| Type | Subsidiary |
|---|---|
| Industry | Retail |
| Founded | 2004 |
| Headquarters | Carrollton, TX |
| Key people | Matt Rutledge, Founder & CEO |
| Products | Electronics, Household Goods, etc. |
| Revenue | US$164 million (2008) 39.7% from 2007[1][2] |
| Employees | 140 |
| Parent | Amazon.com |
| Website | woot.com |
Woot is an American Internet retailer based in the Dallas suburb of Carrollton, Texas. Founded by electronics wholesaler Matt Rutledge, it debuted on July 12, 2004.[3] Woot's main website generally offers only one discounted product each day, often a piece of computer hardware or an electronic gadget. Other Woot sites offer one original t-shirt per day, five selections of wine per week, one children's item per day, four deals sponsored by other websites, and one closeout deal per day in cooperation with Yahoo! Shopping. On June 30, 2010, Woot announced an agreement to be acquired by Amazon.com.[4]
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Woot's tagline is "One Day, One Deal." Generally, Woot offers one product per day until its stock of that item is sold out, or until the product is replaced at midnight Central Time with the next offering. If a product sells out during its run, the next item still does not appear until midnight, except during Woot-Off promotions. Products are never announced beforehand. This sales model means that defective products cannot be replaced, only refunded. The company also does not provide customer support for the products it sells; in case of problems, customers are advised to seek support either from the manufacturer or through the online user community on the Woot forums.
Woot pioneered the one-deal-a-day business model, which has been implemented by many web-based retailers since. Customers may buy up to three of the day's item, although the site has occasionally limited product quantity to one per customer. Woot does not reveal sales figures unless the item sells out or a new item is for sale. Except for Shirt.woot, items are shipped only to the United States, using FedEx Ground, FedEx SmartPost, or United Parcel Service. All items, regardless of size or weight, are shipped for a flat $5 fee.
Woot sometimes sells items that it does not have in stock; this occasionally causes shipping delays.[5][6]
The company's marketing style is irreverent and often acknowledges its community of customers. Product descriptions commonly mock the product, the customer, or Woot itself. Product drawbacks are preemptively acknowledged and buyers are advised to beware. For those only interested in serious details, official information about the product is always listed below the Woot-written description. Community users often do their own product research and post their opinions on the user forums. Woot staff tags the most useful posts and features them at the top of the forum.
Woot's main site previously featured a daily podcast by Matthew Shultz that briefly described the item up for sale and included a humorous song or skit. This has since been replaced by a weekly video podcast. Photoshop contests among Woot forum users for prizes, including cash, free shipping on Woot orders, and the Monkey Prize (typically a random monkey-related item of little or no value) were another promotional event.
Community members have contributed back to the site by offering Woot-related services. These include status checkers, Dashboard widgets, and Windows Sidebar widgets to report when the next product is listed; there are also webcasts and other means to monitor the site's status. Woot has an official Twitter account, which is among the 100 most-followed accounts on Twitter (as of May 24, 2010).[7][8]
The site occasionally deviates from the one-product-per-day model for a "Woot-Off". A Woot-Off lasts for an unannounced length, usually 24-72 hours. During a Woot-Off, products usually sell out quickly, and when one product sells out, it is replaced within a minute or two by a new product. A percentage bar shows how much stock of the current product remains. However, Woot never gives the exact quantity available until after the item has sold out.
During April Fool's Day 2008, Woot staged a Woot-Off offering the same product repeatedly, except for a few brief periods when Woot sold Bags of Crap (see below) instead.
On occasion, Woot has a limited one-hour version of the Woot-Off called Happy Hour. These events are promoted solely via Twitter, and do not appear on woot.com's front page.
In lieu of typical product sales, Woot occasionally offers a blind grab bag officially called "Random Crap." While today its accompanying picture of a paper lunch bag with a question mark has kept its unofficial name "Bag of Crap," (BOC) it was originally dubbed "Bag of Crap" during the early years of the site when a physical bag of some kind (notebook, iomega zipper bags, etc.) was sold with the 1-3 "craps" and was part of what you were buying.[9] Today, the BOC contains at least three "crappy" items and one bag[10] whose value and quality are not guaranteed, but sometimes expensive items are included. The BOC typically triggers millions of order requests and sells out within seconds, causing server lag and even a server crash. During the January 25, 2011 selling, the website received a record 3.1 million requests, and the product was sold out within eight seconds.
