• San Jose Mercury News, Wednesday, June 9, 2010 10:44 AM

Merc News columnist Chris O'Brien takes a look at a column that Zappos co-founder Tony Hsieh recently wrote for Inc. about why he sold the online shoe retailer -- which was built on the principle of putting employees and customers first -- to Amazon. His premise was that "better service would translate into lots of repeat customers, which would mean low marketing expenses, long-term profits and fast growth."

But Hsieh reveals in the Inc. piece that some members of his board, led by venture capitalists from Sequoia, didn't quite buy into the philosophy with the same enthusiasm. They were, as money people are wont to be, more interested in the bottom line and saw the company culture, Hsieh writes, "as a pet project -- 'Tony's social experiments,' they called it."

In a Brandweek piece headlined "Your Culture Is Your Brand," Hsieh lays out the 10 core values that Zappos embraced from "deliver 'wow' through service" to "be humble." It's important to "commit" to your core values, he says, "and by commit, we mean that you're willing to hire and fire based on them."

Both the Inc. and Brandweek columns are excerpted from Hsieh's book, Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose, which has garnered 89 overwhelmingly positive reviews on Amazon as of this morning despite an official publication date of just two days ago. The man obviously knows something about viral marketing.

Read the whole story at San Jose Mercury News »