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Comment by yan | Hacker News Reader

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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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.

Well, what would you assume is fair and why?

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

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

If they're netting 15% (a number often used for retail) of the billion a year they take in, that's a $150,000,000. So... it's not that low.

Except for that whole deleting e-books of customers' Kindles without telling them thing, I agree.

EDIT: I'm curious about the downvotes. I think deleting books of customers' Kindles is in direct opposition to customer service being their number one goal. I have a feeling Amazon isn't all that interested in customer service and I don't remember any super positive things about Amazon culture. What am I missing?

It was a horrible mistake. But they have said that they will never do it again. Looks like they have learned their lesson. You can give them a pass for now ?

Yes, in the short term it sucks that they deleted e-books, but they are doing it to make sure that in the long term, they can continue to provide a wide variety of e-books to their customers. They have to keep the publishers happy to do this.

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