Zappos is a company, founded in 1999, that sells shoes and clothes online.

It's the biggest online shoe store, acquired by Amazon last year for $1.2 Billion.

What's up with Zappos? Well, last week I stumbled upon an italian startup blog, called Volgere.

One of their posts was a review of the Zappos Culture Book.

I was somewhat interested in this book, so I read the post and I eventually got to the Zappos Book page, where I read I could get the book for free.

That surprised me, and I ordered it. Not that I really wanted to know about the Zappos culture (altought I have read a lot of good things about that), I was just curious if they were really going to send it to me.

Well, they did.

And they did it in a very special way, read on.

Last week I was also going to order a few english-language books (Rework by 37signals & Linchpin by Seth Godin). I tried Amazon.com, but their shipping prices were too high. Getting my books from America to Italy was going to cost me around 20$ for the "standard shipping" - that means I was going to have my books in 25 days.

I switched to Amazon.co.uk, and being in Europe they had a better shipping price and delivery times.

An express shipping from Amazon.com would have costed me around 35$, not really worth it.

What Zappos did, however, is incredible. Not only they sent me a book for free, but they sent it from America using express shipping: I ordered it on March 1st, and it arrived the 4th! 3 days later, unbelievable.

And, by the way, the book is great and inspiring.

Deliver WOW through service, they made it.