Amazappos. Zappazon?

The two companies with the Z in their names decided to get married yesterday. Zappos.com agreed to be acquired by Amazon.com for shares equaling approximately $807 million, plus an additional $40 million in cash and restricted stock to employees. This is the biggest purchase by Amazon ever, and is pretty significant since Zappos is one of the big players in the shoe/apparel market.

I sort of wonder what will happen to Endless.com, which we really liked over here at Shoe-n-Tell. Amazon says that they’ll continue to operate it, and Zappos has said that management on their end will continue to function normally. I would’ve thought that perhaps the nice functionality of Endless could somehow be rolled into the customer and community focused Zappos. Zappos is well known, but a bit clunky at times. I guess we’ll see how the shoes fall - but I can’t imagine that there won’t be at least a few reductions in the workforce.