Last mother’s day, we screwed up. Big time.

We had these brand new customizable photo bags we were gonna put up for sale. They looked beautiful, and you could upload any photo to have it baked into the fabric with heat. High quality finish, for $100+. It was perfect for moms, so we scrambled to get it up fast so our customers could order them for Mother’s day delivery (the bags take a couple weeks to create.)

We stayed up all night, but we got it done. And aside from a few early glitches, it worked! The orders came in, and people started writing in to tell us how excited they were to be getting a custom bag. It went on like this for a couple weeks before we found out. Almost a third of our orders had never gone into manufacturing. A technical glitch had prevented us from seeing them, and with a week left until M-Day, it was impossible to get to deliver on our customers’ promises. We were about to have a bunch of very angry customers (and moms!) on our hands. I didn’t know what to do.

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At DRY, our brand positioning and personality are everything — our personality is our brand and our brand is our offering. As such we talk A LOT about what we are and what we want to be. . . and, equally importantly, what we don’t want to be. We give our brand and our individual products personality profiles, and ask the questions: “If DRY was a person, who would we be?”, “What would we do?”, “What would motivate us?” We look at historical figures, celebrities and people on the street — “Is he DRY?” “What flavor is she?” And we talk about the personalities of other brand— “How are we different?”

So, what is the DRY personality? We’ve worked hard to create a brand that we believe meets the needs of today’s consumer, and as such, our brand personality is a direct reflection of our target’s desires for simplicity, individuality and versatility. The traits we associate with the DRY brand are: smart, sophisticated, simple, modern, unique, innovative and engaging. What DRY is not are: serious, elitist, playful, irreverent, folksy, aloof or average.

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There’s an age-old saying in the business world that “people buy from people”. The implication is that at the end of the day it’s the real human connection between two individuals that motivates a transaction.

As it turns out, the same is true in the world of microcredit. When Kiva.org first went live in March of 2005, it was an experiment to see if people in the developed world would be willing to loan money to low-income entrepreneurs clear across the globe – individuals they would never speak to or meet. We strove to build what human connection we could through profile pictures, background stories, and progress updates from the borrowers.

The experiment worked, and it worked in ways Matt and Jessica Flannery, Kiva’s founders, could never have imagined. Today Kiva has facilitated over $25M in loans in over 40 countries – and this success is in large part due to the relationships that are established between the lenders and borrowers. Microcredit is not charity; it’s empowerment and it’s a partnership, and there’s something incredibly tangible about living in Iowa and lending to a farmer in Afganistan through Kiva.org. As it turns out, “people loan to people”.

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1. Why was personality the theme that you chose to build your hotel brand around?

Because hospitality is mainly about one very important ingredient…Personality! When we originally started this hotel company, it was called Hotel Group of America. As the company grew and we continued to open more hotels, so many of our guests would comment on how much personality each property had. So, we took this feedback from our guests, and renamed the company Personality Hotels. And that’s very true - each of the properties definitely has its own unique style and personality so there’s always a perfect fit for each of our guests’ individual needs. I can’t meet all of my guests, but I do feel that I get to know a little bit about them just by the hotel where they choose to stay.

2. How did the idea to use the Personality Profile comment cards come around?

Six years ago I was brainstorming what kind of comment card would inspire my guests to fill out and give me their honest feedback. My older daughter, who was 10 years old at the time said “Make it like a paper doll that guests can fill in and make sure to give it a heart & mouth so it comes alive!” Don’t you just love kids and their honesty? and has it increased the number of comments you get overall? I can barely keep up with the number of cards that we receive from our guests! I especially love they ones that are decorated and become original pieces of Personality art. The cards really allow people to express their artistic side and have fun. Do people take theirs with them? No, they love turning them over to us. I post the most original ones in the corporate office to remind my staff why we’re in this profession. I also post them on PersonalityHotels.com for all the world to enjoy.

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Over the past 8 years, Zappos.com has grown very quickly. In 1999, the year the company was founded, we had almost no sales. Since then, our historical gross merchandise sales numbers have been:

2000: $ 1.6 million
2001: $ 8.6 million
2002: $ 32 million
2003: $ 70 million
2004: $184 million
2005: $370 million
2006: $597 million
2007: $840 million
2008: $1 billion (projected)

We’ve been asked by a lot of people how we’ve grown so quickly, and the answer is actually really simple. Our top priorities are company culture and customer service, which has resulted in repeat customers and word of mouth being the #1 driver of our growth. We believe that one of the most important ways for us to deliver “above and beyond” customer service is by letting the personality of our call center reps shine through. This means that, unlike most call centers, we don’t have scripts and we don’t measure call times. Each of our reps are are encouraged to let their individual personalities shine when talking with our customers, because we don’t want to come across as just another faceless company.

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