Marginally Better S01E07: Breaking Things, Returning Things, and Getting Things Right

July 23, 2025
Marginally Better, Podcast
16 min read

“Move fast and break things” might’ve been the startup mantra of the early 2000s—but in 2025, it’s costing companies customers, credibility, and billions in returns. In this episode of Marginally Better, Joe Taylor, Jr. unpacks how the speed-at-all-costs philosophy is being replaced by something smarter: thoughtful design, seamless returns, and customer-first decision-making. From Zappos’ billion-dollar bet on free returns to IKEA’s cinnamon roll-powered strategy, discover how today’s best businesses are building loyalty by slowing down, listening up, and getting things right. If you’ve ever cursed a broken update or fallen in love with a handwritten thank-you note, this one’s for you. 

Episode Links:

Additional Zappos Return Policy Sources:

Transcript:

Announcer: From the global headquarters of Johns and Taylor in beautiful New Jersey, it’s Marginally Better. Here’s your host, Joe Taylor, Jr. 

Joe Taylor, Jr.: On the show this week, Silicon Valley told us to “move fast and break things,” but what happens when your customers are tired of being crash test dummies? We’ll explore why some of tech’s biggest failures came from moving too fast, and why the companies winning today are the ones who stopped breaking things and started building trust. 

We’ll dive into the $816 billion returns economy, where companies like Zappos turned the most painful part of online shopping into their greatest competitive advantage. And we’ll reveal how some businesses are transforming returns from a cost center into a customer loyalty goldmine. 

Plus, we’ll celebrate the underdogs of user experience – companies that beat Silicon Valley giants not with bigger budgets, but with better focus. From a 50-year-old electronics retailer to a tiny adventure travel company, we’ll show you how David keeps beating Goliath. 

That’s all coming up after the break on Marginally Better. 

Welcome to Marginally Better, a show about business, innovation, and the American economy. I’m Joe Taylor Jr. 

“Move fast and break things.” For years, this was Silicon Valley’s rallying cry. Facebook had it painted on their walls. Startups wore it like a badge of honor. The idea was simple: speed beats perfection. Ship now, fix later. 

But here’s what’s happening in 2025: customers are done with broken things. They’re tired of being beta testers. And businesses are starting to realize that maybe, just maybe, breaking things has a cost they never calculated. 

A UX designer recently published a blog post that’s getting forwarded around a lot in the design community. We’ve linked to it in our show notes. They tell the story of sitting in yet another meeting where someone says, “We need to be the Uber of…” and watching their team scramble to ship something, anything, in two weeks. 

“Everyone thinks they’re telling a story about disruption,” the designer writes. “But they’re actually telling a story about the Fastest Gun in the West – shoot first, aim later. The problem is, in UX, when you shoot first, you hit your users.” 

They share data that should terrify any executive: 88% of online consumers are less likely to return to a site after a bad experience. That’s not iteration. That’s elimination. 

Over on Reddit’s r/The10thDentist – a community dedicated to genuinely unpopular opinions – a post about “move fast and break things” exploded with over 2,000 comments. The original poster argued this mentality has created a world of half-finished products and perpetual frustration. 

One commenter, a software engineer with 15 years experience, put it bluntly: “I’ve watched this philosophy destroy three companies from the inside. We moved so fast we forgot why we were moving in the first place.” 

Another shared a story about their banking app updating every two weeks, each time moving buttons and breaking features that worked fine. “I just want to check my balance,” they wrote. “Not relearn the interface every month.” 

But perhaps the most damning indictment comes from Harvard Business Review. Hemant Taneja, a managing director at General Catalyst, declared in 2019 that “The Era of ‘Move Fast and Break Things’ Is Over.” 

His research found that the companies still following this mantra are seeing increased customer churn, higher support costs, and most critically, eroding trust. He cites specific examples: a fintech startup that lost 40% of its users after rushing out a “revolutionary” update that corrupted transaction histories. A health app that pushed an untested feature and accidentally shared private medical data between users. 

“There’s a difference between moving fast and moving recklessly,” Taneja writes. “The former requires discipline. The latter just requires ego.” 

