Delivering Happiness

Halloween Toast
On October 31, at 11:59 
PM
Pacific Time, after months of waiting for
regulatory approval, the deal with Amazon officially closed. The total value
of the transaction for Zappos shareholders was over $1.2 billion, based on
Amazon’s closing stock price the day before.
I happened to be in New Delhi, India, at the time. Alfred, Fred, and I
had scheduled a conference call together to commemorate the event. In
Zappos tradition, we had planned to take a shot of Grey Goose vodka
together over the phone.
“What should we toast to?” Alfred asked.
For some reason, the first thing that came to my mind was Buzz
Lightyear from the movie Toy Story.
“To infinity and beyond!” I said.
We all toasted. It was official. Zappos and Amazon were married. We
could finally start working together to combine our respective strengths of
art and science, of high-touch and high-tech.
We were excited about the possibilities of what was yet to come.
We were excited about what we were about to build together.
The future was waiting for us.
No matter what your past has been, you have
a spotless future.
—A
UTHOR UNKNOWN

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In January 2010, Zappos moved up 8 slots and was ranked
number 15 in Fortune magazine’s annual “Best Companies to Work
For” list.

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7
End Game
Delivering Happiness
So far, this book has been about me, about Zappos, and about some of the
lessons we’ve learned along the way.
So far, you’ve been a passive reader.
As we near the final pages of this book, I’d like to ask you to actively
participate and think about the answer to this question:
“What is your goal in life?”
When I ask different people this question, I get a lot of different
answers. Some people say they want to start a company. Other people say
they want to find a boyfriend or girlfriend. Others say they want to get
healthy.
Whatever your response is, I’d like you to think about your answer to
the follow-up question:
“Why?”
Depending on what they said before, people might say they want to
retire early, or find a soulmate, or run faster.
Again, whatever your response to the previous question was, I’d like
you to ask yourself:
“Why?”
The next set of answers people give might be so they can spend more
time with their family, or get married, or run a marathon.
What’s interesting is that if you keep asking yourself “Why?” enough
times, you’ll find yourself arriving at the same answer that most people do

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when they repeatedly ask themselves why they are doing what they are
doing: They believe that whatever they are pursuing in life will ultimately
make them happier.
In the end, it turns out that we’re all taking different paths in pursuit of
the same goal: happiness.
In 2007, I started getting interested in learning more about the science of
happiness. I learned that it was a relatively new research field known as
positive psychology. Prior to 1998, almost all psychology was about trying
to figure out how to get people who had something wrong with them more
normal. But most psychologists and researchers never bothered to examine
what would make normal people happier.
I started reading more and more books and articles about the science of
happiness including Happiness Hypothesis and Happier. Initially, it was
just a side hobby and interest of mine that had nothing to do with Zappos.
And then one day, it hit me. It had everything to do with Zappos. (In
retrospect, it seems so obvious, but it took me over a year to figure this out.)
We’ve always had customers tell us that they think of the experience of
opening up a Zappos shipment as “Happiness in a Box.” Whether it’s the
happiness that customers feel when they receive the perfect pair of shoes or
the perfect outfit, or the happiness that customers feel from our surprise

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upgrades to overnight shipping or when they talk to someone on our
Customer Loyalty Team, or the happiness that employees feel from being