Zappos Founder's RNKD Connects Best Customers With Rewards

This article is more than 2 years old.

After founding customer-focused online shoe company Zappos, Nick Swinmurn has started RNKD, which helps consumers get rewards for the clothing they buy.

RNKD rewards customers for products they already have in their closets. Literally. People can take photos of clothing and accessories they have in their closets, upload them to RNKD, and get rewards directly from brands. People with the most, say, Nike shoes can get rewards, as can those who "Like" photos or refer friends.

With RNKD, customers get recognition and special deals for being loyal customers. "If I own 50 pairs of Nikes I should get a better price than someone who doesn't own any," Swinmurn says. He expects a strong social component to the service as people sahre their photos of their closets and clothes. As people buy more items they can add to their digital collections.

People should get rewards for what they own, not just things that they say they "Like" or add to a wish list as with other style websites, Swinmurn says. For brands, they can log in and see who their biggest customers are, then reward them. Many companies do not have this kind of information about their customers so RNKD could provide a way to directly connect with them, he says. Swinmurn envisions clients such as a NBA basketball team knowing not just who its season ticket holders are, but what jerseys and T-shirts they buy and when.

Swinmurn came up with the idea after leaving Zappos and founding a small clothing brand, Dethrone, in 2008. But Swinmurn found it difficult to connect with customers. "I always wanted to start a brand," Swinmurn says. "Even at Zappos I started a private label." He got interested in mixed martial arts, which became the inspiration for the brand.

Swinmurn had been working on his own startup ideas since he was in college. One was selling lithograms of famous athletes. Another was a kiosk system for major sports teams at their stadiums. None of these were very successful. But Swinmurn learned a lot.  In 1998 he started a website called That later turned into Zappos and he pitched it to a number of venture capitalists but didn't get anyone to invest until meeting Tony Hsieh and Alfred Lin with San Francisco-based Venture Frogs. Hsieh and Lin needed someone to move into their tech incubator so they said they'd invest if Swinmurn moved in. Zappos took off and eventually ballooned to more than 1,000 employees. In 2006, Swinmurn decided he wanted to leave and do new things. "Everything worked out perfect for us," Swinmurn says. Amazon eventually bought Zappos for $1.2 billion. Now Swinmurn is looking to bring what he learned from that experience to RNKD.

