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Woot (retailer)
Encyclopedia
Woot is an American Internet retailer based in the Dallas
suburb of Carrollton, Texas
. It was founded by electronics wholesaler Matt Rutledge and debuted on July 12, 2004. 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
.
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. This sales model means that defective products cannot be replaced, only refunded. The company also doesn't provide any customer support for the products it sells. In case of problems, customers are advised to seek support either through 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 occasionally the site has 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 sell items that it does not have in stock. This occasionally causes shipping delays.
Matthew Shultz used to record a daily podcast
that was published on Woot's main site. This podcast briefly described the item up for sale and includes a humorous song or skit. This has since been replaced by a weekly video podcast, which is usually not very good unless it is a "Happy Snacking" segment..
Woot used to conduct Photoshop contest
s among its forum users for cash prizes. There were also several honorable mention winners, who received free shipping on an order. Another entry was awarded a Monkey Prize
, typically a random monkey-related item of little or no value, some awarded have yet to be delivered.
Community members have contributed back to the site by offering Woot-related services. These include status checkers, Dashboard and Windows Sidebar widgets to report when the next product is listed. There are also webcasts and other means to monitor the current meeting. Woot also has an official Twitter
account, which is among the 100 most-followed accounts on Twitter (as of May 24, 2010).
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.
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.
, Woot has occasionally partnered with another company to launch a new product with a one-day exclusive Woot sale.
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 Woot Wine), 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.
The designs are silk-screened on to 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.
Most designs are from established artists, but Woot also conducts a weekly design competition where users submit their own design ideas for a public vote. The three most popular designs 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.
and created a new site, sellout.woot.com which has since become part of Yahoo! Shopping. The business model is the same as on the main Woot site, although with different products. While the site itself is part of Yahoo! Shopping, all product offers and fulfillment are managed by Woot.
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.
Dallas, Texas
Dallas is the third-largest city in Texas and the ninth-largest in the United States. The Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex is the largest metropolitan area in the South and fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States...
suburb of Carrollton, Texas
Carrollton, Texas
-Climate:*On average, the warmest month is July.*The highest recorded temperature was 112°F in 1980.*The average coolest month is January.*The lowest recorded temperature was 1°F in 1989.*The most precipitation on average occurs in May....
. It was founded by electronics wholesaler Matt Rutledge and debuted on July 12, 2004. 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
T-shirt
A T-shirt is a style of shirt. A T-shirt is buttonless and collarless, with short sleeves and frequently a round neck line....
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
Yahoo! Shopping
Yahoo! Shopping is Yahoo's price comparison service.Yahoo uses the Kelkoo price comparison service it acquired in April 2004 to power Yahoo! Shopping in 6 countries.-External links:**...
. On June 30, 2010, Woot announced an agreement to be acquired by Amazon.com
Amazon.com
Amazon.com, Inc. is a multinational electronic commerce company headquartered in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is the world's largest online retailer. Amazon has separate websites for the following countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, and...
.
Sales model
Woot's taglineTagline
A tagline is a variant of a branding slogan typically used in marketing materials and advertising. The idea behind the concept is to create a memorable phrase that will sum up the tone and premise of a brand or product , or to reinforce the audience's memory of a product...
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. This sales model means that defective products cannot be replaced, only refunded. The company also doesn't provide any customer support for the products it sells. In case of problems, customers are advised to seek support either through the manufacturer or through the online user community on the Woot forums.
Woot pioneered the one-deal-a-day
One deal a day
Deal of the day is a type of ecommerce in which a website offers a single product for sale for a period of 24 to 36 hours...
business model, which has been implemented by many web-based retailers since. Customers may buy up to three of the day's item, although occasionally the site has 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 Ground
FedEx Ground is a shipping company which is a subsidiary of the FedEx corporation. It is headquartered in Moon Township, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Pittsburgh. Originally conceived as a lower cost competitor to UPS, Roadway Package System was created to take advantage of new barcode, material...
, FedEx SmartPost or United Parcel Service
United Parcel Service
United Parcel Service, Inc. , typically referred to by the acronym UPS, is a package delivery company. Headquartered in Sandy Springs, Georgia, United States, UPS delivers more than 15 million packages a day to 6.1 million customers in more than 220 countries and territories around the...
. All items regardless of size or weight are shipped for a flat $5 fee.
