It was an unusually hot day for Las Vegas in November 2012, and Rubin Ritter was exhausted. Jet-lagged from the 12-hour flight from Berlin and feeling the effects of his company holiday party from a few days earlier, he didn't exactly look forward to Sin City's crap tables and yard-long margarita glasses. But as managing director at German fashion Web retailer Zalando, Ritter had to attend a conference there and decided to fold in a visit to the American firm Zalando had copied right down to the business model (Free shipping! Free returns!), website design and first syllable: Zappos, the online shoe store snapped up by Amazon for $1.2 billion in 2009.
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