Okay, this is going to be my last post around cultures in Europe, I promise (fingers crossed behind my back just in case).
Tech Crunch UK Europe (sorry Mike) has a post up about Spartoo.com raising 12M Euros today, calling the company the “Zappos of Europe”, sure Zappos and Spartoo both sell shoes, have an s and a p in their name, but I’m not sure if Spartoo could really classify as a Zappos.
Here’s why, Zappos has a phenomenal culture and has bread a cult like following with it’s customers and partners. I’m neither of these and they still sent me a Zappos culture book for 2010 where every employee has written a paragraph or more about Zappos culture. Zappos will return your purchase and will make it a pretty good experience. I personally don’t know if Spartoo does this well – anyone?
I don’t believe that Zappos bottom line was the reason they were purchased, I believe Amazon wanted to learn and leverage the Zappos attitude to it’s customers and employees and it’s approach to social media. I think Zappos will teach Amazon a lot about customer service, and Amazon will teach Zappos a lot about costs and distribution.
The real learning might even be on international operations, and if that’s the case and Amazon helps bring Zappos to Europe and the rest of the world, I wouldn’t want to be Spartoo.
