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Zappos.com: These boots were made for e-commerce

17 Oct 2008

Among dreamy startups and salty e-commerce veterans alike, Zappos.com appears to be the golden grail - certainly one blessed, at least, with heavenly rewards. "Zappos is the Amazon of the shoe business, and its model is extremely difficult to mimic," Gene Alvarez, vice president of research at Gartner (and former employee of shoe-biz powerhouse, Nine West Group), told the E-Commerce Times.

While Zappos started as a shoe-specializing online retailer, and currently holds the title of world's largest, it stocks more than 3 million shoes, handbags, clothing items and accessories from more than 1,100 brands. Future plans include continued additions to the product offerings including electronics and cookware.

Critics damn Zappos to an early fate, claiming many of its competitors have long since added similar features to their shopping sites, such as multiple search options, 360-degree product views, and user comments and ratings. But these criticisms fall flat, as do copycats' aspirations, because these site comparisons barely scratch the surface of what makes the e-commerce giant shine.

"Zappos has built a dot-com model specifically for dot-com and have invested a great deal of time, money and effort into combining superior shoe business knowledge with a great supply chain, business process, and retail policy," says Alvarez. "Zappos is not immune to competition, but it certainly has set the bar extremely high."

Read the full article here.