Com | Zappos

In 1999, Nick Swinmurn founded ShoeSite.com (soon renamed Zappos after the Spanish word zapatos ). The early days were a classic "fake it till you make it" mirage. Without inventory or warehouse space, Swinmurn would walk into local shoe stores, take pictures of shoes, upload them to the website, and if someone bought them, he would run back to the store, buy them at full price, and mail them out.

They offered free shipping both ways for a full year, shifting all the risk of online shopping from the consumer to the company. zappos com

Hsieh realized that to survive, Zappos could not just be a site that sold shoes. He decided that Zappos would be a He instituted radical policies that baffled traditional retailers: In 1999, Nick Swinmurn founded ShoeSite