During April Fools Day 2011, Woot staged a "Bag of Crap" flash game, which users were instructed to play in order to win the privilege of buying Bags of Crap. On April 1, 2011, eight thousand Bags of Crap were sold. Later in the day, once the Bag of Crap selling period was over, a Woot admin said that there were over seven million attempts to get the Bags of Crap. [11]
Beginning with the "gamma" launch of the Neuros MPEG 4 Recorder, Woot has occasionally partnered with another company to launch a new product with a one-day exclusive Woot sale.
On January 10, 2006, Woot began offering two-packs of products every Tuesday. Woot has also used this day to offer quantities greater than 2, such as 3-for-Tu3sday, 4-for-4uesday, 5-for-Tue5day, 6-for-Tue6day, 10X-Tuesday, 12-for-Tu12day, Two Dozen Tuesday (24-for-Tue2day), and Three Dozen Tuesday (36-for-Tu36day). On June 28, 2011, Woot decided to take a step back from the "two for Tuesday" promotions to focus on quality over quantity, though noting that they have not completely retired the idea.
Woot has created several spin-off sites, some following a similar business model as the main site, others providing other retail-related services.
Wine.woot was launched in the summer of 2006 and offers wine and "wine-related" products. It initially offered one item per week (often a set of multiple bottles from the same winery), but has since expanded to offer five new items each week. Unlike the main Woot site, Wine.woot will occasionally offer new deals outside of the regular schedule if an item sells out.
Due to state legislation, Woot Wine items may only be delivered to a limited number of states. As the wineries are the seller of record (not Wine.woot), the list of states to which any given offer may be shipped is dependent on where the current winery can ship, and may change from offer to offer.
Shirt.woot sold its first shirt in July 2007, after a short beta test. The website began by offering one new T-shirt design every weekday. Since September 2007, shirts have been offered on Saturday and Sunday as well.
The designs are silk-screened on American Apparel shirts in Woot's Carrollton, Texas facility. Shirt design submissions are reviewed and selected by an editor in the Seattle, Washington offices of Woot.[12]
Most designs are from established artists, but Woot also conducts a weekly design competition, the "Derby", where users submit their own design ideas. The three most popular designs, as determined by a public vote, are produced and sold; the winners receive $1,000 each, plus $2 for every shirt sold after the first day.
Shirts are sold on their day of release for $10, while shirts from previous days are sold for $15. Shirt.woot offers between 28 and 34 different designs, depending on the day of the week. Each week, seven shirts with the lowest sales are dropped from the production line through a process called "The Reckoning" and discontinued. Sometimes, usually during Woot-Offs on the main site, Shirt.woot will drop the price of shirts in The Reckoning to $12 for an hour. Such sales are announced via Twitter.
Unlike the main Woot site, Shirt.woot offers international shipping and free standard shipping in the US. Next day delivery is available for an additional fee.
Woot occasionally offers a Random Shirt day. Shoppers can purchase up to three randomly selected, usually discontinued, shirts. Customers can specify the size and quantity (up to three) desired, but not the design.
The site briefly experimented with selling "Classic" shirts, identical to or based on previously discontinued designs.
On September 12, 2007, Woot entered into a partnership with Yahoo! and created a new site, sellout.woot.com,[13] which has since become part of Yahoo! Shopping. The business model is the same as the main Woot site's, although with different products. While the site itself is part of Yahoo! Shopping, all product offers and order fulfillment are managed by Woot.
Woot launched Kids.woot on August 18, 2009. It sells one item, geared toward children, per day. Kids.woot began featuring the Woot-Off promotion on October 28, 2009.
A website operated by Woot,[14] Deals.woot is a deals aggregator with two types of listings. One is the "Sponsored Deals" section, which has listings recommended by retailers and manufacturers, as well as links to other daily deal sites. The second section, "Community Deals", consists of deals recommended by the users. Users can vote on deals and comments, and can "tattle" on expired or misrepresented deals.
Deals.woot had its first official event on February 10 and 11, 2011, dubbed "Crab Day", where users of the site gathered together to post as many crab-related deals as they could find.
Moofi (Woot! upside-down) was launched during the week of June 13, 2010.[15] It can have several deals running at the same time. The Moofi subdomain links directly to the Woot! main page, but a quick search on the Deals.woot site[16] will reveal the current Moofi items and their hidden URLs.
On October 24, 2011, Woot launched its Home.woot site, focused on offering deals for a wide variety of household goods. [17]
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