Woot

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This article is about the company. For the slang term, see w00t.
Woot, Inc.
Type Private
Founded 2004
Headquarters Carrollton, TX
Key people Matt Rutledge, Founder & CEO
Industry Retail
Products Electronics, Household Goods, etc.
Employees 30+[1]
Website www.woot.com

Woot is an Internet retailer based in the Dallas suburb of Carrollton, Texas. It was founded by electronics wholesaler Matt Rutledge and debuted on July 12, 2004.[2] Woot was the pioneer of the "one deal a day" business model on the internet. Woot's main web site 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, one selection of wine per week, and one closeout deal per day in cooperation with Yahoo! Shopping.

Contents

[edit] Sales model

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 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-Offs. Products are never announced beforehand and can easily sell out in a few hours or even minutes.

Customers may typically buy up to three of the day's item, although occasionally the site has limited product quantity to one per customer.[3] Woot does not reveal sales figures unless the item sells out.

Woot mainly uses FedEx and normally ships only to addresses within the continental United States. Beginning in June 2007, Woot started shipping some smaller products with FedEx SmartPost, a service that uses the United States Postal Service for final delivery.[4]

[edit] Marketing style

The company's marketing style is irreverent and often acknowledges its community of customers. Product descriptions often mock the product, the customer, or Woot itself. Product drawbacks are preemptively acknowledged and buyers are advised to beware. Community users often do their own research and post their opinions on the user forums. The Woot staff identifies "Quality Posts", or quality excerpts from posts, and features them at the top of the forum. They tend to feature not just positive comments about the item, but also helpful negative comments and reviews, as well as competitive pricing links that users have posted.

Matthew Shultz records a daily podcast that is published on Woot's main site. This podcast briefly describes the item up for sale and includes a humorous song or skit.

Woot conducts Photoshop contests among its forum users for cash prizes. There are also several honorable mention winners, each of whom receive free shipping on an order. One off-topic or poorly edited entry is awarded a Monkey Prize, typically a random monkey-related item of little or no value.

Community members have contributed back to the site by offering Woot-related services. These include:

[edit] Special events

[edit] Woot-Off

The site will occasionally deviate from the one-product-per-day model for a "Woot-Off", where a succession of products are available for a period of unannounced length, usually 24–72 hours. This mode is indicated by rotating lights and a bar displaying the percentage of product's stock remaining. 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 Random Crap instead.

During an average two-day Woot-Off, Woot's sales typically exceed one million dollars.[5]

[edit] Bag O' Crap

In lieu of typical product sales, Woot occasionally offers a $1.00 fukubukuro-like blind grab bag officially called "Random Crap". Its accompanying picture has lent it the name "Bag O' Crap" (BOC). The BOC includes dollar store items and may also include significantly more expensive items.[6] The BOC typically sells out within seconds of furious ordering, regularly overloading Woot's servers.

[edit] Product launches

Beginning with the "gamma" launch of the Neuros MPEG 4 Recorder, Woot has occasionally partnered with another company to launch a new product on its website. This "Launch Event", designated by an animated rocket ship, indicates Woot is the first and only place (as of that day) that has an available quantity of the sale product. The icon representing the rocket is not clear to some users, and is often referred to as the "Pope hat".[7]

[edit] 2-for-Tuesday

Since January 10, 2006, Woot has offered two-packs of products every Tuesday. Woot has also used this day to offer quantities greater than a 2-pack, such as 3-for-Tuesday.

[edit] Woot Wine

Woot began beta testing Woot Wine (also known as wine.woot!) on May 22, 2006, and officially launched the spin-off on October 2, 2006. The slogan is "One Week, One Wine". Generally, new items are offered starting on Monday.

On December 4, 2006, Woot sold a private-label cabernet sauvignon called Monkey Prize. It received an 89+ review from Gary Vaynerchuk in episode 137 of WineLibrary.tv, a video podcast wine-tasting.[8]

Woot Wine occasionally sells non-wine items such as a 3-pound wheel of blue cheese and a juniper bonsai tree.

Due to state legislation, Woot Wine is limited to states in which it can be delivered:, California, Colorado, Connecticut, District Of Columbia, Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, South Carolina, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

[edit] Labrats

Beginning the week of October 7, 2007, wine.woot began a new practice dubbed "Labrat". Customers can ask to be a Labrat by sending e-mail to labrat@woot.com. Eligible customers who make a winery purchase through Wine.Woot by 10 AM Central Time Monday may automatically receive an additional bottle or more of that week's offer overnight. Labrats are expected to taste the wine and to comment about it on the wine.woot forums that week.[9]

[edit] Woot Shirts

Woot Shirts, also known as shirt.woot!, sold their first shirt on July 20, 2007 after a short beta test. The website began by offering one new T-shirt design every weekday. Beginning on September 1, 2007, shirts were also offered on Saturday and Sunday.

Woot shirts 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 St. Louis, Missouri offices of Woot. Most designs are from established artists, but Woot also conducts a weekly internet design submission contest called the "Shirt Design Derby" to solicit ideas from its forum community.

Woot continues to offer shirts on following days for a higher price. Links to the shirts are not made obvious from Woot themselves, but links can be found in the comments of each shirt and are revealed directly weekly on Fridays. Every Monday, the shirts with the lowest sales are dropped from the production line through a process called "Reckoning" and discontinued.

Shipping policies for Woot Shirts differ considerably from those of other Woot sites. Woot normally ships shirts for free via SmartPost. Customers may pay an extra $5 charge for overnight FedEx shipping.[10] Beginning in March 2008, Woot Shirts has offered standard shipping to Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico for free[10] and has offered international shipping for an additional charge.

[edit] Random Shirt

Woot has thrice offered a Random Shirt day. Shoppers can purchase up to three randomly-selected discontinued shirts for $6.66 each. Customers can only specify the size and quantity desired, not the design. Random Shirt Day is similar to the Bag O' Crap offered on the main page and has been nicknamed "Shirt O' Crap" or "Bag of Shirt".

[edit] Woot Sellout

On September 12, 2007, Woot entered into a partnership with Yahoo! and created a new site, sellout.woot.com.[11] All product offers and fulfillment are managed by Woot, but users must enter the Woot Sellout site through Yahoo! Shopping's front page. New products appear at the same time as other Woot sites, seven days a week.

[edit] References

  1. ^ http://www.woot.com/Jobs.aspx, "Work for Woot"
  2. ^ The Blog - July 12, 2007 - Random Crap
  3. ^ the blog: Creative Zen Vision:M 30GB - Digital Multimedia Device (2006-11-17). Retrieved on 2008-02-10. “we’re limiting purchases to 1 per customer”
  4. ^ Woot : SmartPost: Who, Why and Where's The Feet?
  5. ^ Adept Consulting: Woot-Off: April 26th, 2007
  6. ^ http://www.woot.com/Forums/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=333781, Customer receives 61" DLP TV as part of "BOC" purchase
  7. ^ Woot : What Is Woot?
  8. ^ "WOOT Wine Tasting, Monkey Prize" (episode 137). Wine Library TV (November 30, 2006). Retrieved on 2008-05-17.
  9. ^ Wine.woot newsletter
  10. ^ a b Shirt.Woot : What Is Shirt.Woot?
  11. ^ Woot Sells Out!. Woot. Retrieved on September 12, 2007.

[edit] External links

[edit] General

[edit] Reviews

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woot"
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