Woot sometimes sell items that it does not have in stock. This occasionally causes shipping delays.
Marketing style
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 the serious details, the real information about the product is always listed below the Woot-written description. Community users often do their own research and post their opinions on the user forums. The Woot staff designates some "quality" posts or excerpts, and features them at the top of the forum.Matthew Shultz used to record a daily podcast
Podcast
A podcast is a series of digital media files that are released episodically and often downloaded through web syndication...
that was published on Woot's main site. This podcast briefly described the item up for sale and includes a humorous song or skit. This has since been replaced by a weekly video podcast, which is usually not very good unless it is a "Happy Snacking" segment..
Woot used to conduct Photoshop contest
Photoshop contest
A Photoshop contest, or sometimes photochop contest, is an online game, in which a website or user of an Internet forum will post a starting image — usually a photograph — and ask others to manipulate the image using some kind of graphics editing software, such as Photoshop, Corel...
s among its forum users for cash prizes. There were also several honorable mention winners, who received free shipping on an order. Another entry was awarded a Monkey Prize
Booby prize
A booby prize is a joke prize usually given in recognition of a terrible performance or last-place finish. A person who finishes last, for example, may get a booby prize such as a worthless coin. Booby prizes are sometimes humorously and jokingly coveted as an object of pride.Booby prizes, however,...
, typically a random monkey-related item of little or no value, some awarded have yet to be delivered.
Community members have contributed back to the site by offering Woot-related services. These include status checkers, Dashboard and Windows Sidebar widgets to report when the next product is listed. There are also webcasts and other means to monitor the current meeting. Woot also has an official Twitter
Twitter
Twitter is an online social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based posts of up to 140 characters, informally known as "tweets".Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and launched that July...
account, which is among the 100 most-followed accounts on Twitter (as of May 24, 2010).
Woot-Off
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.
Happy Hour
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.Bag of Crap
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. Today, the BOC contains at least three "crappy" items and one bag 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 usually a 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.
Product launches
Beginning with the "gamma" launch of the Neuros MPEG 4 RecorderNeuros Technology
Neuros Technology is a Chicago, Illinois-based company that produces a number of audio and video devices with the brand name Neuros. Founded by Joe Born in 2001 as a division of Digital Innovations and previously operated under the name Neuros Audio...
, Woot has occasionally partnered with another company to launch a new product with a one-day exclusive Woot sale.
2-for-Tuesday
Since January 10, 2006, Woot has two-packs of products every Tuesday. Woot has used this day to offer quantities greater than a 2-pack, 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), or Three Dozen Tuesday (36-for-Tu36day). On June 28, 2011, Woot decided to take a step back from two for Tuesday and start selling a good item instead of an item that happens to come in pairs. They noted they have not completely retired the idea.Other Woot sites
Woot has created several spin-off sites, some of which follow a similar business model as the main site, while others provide other retail-related servicesWine Woot
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 Woot Wine), 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
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 are now offered on Saturday and Sunday as well.The designs are silk-screened on to American Apparel
American Apparel
American Apparel is a clothing manufacturer in the United States. It is a vertically integrated clothing manufacturer, wholesaler, and retailer that also performs its own design, advertising, and marketing...
shirts in Woot's Carrollton, Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
facility. Shirt design submissions are reviewed and selected by an editor in the Seattle, Washington
Seattle, Washington
Seattle is the county seat of King County, Washington. With 608,660 residents as of the 2010 Census, Seattle is the largest city in the Northwestern United States. The Seattle metropolitan area of about 3.4 million inhabitants is the 15th largest metropolitan area in the country...
offices of Woot.
Most designs are from established artists, but Woot also conducts a weekly design competition where users submit their own design ideas for a public vote. The three most popular designs 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.
Sellout Woot
On September 12, 2007, Woot entered into a partnership with Yahoo!Yahoo!
Yahoo! Inc. is an American multinational internet corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, United States. The company is perhaps best known for its web portal, search engine , Yahoo! Directory, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! Answers, advertising, online mapping ,...
and created a new site, sellout.woot.com which has since become part of Yahoo! Shopping. The business model is the same as on the main Woot site, although with different products. While the site itself is part of Yahoo! Shopping, all product offers and fulfillment are managed by Woot.
Kids Woot
Woot launched Kids Woot on August 18, 2009. It sells one item geared towards kids per day. