
  Amazon Buys Zappos  - transburgh
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/22/amazon-buys-zappos/
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smhinsey
Here's the CEO's letter to employees, which has a little more info:
<http://blogs.zappos.com/ceoletter>

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jakewolf
A lot more info! If only more people would upvote the original source.

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alaskamiller
Amazon bought zappos because zappos is a top notch shipping, fulfillment, and
logistics company. That happens to sell shoes but they can easily transition
to something else like how they experimented with accessories and even
computer goods. Amazon made a cheap deal to buy a younger smaller amazon to
add to their existing expertise.

Tony Hseih is amazing to me. LinkExhange sold to Microsoft when he was in his
mid 20's and now this. Amazing.

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imajes
actually i would suspect that Amazon partnered with zappos because zappos has
a great company culture and brand, and amazon are having problems retaining
theirs as they get bigger.

I am sure amazon doesn't need help doing supply chain - in fact I am certain
there'd be significant savings to have amazon fulfill zappos' orders.

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Harj
i cant imagine Amazon would pay $840m just for zappos' culture and brand

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jrockway
The actual letter from the CEO mentions that Amazon may be using Zappos'
warehouse space, which is "closest" to the UPS Worldport.

(Incidentally, Louisville may be UPS' hub, but my Amazon packages arrive
fastest when they ship from the Indiana warehouse.)

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swwu
I find it vaguely surreal that I work at Amazon, yet I read about this on
TechCrunch before I found out "officially".

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vaksel
Welcome to the world of publicly traded companies.

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yan
This deal _feels_ right. Both companies seem to be committed to customer
service as their number one goal. Based on what I've been reading about
Zappos, Tony & Co deserver this. Great company, great management, great
culture, great news!

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enjo
Doesn't it feel like a pretty low-ball deal for Zappos? Only $40M in cash and
only $850M overall. I get that they're a lower margin business, but still...
I'm SHOCKED that they didn't get more out of it.

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tybris
You realise this is nearly a 1 billion dollar deal for a fledgling clothing
shop, right?

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ryanwaggoner
They're ten years old and doing over a billion in gross sales annually. Hardly
fledgling.

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edawerd
Congrats to Tony on his second acquisition. (He sold LinkExchange to Microsoft
for $265M in 1998)

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mgenzel
It seems a good fit, but I always do worry when great grassroots-type great-
culture great-customer-service company gets acquired by a much larger company
(even if it's Amazon, which is much better than others - I worked there, I
know). It's very hard to avoid the intermixing, and the bad things flow much
better than the good.

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jakarta
I wonder what the profit is like over at Zappos. We know that they did $1.1ish
Billion in revenues but profit figures may be much lower (I've heard as low as
$50M pre-tax). My guess though is that Amazon's shipping chain will allow
Zappos to lower their costs, increasing EBIT. Still though, does not seem like
a cheap deal.

At least Amazon will be able to leverage the Zappos brand should they decide
to expand more into Apparel. This would probably work out well in the long
term.

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jcreamer120
Congrats to Zappos. This deal seemed to fly under the radar. I think this is
good buy for Amazon as long as they're leaving management in place.

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djb_hackernews
I recommend zappos to everyone. I haven't bought footwear anywhere else for at
least the past 5 years. It seems bizarre it took so long for an online
retailer to figure out a great barrier for online shoppers is the return
shipping if the item doesn't work out. They got my loyalty based on that even
though their prices aren't the absolute cheapest on the net.

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vaksel
the negative quantity mistake is pretty funny

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jonknee
Good for them, they are two of my favorite online retailers.

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weaksauce
Agreed, I hope that even though they will be run as two separate companies
they will maintain the corporate culture of zappos even under pressure.

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vaksel
Sounds like a very good partnership for both parties

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b3b0p
My first thought when I read this announcement was if my Amazon Prime would
work with Zappos eventually.

It sure would be nice, but I'm not counting on it.

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scumola
Too bad zapazon.com is already taken. :)

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mdg
"They sell fuckin shoes! People were selling shoes before them" - dhh.

That quote really struck a chord with me from his talk in 2008. It is quite
possibly one of my favorite quotes ever.

