders.

Then he went to a shoe show and thought he should put the huge shoe collection on the Internet.

He found a job of earning money from Silicon Graphics contractor and began to raise funds for the Shoesite.com company he founded.

He borrowed money from friends, Silicon Graphics colleagues and even masseuses.

When he raised 150 thousand dollars, I quit my job as Silicon Graphics and hired a few friends to help him.

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In P, 1999, they always entered stores, took pictures and sold shoes online.

That autumn, some competitors began to emerge. They thought Shoesite was not very conspicuous as a brand.

Zapatos is the meaning of shoes in Spanish, so they add a p letter to Zappos.

They want to create something interesting and different.

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< p > he met with about 10 wind companies.

Every venture is looking for the next important Internet business, but he has not made any progress.

They said no one would buy shoes if they didn't try them on.

In addition, they need people who have experience in footwear business to persuade brands to cooperate with them.

So one day, he called Nordstrom in San Francisco and asked to negotiate with the man shoe buyer.

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Fred Mossler (Fred Mossler) agreed with him. Moss felt that the online business might have an opportunity, but Nick Svenmon had to wait for Nick Svenmon to raise more money to make a commitment.

But in raising money, Nick Svenmon gained nothing and was refused. Then his lawyer, Art Schneiderman, said that he knew Venture Frogs who might invest.

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< p > so Nick Svenmon met Xie Jiahua, who had just sold his company (LinkExchange, Microsoft bought in 1998 for $295 million), so he had a lot of ideas.

Nick Svenmon told him that in 1998, the size of the shoe market in the United States reached 40 billion dollars, and only 5% of shoes were sold by mail order.

Therefore, before the advent of the Internet, 1/20 shoes were sold through mail order.

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Two days later, Xie Jiahua and his partner Alfred Lin (P Alfred) drew up an agreement, and Fred joined in, and they began to do business.

They initially invested $500 thousand.

At the beginning, Nick Svenmon paid $30 thousand a year for himself, and all decisions were made by him.

When Xie Jiahua came, he gave a lot of help in technology.

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< p > 2001, the 2 of them became joint CEO and merged Venture Frog personnel into Zappos. Finally, Xie Jiahua invested $15 million in the company.

In San Francisco, he has 11 apartments, and he sells these properties continuously for Zappos's operation.

It was a hard journey, and they felt it might go bankrupt.

In 2002, Draper Richards (Draper Richards) invested $250 thousand to buy the convertible bonds of the company.

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After P, a year later, they wanted to get their money back, so Xie Jiahua had to sell an apartment and pay back the money.

In 2003, they were close to breakeven and began to grow rapidly.

Sales in that year amounted to $70 million, up to $184 million in 2004 and $370 million in 2005.

But they still need to borrow money to buy goods.

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< p > they encountered huge inventory problems because their selling method was to buy all the shoes.

Many times buyers have brand representatives to place orders in the system. They think brand representatives know what best to sell.

But then left a lot of inventory.

Although the company has become famous, if banks reduce their credit lines or suppliers want to pay the money quickly, they will go bankrupt.

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In 2006, P achieved sales of $597 million, but its profit margin was 1% or 2%.

Everything depends on capital.

When they were looking for a new round of financing in 2004, Nick Svenmon, founder of CEO/ and Xie Jiahua, who was in charge of finance, said, "CEO should be a financial decision-maker. Why are you not the CEO? I am the chairman / founder, so investors will know that you are in charge of the business."

He has never put himself in the first place.

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In 2004, they moved the company to nearby Henderson (Nevada City, San Francisco), because their call center couldn't go on. In P, because of the cost of living, it was hard to find people who had done customer service work.

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In 2006, he was tired of P. He wanted to open another small company and decided to leave.

He left with all his shares and retained ownership of the company, and no one bought his shares.

He started Stagr, an Online Custom T-Shirt Design Company.

They immediately signed an agreement with Madonna to get the right to use her album cover, so that people could print it on the T-shirt.

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< p > this business is very successful, so they signed with Fei Ji (Fergie), Oz Osborn (Ozzy Osbourne) and others, but they didn't sell well.

He guessed that Madonna's fans were just fooling.

So a year later, he closed the company.

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The failure of P failed him. It took him a year to slow down.

But as Amazon bought Zappos in 2009 for $1 billion 200 million, he realized that something could be done and some things could not be done.

After Stagr, he met a man who manages Sanda players. So he decided to start Dethrone, a clothing brand that caters to the ultimate fighting fans.

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< p > Dethrone will not become one of the biggest brands in the world.

This is his personal hobby project with his brother Dan.

Sales are about $1 million 300 thousand a year and are close to profitability.

The interesting part of the story is to think creatively and implement this idea.

Now he will not take himself too seriously, nor will he be afraid of failure.

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< p > his suggestion < /p >.

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< p > respond to customer needs: if a customer calls to buy a pair of special shoes and we do not, we should search and send links to him and tell him where he can buy them.

We offer free shipping rates, including round-trip freight rates to respond to the question "if not suitable for what to do?" the problem is < /p >

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< p > do not let others restrict what you do: when I work for San Bernardino Stampede, they tell me that it will take years of hard work to get the baseball team.

I ignored them, applied for it myself, and was immediately employed by San Diego Padres.

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< p > don't be too self: everyone in Zappos thinks he is equal, and everyone works for the same goal.

I call myself CEO only because this is my title.

You must establish partnerships with anyone, because this is a team.

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