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Sun, 28 May 2006
Zappos.com

Longtime readers will know that shopping for clothing usually results in a blog post...

Yesterday I took Abigail to the mall to buy a bicycle. As part of the deal she agreed to go shoe shopping with me, since both types of shopping required a trip off island. While traipsing up and down the rows of the shoe store, she asked me "Why do you need a new pair of shoes? Did you outgrow yours?". A bystander looked up from his own shopping and remarked "That's a good question". Which it was. We stopped and I explained to her that once you reach a certain age, your feet stop growing and you actually start to wear out your shoes (and shirts, and pants). Then I pulled off one of my Nevados (I actually didn't even know what brand the shoes were until today), and showed her how the back of the shoe was ripping out. We then resumed the frustrating experience of looking at shoes that either I didn't like or which were not in stock in my size.

When we got home, I started Googling for a few of the brands of shoes that I liked, which itself started turning into a frustrating experience. Nevados, for example, has no corporate web presence that I could find, and I ended up at shoes.com. Julie wandered in and said "I have a site for you": Zappos.com. No only could I search for shoes by brand and style, I could search by size, which is a huge timesaver because I am at the bottom of the shoe size distribution. I was starting to feel better. Then I learned that Zappos had free shipping and will enclose a prepaid UPS/USPS return label in case I didn't like the shoes. The hassle of shipping (and worse, return shipping) was why I hadn't even bothered to try buying shoes on line. It took (another) frustrating shopping edition for me to wind up at Zappos. While I enjoyed the time that Abigail and I spent shopping and talking, I'm probably never going to darken the door of a shoe store again.

[17:12] | [misc] | # | TB | F | G | 3 Comments | Other blogs commenting on this post
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Ted Leung FOAF Explorer

I work at the Open Source Applications Foundation (OSAF).
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