Amazon/Zappos - Will Zappos now ship to the Middle East and the rest of the world?

With Amazon, the world's biggest online retailer, today announcing its acquisition of popular online shoe firm Zappos.com in a US $928 million deal, one question that begs an answer is whether the Middle East and the rest of the world will now be able to order shoes from the site.

Whilst Amazon delivers all around the world, Zappos.com's international delivery service currently only applies to Canada, leaving the rest of the world devoid of their services.

However with Amazon putting so much money into this acquisition, it would make sense to try and expand Zappos.com's operations to include worldwide deliveries.

Currently, Zappos.com has 1,300 employees and more than 3 million shoes, handbags, clothing items and accessories from over 1,136 brands. Heavily invested in what they call the 'customer experience', Zappos currently operates a free shipping service and a 24hr helpline. They're costly schemes, but with 75 percent of their sales coming from repeat customers and positive word of mouth replacing the traditional advertising avenues,Zappos take the time to look after those that have made them the successful company they are today.

"The number one driver of that is repeat customers and word of mouth - promoters have become an extremely important thing for us," said CEO Tony Hsieh. "Any costs that we've put into investing in the customer experience ends up driving that repeat customer behaviour and word of mouth so it is very much an indirect marketing cost."

With new possibilities wide open to the company with the Amazon investment, international markets are now theirs for the taking. With sales for 2009 currently projected at over US $1 billion,Zappos.com could see those figures multiply dramatically over the next few years with a concerted international push.

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