ZAPPOS IS ADVERTISING ON TV?

[DISCLAIMER: I have Tivo, so they may have been advertising for quite a while. I just saw it during Top Chef. Where my favorite chef, Jenn from coco500, got kicked off! Coco500 is like my office away from home so I'm highly loyal. But I digress...]

Back to Zappos: Um.....what year is this? If you want to feel like it's 1999, read this About Us page.

I thought we'd proven by now that TV advertising is not a cost effective way to build an
online brand. Particularly one that's been around for a zillion years and shouldn't need it. Why when the rest of the world is getting disenchanted with TV ads does a dot com jump on the bandwagon??? That's like a blogger suddenly craving newsprint.

I was always a bit dubious about Zappos despite the Sequoia-induced hype. They're one of those weird dotcom-web 2.0 sandwich companies that are good enough for a "nice business" and maybe even a great VC exit, but don't seem to really get it. They just haven't evolved along with the Web, if you know what I mean. (OPEN TABLE DO YOU HEAR ME???? You are NOT a Web 2.0 company. You are a software business with a Web interface. But that's a subject for a future post.)

I mean, a world of shoes online? Great. But browsing and the experience is a huge problem. Even the CEO admits it here. I don't think the new interface is much better, and the strategy to become the Amazon.com of apparel seems it will only clutter it up more.

This is not shopping for a book. People like to try shoes on. I got my husband some shoes on Zappos a few years ago. I knew exactly what I wanted to get him, and didn't have time to go from mall store to mall store, so I figured it was great case for Zappos. TOO SMALL! They hurt his feet. Not enough to deal with the hassle of shipping them back, but enough that they sit in the closet and enough that I decided shoe shopping was possibly the only category of ecommerce not for me. (And, if you could check my tab at Intermix, you'd know that's saying something.)

According to their site Zappos is nearing $1 billion in sales. No idea how profitable they are, but they don't seem to be a very lean company. Still, I have no doubt Zappos will be a good exit for their investors (ahem, nine years after they were funded?) But I'd never buy the stock. At best it's a Netflix. An incremental step toward progress in shoe shopping, but hardly a great, scaling, defensible business. And, to me, resorting to spamming Bravo with TV ads makes that somewhat desparate point more pronounced.