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Woot

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This article is about the company. For the slang term, see w00t. For other uses, see Woot (disambiguation).
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Woot, Inc.
Screenshot
Type of site
Subsidiary
Founded2004; 20 years ago (2004)
HeadquartersCarrollton, TX
Key peopleMatt Rutledge
(Founder and former CEO)
IndustryRetail
ProductsElectronics, Household Goods, etc.
RevenueUS$164 million (2008)
Increase 39.7% from 2007[1][2]
Employees140
ParentAmazon
URLwoot.com

Woot (originally W00t) 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 daily deals for T-shirts, wine, children's items, and household goods. Two other sites offer various items. On June 30, 2010, Woot announced an agreement to be acquired by Amazon.[4]

Sales model

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Woot's original tagline was "One Day, One Deal" and is now "Don't work to find deals. Let the deals find you".[5] Originally, Woot offered one product per day until its stock of that item was sold out, or until the product was replaced at midnight Central Time with the next offering. If a product sold out during its run, the next item would not appear until midnight, except during Woot-Off promotions. Woot was a forerunner in the one-deal-a-day business model. Customers could buy up to three of the sale item, although the site occasionally limited product quantity to one per customer.

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 issues, customers are advised to seek support either from the manufacturer or through the online user community on the Woot forums.

Following its acquisition by Amazon, Woot's business model was heavily modified to sell a selection of products across different categories, moving away from its foundational business to better complement its Amazon partnership. The selection within a category varies and if a product sells out early enough in the day, a new product is generally offered for sale in its place.

Woot sometimes sells refurbished items. In 2011, sales of 6,200 refurbished Motorola Xooms included a small number (about 100) that weren't refurbished properly and may have been sold with data from the devices' previous owners.[6]

Marketing style

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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[when?] 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 other promotional events.[citation needed]

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 methods to monitor the site's status.

Special events

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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.[7] 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.

Beginning with the "gamma" launch of the Neuros MPEG 4 Recorder on February 9, 2005,[8] Woot has occasionally partnered with another company to launch a new product with a one-day exclusive Woot sale.

Starting in August 2004, Woot began occasionally offering a blind grab bag officially called "Random Crap", in lieu of typical product sales.[9] 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.[10] Today, the BOC contains at least three "crappy" items and one bag[11] whose value and quality are not guaranteed, but sometimes expensive items are included. The BOC has been known to sell out in a matter of hours.[12] 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 Fool's Day 2008, Woot staged a Woot-Off offering the same product repeatedly,[13] except for a few brief periods when Woot sold Bags of Crap instead. Three years later on April Fools' Day, 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.[14]

Debuting on March 10, 2010, Woot ran limited one-hour versions of the Woot-Off called Happy Hour. These events were promoted solely via Twitter, and did not appear on woot.com's front page.[15] Happy Hour didn't quite work out and was put on an indefinite hold by August 2011.[16]

Acquisition

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On June 30, 2010, Woot was sold to Amazon for a reported sum of $110 million.[17] The CEO, Matt Rutledge, sent an E-mail[18] to employees stressing that Woot would continue to operate as per usual. However, in June 2014, he crowdsourced a new website called Meh to become the successor of Woot, citing dissatisfaction with changes made by Amazon.

[edit]

Woot has created several spin-off sites, some following a similar business model as the main site, others providing other retail-related services. These include:

  • Wine.woot 2006–2017,
  • Shirt.woot begun 2007,
  • Sellout.woot 2007,
  • Kids.woot 2009–2017,
  • Deals.woot closed 2016,
  • Home.woot 2011–present,
  • Sport.woot 2012–present,
  • Electronics.woot launched 2012 as Tech.woot, renamed Electronics.woot in 2014,
  • Tools.woot 2013–present,
  • Accessories.woot 2013–2017,
  • Computers.woot 2014–present.

References

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Citations
  1. ^ "Woot listing in Inc. 5000 for 2008". September 12, 2008. Archived from the original on August 22, 2008. Retrieved December 5, 2011.
  2. ^ Brown, Lisa R. (October 25, 2009). "Woot.com expanding with new South City office".
  3. ^ Woot (July 12, 2007). "The Blog – Random Crap". Woot.com. Retrieved December 5, 2011.
  4. ^ "The Blog – June 30, 2010 – BREAKING: Woot To Be Acquired By Amazon, Then Left To Amuse Ourselves". Woot.com. June 30, 2010. Retrieved December 5, 2011.
  5. ^ "Isn't Woot all about 'One Day, One Deal'? 'What is Woot?', FAQ Q#4". Woot.com. 2013. Retrieved December 30, 2013.
  6. ^ Wong, Wailin (February 3, 2012). "Xooms sold on Woot.com may contain previous owners' data". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved February 5, 2012.
  7. ^ "Woot : What is Woot?". Woot. Archived from the original on December 5, 2011. Retrieved February 21, 2012.
  8. ^ "Woot: The Community: Woots: Neuros MPEG4 Recorder". www.woot.com. Archived from the original on July 14, 2014.
  9. ^ "Random Crap". Woot. August 13, 2004. Retrieved June 3, 2021.
  10. ^ Woot by Wootbot on July 18, 2005 at 12:00 am (July 18, 2005). "Random Crap". Woot. Retrieved December 5, 2011.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  11. ^ Woot by Wootbot on May 15, 2009 at 5:03 pm (May 15, 2009). "Random Crap". Woot. Retrieved December 5, 2011.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  12. ^ "This Internet Millionaire Has a New Deal For You". D Magazine. Retrieved February 27, 2019.
  13. ^ Murphy, Samantha (October 2008). "Winning Woot". Chain Store Age. 84 (10): 50.
  14. ^ "The Community: Woots: Random Crap – Level 1". Woot. January 4, 2011. Retrieved December 5, 2011.
  15. ^ "Woot Happy Hour: No, You Can't Run a Tab - Woot". Archived from the original on October 6, 2014. Retrieved July 12, 2014.
  16. ^ http://www.woot.com/forums/viewpost.aspx?postid=4578289 [dead link]
  17. ^ D'Onfro, Jillian. "This story about Amazon's Jeff Bezos eating octopus for breakfast is symbolic of his business strategy". Insider. Retrieved March 16, 2022.
  18. ^ CEO, Matt Rutledge, Woot. "Dear Woot Employees, Here's Why We Just Sold To Amazon". Business Insider. Retrieved March 16, 2022.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

Bibliography

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