Freewheeling Numbers From High-Flying Zappos.com

Online shoe seller Zappos.com has been a runaway success in its first nine years of business. The company, which thrives on wowing customers with over-the-top customer service, also tends to wow people in the multichannel business with its open-book policy when it comes to inside company details. Below are some figures its Chairman/COO/CFO Alfred Lin revealed at a luncheon presentation during last week’s National Conference on Operations & Fulfillment in Orlando, Fla. When questioned by Catalog Success during his presentation whether the company was profitable, Lin said that after breaking even during its first six years, it did post profits in 2006 and ’07.