Over at LeadDev, engineering leader Charity Majors offers a different angle. She argues the problem isn’t speed – it’s the breaking part.  

“Move fast and make things,” she suggests instead. “Test fast. Learn fast. But stop celebrating destruction like it’s innovation.” 

She shares metrics from her own teams: When they shifted from “ship and fix” to “test and ship,” deployment failures dropped 73%. Customer complaints fell by half. And here’s the kicker – they actually moved faster because they spent less time firefighting. 

What’s fascinating about all these perspectives is they’re saying the same thing: We’ve confused velocity with progress. We’ve mistaken disruption for destruction. 

The companies winning today aren’t the ones breaking things. They’re the ones who move fast AND think carefully. Who test with small groups before inflicting changes on everyone. Who remember that behind every user metric is a human trying to accomplish something. 

Because here’s the truth: Your customers aren’t your QA team. They’re not debugging volunteers. They’re people with problems to solve, and if you keep breaking the tools they use to solve them, they’ll find someone else who won’t. 

The new mantra? Move thoughtfully and build things that last. It’s not as catchy, but your customers – and your retention rates – will thank you. 

Let me tell you about one of the boldest business decisions in retail history. 

It’s 1999, and Tony Hsieh had just invested in a struggling online shoe retailer called ShoeSite.com. The company, founded by Nick Swinmurn, was bleeding money. Returns were killing them. Customers would order shoes, find they didn’t fit, and send them back. The shipping costs alone were threatening to sink the business. 

The conventional wisdom was clear: tighten the return policy. Charge for return shipping. Maybe 30 days maximum. Add a restocking fee. Every other retailer was doing it. 

But Hsieh saw something different. In a 2003 interview, he explained his thinking: “Buying shoes online can initially be a scary process for people. But Zappos has withstood when other dot-coms have failed because we provide the best customer experience, such as free shipping both ways.” 

He continued: “Even though free shipping of both orders and returns has cost us more, it has enabled us to keep our customers longer.” 

This wasn’t just about shipping. Zappos implemented a 365-day return policy. A full year. As documented by Harvard Business Review, Hsieh believed that customer service should permeate the whole company, not just one department. Every interaction was an opportunity to build the brand. 

By 2005, Hsieh was writing to investors about what he called the “WOW philosophy.” In an investor email from February 1, 2005, published by I Done This, he wrote: “We are often told that customer service is sorely lacking throughout most of this country. If we constantly focus on improving the customer experience and cause people to think about service everytime they think about Zappos, then in the long term, we believe that we will succeed as a company.” 

He added: “However, our service can’t just be ‘good enough’… We need to go above and beyond people’s expectations. Internally, we call this our WOW philosophy.” 

The numbers proved him right. According to Harvard Business Review’s analysis, more than 75% of purchases came from repeat customers, and 44% of new customers heard about Zappos from word of mouth. 

Fast forward to 2009. Amazon buys Zappos for $1.2 billion. Not because they had the best prices or the biggest selection, but because they’d turned the most painful part of online shopping – returns – into their biggest competitive advantage. 

Sara Horne, writing for Spark Holyoke, documents how this worked. Zappos discovered that customers who returned items were actually their best customers. They spent 2.5 times more than customers who never returned anything. Why? Because they trusted Zappos. They knew if the shoes didn’t fit, sending them back would be painless. 

“The 365-day return policy wasn’t about returns,” Horne explains. “It was about removing fear from the purchase decision.” 

But not every generous return policy has a happy ending. Take L.L.Bean, the outdoor retailer that built its reputation on a lifetime guarantee. For 106 years, you could return anything, anytime, for any reason. Worn out boots from 1987? No problem. Jacket from your grandfather? Sure. 

Then in 2018, as Bustle reported, they ended it. Why? Because people were abusing it. Yard sale finds, thrift store purchases – people were “returning” items they’d never bought from L.L.Bean in the first place. 

The company’s executive chairman, Shawn Gorman, had to make the call. “Our returns were approaching the cost of a full year’s profit,” he told investors. They shifted to a one-year policy – still generous, but not infinite. 

