I read with sadness this morning that Amazon has acquired Zappos. Why with sadness? I have been admiring Zappos weird and wonderful ways now for some time. Imaging an online shoe retailer that has a 365-day return policy, with free shipping? What? An online shoe retailer? How do you sell shoes online? And with a full year to return the shoes if your heels chafe?

Or a company that publically puts out all their internal people practices for everyone to learn from? Talk about abundance mentality. Tony Hsieh (CEO of Zappos) is one of my favourite people to follow on Twitter. And apparently Twitter is used widely within Zappos as a communication medium.

So that is why it was sad when I read the headline “Amazon buys Zappos”. True to form though, Tony Hsieh, the Zappos CEO published his letter to his staff on the Amazon deal (and broadcasted that via Twitter). Tony says he would have preferred the headlines to read “Zappos and Amazon sits in a tree”, meaning that Zappos will still be independently managed. If you scroll down far enough in the letter there is a short embedded video from Jeff Bezos, that is well worth watching (see below).

Jeff Bezos (CEO of Amazon, in case you’ve been Rip van Winkle for the last 15 years) says that there are four things that he has learnt. I asked myself if we have learnt these things yet at Real Insurance:

1. Obsess over customers. Are we obsessive about customers at Real Insurance. Not enough. Not yet.
2. Invent. Do we invent at Real? Yes we do.
3. Think Long Term. Do we have a long-term view? Yes we do.
4. And my favourite: It’s always day 1.  There is always more invention to come. More that we can do. Better service and product that we can give our customers. The best is yet to come. Watch this space!

So I am no longer sad about Zappos and Amazon sitting in a tree. It is a good tree to be in.