I've always known Zappos was located in the Las Vegas area -- and given that my husband and I were planning to visit Vegas in mid-January for a college reunion, I quickly looked up whether tours were available for Zappos HQ!
Luckily - they were, and I booked 2 tour tickets about 1 month in advance of our trip to Las Vegas. The process for booking the Zappos company tour is very quick, efficient, and self-explanatory on their website.
On the day of our tour (ours happened to be at 9 am on Tuesday morning, 1/21/2014), we arrived on time, but parking was hard to find!
Parking = it's up a small ramp, into a parking structure. There was an attendant outside helping to direct us to where to park. The parking entrance is on Las Vegas Blvd though, so don't go turning onto Stewart Ave.
Once parked, we had to take the elevator up to the Lobby area, and check in at the front desk of the Lobby. They gave us name badges (stickers) to put on your shirt along with a card-key chain to hang on your neck to access the various doors and kiosks in the building.
Once we were signed in -- they instructed us to go to an atrium area to watch a video of Zappos (basically an intro 101, probably 10 min long) history, culture, how they came to be. We only caught the last 2-3 minutes of it, unfortunately. :(
ALERT = be careful if you are LATE to your tour, because my husband and I (including 3 others who were late as well), had to come to the front of the stage where the screen was, and do a little dance for everyone. It ranges anywhere from "my little tea pot" to "itsy bitsy spider". hahaha...
The rest of our tour lasted about 1 hour, and our tour guide was very thorough with guiding us from dept to dept and explaining what each dept does, etc. It was interesting to note all the awards the company won over the years, and how it scaled so quickly over the years. Many folks in our tour group had questions as well and she tried to answer them as best as she could. We were free to take whatever pictures we wanted of the premises, and even got a snapshot of where the executives sit as well. None of them were actually there at their desk though, lol.
At the end of our tour, they guided us back to the lobby area - where we were given a souvenir to take home (a large year book!) and an opportunity to take photos in the queen/king chair. :) You'll know what I mean when you go on your visit.
The tour was fun, good learning experience, and I could see how their culture is so special. Glad we were able to come visit and see how this start-up gained traction and momentum over the years! Thanks Zappos!