Here’s what’s instructive: L.L.Bean’s sales didn’t plummet. Customer satisfaction stayed high. Because it turns out, most honest customers don’t need a lifetime to decide if they like something. They need reassurance, not infinity. 

Enter David Sobie, a former Walmart executive who saw opportunity in the chaos. In 2016, he founded Happy Returns with a simple observation: Returns are miserable for everyone. Customers hate printing labels and finding boxes. Retailers hate processing them. The environment hates the waste. 

His solution? Return bars. Physical locations – starting in malls, then in stores like Ulta and Staples – where you could return items from any participating retailer. No box, no label, no hassle. Just scan, hand over, done. 

According to Retail Dive, the innovation caught fire. By 2022, UPS acquired Happy Returns for an undisclosed sum rumored to be in the hundreds of millions. Why? Because they’d solved a universal pain point. 

“We’re not in the returns business,” Sobie told reporters. “We’re in the confidence business. When customers know returns are easy, they buy more.” 

But perhaps the most innovative approach comes from an unexpected place: IKEA. Yes, the company famous for furniture you assemble yourself with an Allen wrench and pure determination. 

As documented by Supply Chain Dive, IKEA partnered with Optoro, a returns technology company, to do something radical: prevent returns before they happen. Using data analytics, they identified why people return items. Too big for the space? Wrong color in person? Missing parts? 

Then they attacked each reason systematically. Better room planning tools. More accurate color displays. Quality control that ensures every box has every screw. The result? Their return rates are 50% lower than industry average. 

But here’s the IKEA twist, detailed in a Medium piece by Design Bootcamp: When you do need to return something, they’ve designed the process to be almost pleasant. Dedicated return areas, clear signage, and – this is genius – they put the returns desk right next to the restaurant. Frustrated by a return? Here’s a cinnamon roll. Angry about missing parts? Swedish meatballs are on us. 

They turned a pain point into a touchpoint. 

According to Retail Dive’s latest analysis, returns now cost retailers $816 billion annually. That’s billion with a B. It’s more than the GDP of most countries. And here’s the thing – that number is growing. 

But hidden in that massive figure is an equally massive opportunity. Because every return is a chance to build trust or destroy it. Every return policy is a statement about how much you value your customers versus your inventory. 

The winners in this new economy aren’t trying to prevent returns through restrictive policies. They’re preventing returns through better products, clearer descriptions, and smarter technology. And when returns do happen, they’re turning them into relationship-building moments. 

Because here’s what Tony Hsieh understood from the beginning. As he told Harvard Business Review: “We decided that customer service shouldn’t just be a department; it should be the entire company.” Every phone call, every return, every interaction was a chance to WOW a customer. 

The goal was never to minimize returns. It was to maximize trust. And trust, it turns out, is worth a lot more than $816 billion. 

You know what’s exhausting? Complaining about bad customer service. We’ve spent weeks on this show talking about chatbots that lie, websites that don’t work, and companies that trap you in subscription hell.  

So today, let’s talk about the ones getting it right. Because they exist, and they’re brilliant, and honestly, they make everyone else look even worse by comparison. 

The Baymard Institute just released their 2024 UX Awards, and the winners tell a fascinating story about who’s actually prioritizing user experience. 

Let’s start with the obvious ones. Target’s mobile app won for checkout flow. Apple Store won for mobile homepage and category navigation. These are massive companies with massive budgets. No surprise there. 

But dig deeper into the list and you find the real stories. American Trucks won Top 1% UX performance overall on desktop. This is a company founded by two brothers, Andrew and Steve Voudouris, operating out of a 115,000 square foot warehouse outside Philadelphia. They’re competing against Amazon, competing against auto parts giants, and they’re winning on user experience. 

How? By focusing relentlessly on their specific audience – truck enthusiasts. They offer free shipping on orders over $149, same-day shipping on most orders, installation guides, product reviews, and parts videos. They know their customers don’t just want parts; they want expertise. 

Then there’s Crutchfield, which won Top 1% overall UX performance in the Electronics & Office industry. This is remarkable when you realize they’re competing directly with Best Buy and Amazon. 

