More from ZAPPOS!

Hey Sarah -

You left out of the video us actually taking the shot together :)

Anyway, re: your question on environmental impact, yes making returns easy increases shipping and returning significantly. I don't have the actual numbers, but I would bet that shipping shoes back and forth has less environmental impact than driving a car to and from the mall...

Tony: I didn't cut it my producer did!! thanks again for a great interview!

s

"I don't have the actual numbers, but I would bet that shipping shoes back and forth has less environmental impact than driving a car to and from the mall..."

Encouraging mass returns via overnight post is extremely wasteful and I think his response is a bit naive.

If my Mall was half-way across the country, then Tony might have a point. But it is not..

Math: 10,000 people drive 30-60 miles to buy shoes from Mall. Or 10,000 people get shoes sent via overnight post half way across the country, and then half send them back.

Zappo's warehouse in LV to:

LA= 200 mi,

KC= 1,300 mi,

NY= 2,200 mi

Then multiply those numbers by 2 or 3.

Or one could drive the 30 or so miles to and from the mall.

The numbers are obvious. No?

Maybe Zappo's could create a printable PDF so consumers can measure their foot size for each brand? Maybe that would help cut down on the multiple shipping? And Zappo's, if they don't already, could offset that carbon by planting some trees, etc?

FYI - There are a couple of inaccuracies I wanted to point out:

- Returns are done via ground, not overnight.

- Our warehouse is centrally located in KY, not LV. The reason it's there is to be closer to more of the US population.

Again, I haven't done the actual calculations, but I was just trying to say that shipping a 3 pound box back to our warehouse probably costs less in shipping than driving a 3000 pound car 30-60 miles.

The other thing to keep in mind is that the shoes had to get to the mall somehow... they didn't magically appear there, so there are additional shipping costs there. For chains, this usually means shipping to a central warehouse and then reshipping from there to the individual retail stores across the country.

So to answer your question, I don't think the numbers are obvious - there are a lot of different things to take into account.

We've experimented before with PDF printouts but have found that customer reviews are more effective on cutting down on returns so we've focused more on that.