July 23, 2009 3:41 PM

Gibson Dunn Helps Amazon Walk Away with Zappos

Posted by Claire Zillman

In the company's biggest acquisition ever, Amazon snatched up online shoe and apparel retailer Zappos on Wednesday for $847 million.

Amazon will acquire Zappos for 10 million shares of Amazon stock, valued at $807 million. Amazon will also give $40 million in cash and stock to Zappos employees, CNNMoney.com reports. The deal adds more than 1,000 shoe and apparel brands to the e-commerce giant's arsenal of products, Bloomberg reports.

Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher corporate partner Peter Heilmann represented Amazon, along with partners Paul Issler, Ronald Mueller, and Ron Ben-Yehuda. Fenwick & West, a 300-lawyer firm based in Mountain View, Calif., represented Zappos, led by corporate partners William Schreiber and Robert Freedman and tax partner Adam Halpern.

Zappos, founded ten years ago in Henderson, Nev., employs 1,300 people. In the past decade, the site has won over customers with its free shipping and free return policies, grossing $1 billion in sales last year.

In recent years, Amazon has tried unsuccessfully to gain ground in the shoe market. In 2007, it launched Endless.com, a site dedicated to selling shoes and handbags. The site attracted 777,000 visitors in June, compared to the 4.5 million customers that visited Zappos last month, The New York Times reports.

The deal gives Amazon the ability to tap the country's growing shoe fetish. Americans spent $4.3 billion on footwear last year, up from $3.3 billion in 2007, The New York Times reports.

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