It all started, as most things do, with a Bret Easton Ellis podcast.

Zappos employee Christina Gomez sounded like an opiated zombie when she first talked to Freakonomics Radio. "This job is worth more than a million dollars, definitely," she said. "It's kind of like the Wizard of Oz, and we're in the Emerald City." A week later, Gomez was wondering what she had been smoking — and…

In honor of the release of his book, Delivering Happiness, Tony Hsieh shot a video explaining why Zappos has become a successful business model.

• The Barneys display featuring mannequins being attacked and blood spatter on the windows has been dismantled. Barneys creative director Simon Doonan says they had been put up while he was out of town, but they "clearly crossed the line," and so he ordered them taken down. [NYDN]
• Fashion Week kicks off in just…

Amazon.com bought Zappos, the beloved online retailer of shoes, for $920 million, mostly in stock. Amazon's announcement was as direct as its business model; while reporters were calling the company in vain, CEO Jeff Bezos was dishing via YouTube.

That White House summit of young business leaders actually happened. We know because our new economic saviors are posting their cameraphone pics on Twitter. Here's noted thought leader Ivanka Trump and Twitter founder Ev Williams.

Tony Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos, has a promising career as a cult leader. In a blog post, the online shoes-and-clothes retailer's boss acknowledges the layoffs his employees were Twittering about this morning, writing that the company had laid off 8 percent of its workforce. He all but admits the cuts were forced on him…

No company has embraced Twitter quite like Zappos, the online shoes-and-whatever-else retailer — from its CEO, Tony Hsieh, on down. It even hosts a live feed of all Zappos-related messages on the microblogging service. That has made it easy to gather that the company is going through a tumultuous round of…

When online shoe retailer Zappos isn't paying newly trained employees to leave the company, it's replacing them entirely. Robots developed by Kiva Systems zip around a Zappos warehouse picking up items and deliver them to their meatbag underlings for packing, and then move the packages to another small group of…

Las Vegas-based e-tailer Zappos, which prides itself on innovative management techniques like paying new hires to leave, is also an "innovator" in the advertising space. Not for the company's TV ads, but for leveraging the post-9/11 security landcape to get the word out. "When I'm coming through security I know that…

Zappos, the Nevada-based online shoe and accessories retailer, has an interesting twist on new-hire bonuses. After applying and being chosen for a job, employees get a month of paid training. Then they're offered $1,000 to leave. It's a test of commitment, meant to see if money is what matters to workers. The amount…

An impromptu "Tweetup" at Medjool from the online shoe salesfolk at Zappos lured reporter Sarah Lacy out to Medjool. The promise: free booze if you promoted the website with a backhanded mention. Can you suggest a better caption? Do so in the comments. Yesterday's winner: "This picture brought to you by Seagate" by …