haha - the entire letter is hilarious. Woot sounds like another good company with a strong culture.
The big question is why did they sell? Tony Hsieh and Zappos had investor pressure+needed the cash, what was Woot's reason? Maybe the carrot (cash?) Amazon dangled was a really big amount?
I've been wondering this myself. I won't pretend to be business savvy, but if you look at the "woot wage" on some of the products they sale, they make some serious bank. Their "Woot-Offs" seem particularly lucrative because they'll often roll in less desirable items that people will buy anyway just to keep the "Woot-Off" going.
Aside from the alleged $110 million being an enticing sum of money, I have to imagine there are other reasons. The letter indicated they were excited to learn and grow using technology from Amazon so I do wonder if that is a big part of it. Woot! has had stability problems in the past, particularly when the infamous "Bag of Crap" is up for sale. Not that it takes getting bought out by Amazon to fix such an issue, but it couldn't hurt.
Regardless of the reason, I fully expect to see Woot! expand their reach and product offerings outside of shirt.woot, kids.woot and the like as a result of the acquisition.
Amazon seems like the perfect company. Woot sells random stuff; what company is more likely to have lots of extra random stuff sitting around than Amazon?
Wow, that blog post is so heartwarming and fun that it makes me like Woot a lot more than I ever did before! (I didn't dislike it, but had no particular feelings). Respect.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnCHCcveteA