The fundamentals of the economy are strong: People can't even buy shoes, Zappos.com laying off 8%

[Bluebear]

Zappos.com, the online shoe company, held a “surprise” company meeting Thursday to notify its workers of layoffs, a source told the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Rumors have circulated throughout Zappos.com offices in Henderson for the past week or two that sales are flat or declining and layoffs were coming, the source said.

“Today has been a tough, emotional day for everyone at Zappos,” Chief Executive Officer Tony Hsieh wrote Thursday in a memo to Zappos employees. About 8 percent of the workforce will be laid off and and it will affect almost every single department at Zappos, the memo said. Zappos is also looking at closing some brick-and-mortar outlet stores in Nevada and Kentucky.

http://www.lvrj.com/news/breaking_news/34099499.html

[AllieB]

1. I used to keep them in business.

:o

They also used to have better prices on the more expensive shoes, but that's not true anymore.

I haven't had the extra cash to buy shoes in a while, and apparently there are many folks in the same boat as me.

[Dora]

2. I blame it on mismanagement first, the economy second.

I quit buying shoes there a year and a half ago because I couldn't find decent shoes at decent prices any longer. Their inventory became focused on high-dollar, high-fashion shoes. Zappos, which had once been my favored shoe store, began to SUCK.

People NEED shoes, it's a fact of life. If Zappos can't sell the shoes, it's a sign that they're not doing their job right - either they're not selling the right shoes, or they're not selling them the right way.