Alfred Lin just wants to give customers the best experience possible, no matter what the company is selling.

It's a goal he's accomplished by cultivating a decidedly un-corporate corporate culture.

"We wanted to create an environment in a big business where people are passionate about the vision of the company from the CEO to entry-level employees on up," he said. "We want to make it the last job people ever have."

Lin, chief operating officer, chief financial officer and chairman of online retailer Zappos.com, headlined Speaker Lunch on Thursday, a monthly gathering of mid-valley entrepreneurs.

Under Lin's direction, Zap

pos.com has gone from a small company with the goal of selling shoes on the Internet to the top shoe seller on the Web in fewer than 10 years, with its sights set on making $1 billion in gross merchandise sales this year.

Lin later spoke on the Oregon State University campus, sponsored by OSU's College of Business as part of the Dean's Distinguished Lecture Series.

Culture's been on Lin's mind since before Zappos, however. He and company CEO Tony Hsieh started LinkExchange, an online ad network, which they sold to Microsoft for $265 million.

"We started hiring people with all the right technical skills, but the focus became all about growing the business and maximizing profit," he said. "We decided if that was the case and it wasn't any fun to go into work in the morning, it'd be best to sell the company and move on."

The company even publishes a "culture book" every year, a must-read for new employees and available to the public, featuring employee and vendor testimonials and core values like "deliver wow through service," and "build open and honest relationships with communication."

Zappos puts new hires through six rounds of interviews to find people who buy into the company culture. Then everyone, from entry-level call center workers to top executives, learns how to pack, process and ship incoming orders.

If the fit isn't just right, Zappos offers new hires $2,000 to quit.

"My research tells me that a bad employee costs the company 21 times their annual salary," he said. "For people who turn it down, it makes them that much more committed to the company."

Lin said that because the goal is focusing the brand on customers, it doesn't matter if Zappos sells shoes, handbags and electronics or roundtrip tickets.

"One day, as my CEO says, which really scares me, we may run an airline and make it all about service," he said. "I keep pointing out that in the long run, the airline industry has never made anyone any money."

Yet.

Matt Neznanski can be reached at 758-9518 or matt.neznanski@lee.net.