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Zappos is Dead?

23 Jul 2009

ZapposIsDeadI took some liberties with one of Robert Scoble's pictures

It's ironic that one of the stated rationales for Amazon purchasing Zappos was for their corporate culture. Such a purchase will ultimately result in the end of Zappos' independent identity and with it any resemblance to the culture it once had. The real reason I suspect Amazon purchased Zappos is to cheaply remove a future competitor. Yeah, I just said $900,000,000 was cheap. To own internet sales in the US a little longer, it's probably worth a lot more to Amazon.

I have little doubt that Zappos would have continued to grow in strength and become a real force within the internet sales business. They had something unique and wonderful going on, and unfortunately I can't imagine how that can survive when your only shareholder is the 800lb gorilla of internet sales, Amazon. I'd really like to be proven wrong on this hypothesis.