Bill Crutchfield started the company in 1974 from his mother’s basement with $1,000 and an old Porsche he was restoring. He couldn’t find anyone who knew about car stereos, so he decided to become the expert himself. Fifty years later, the company has 675 employees and did $436 million in sales in 2023. 

Their secret? They’ve won Bizrate’s Circle of Excellence Platinum Award for 20 years – the only one of more than 5,000 online retailers to do so. Every advisor receives ten weeks of all-day, hands-on technology training before helping a customer. Their tech team offers free support for any piece of gear Crutchfield has ever sold. 

In 50 years, they’ve never had a layoff. When COVID hit and they thought they’d be shut down, Bill Crutchfield was prepared to keep paying everyone even with no revenue. That’s the kind of long-term thinking that builds exceptional customer experience. 

Perhaps most impressive is Much Better Adventures, which won Top 1% UX performance overall within the Travel Tours & Experience Booking industry. Founded in 2012 by Alex Narracott, Sam Bruce, and Guy Bowden, the company started in a chalet in the Alps. 

They’re competing against massive travel platforms, but they’re winning by staying focused on their mission. They contribute 5% of revenues – not profits – to conservation projects. They co-founded the Tourism Declares movement. As a B-Corp, they earned a B Impact score of 117.1, compared to a median of 50.9 for ordinary businesses. 

Their UX excellence comes from understanding their specific audience. 75% of their customers join trips solo, most in their 30s-50s, and 95% give their group dynamic 5 stars. They’ve designed every aspect of the experience around creating connections between like-minded adventurers. 

And yes, we have to talk about Chewy, the pet supply company. They’re famous for sending flowers when a pet dies, hand-painted portraits of customers’ pets, and handwritten holiday cards. Sounds expensive and unscalable, right? 

Here’s the math: Their customer lifetime value is $700. The industry average is $100. Those flowers cost them $30. The portrait? Maybe $50. But the customer who receives them? They become evangelists. They post on social media. They tell everyone at the dog park. They never, ever switch to another retailer. 

Looking across these winners – from American Trucks to Crutchfield to Much Better Adventures – a pattern emerges. The companies providing exceptional customer experiences aren’t necessarily the biggest or best-funded. They’re the ones who deeply understand their specific customers and are willing to do things that don’t scale. 

American Trucks knows truck enthusiasts want detailed installation guides. Crutchfield knows electronics buyers want real expertise. Much Better Adventures knows solo travelers want meaningful connections. None of these insights require million-dollar budgets. They require caring enough to notice. 

Great customer experience isn’t about perfection. It’s about focus. Pick your audience, understand them deeply, and serve them better than anyone else. 

As Bill Crutchfield puts it: “I had probably a minor role in building the company; our employees really built the company.” That humility – recognizing that your success comes from the people who interact with customers every day – might be the real secret. 

The bar is so low right now that basic competence feels like excellence. Which means the opportunity for any business willing to truly focus on their customers is massive. 

You don’t need venture funding. You don’t need AI. You don’t need to be in Silicon Valley. You need to pick your customers, understand them better than anyone else, and then deliver on that understanding every single day. 

In a world where so many companies are trying to be everything to everyone, the winners are often the ones brave enough to be something specific to someone specific. And that’s a game any business can play. 

[Music: Closing theme begins] 

Joe Taylor Jr.: That’s our show for today. Whether you’re moving fast, processing returns, or just trying to build something people love, remember: Your customers aren’t asking for perfection. They’re asking for respect. Give them that, and everything else tends to work itself out. 

Thanks for listening to Marginally Better. If you like what you heard, please help us out. Leave a quick review on Apple podcasts. It will help us spread the word about the show to people like you who care deeply about great customer experiences. 

If you want to get behind the scenes notes from me and the rest of the team, go to marginallybettershow.com or follow the link in our show notes. 

Marginally Better is a Calufrax radio production. Our producer is Nicole Hubbard with research by Connie Evans. 

I’m Joe Taylor, Jr. 

After a decade in broadcast media, Joe developed early online platforms for NPR, PBS, and AOL. Today, he helps our clients tell compelling brand stories through audio, visuals, and software.

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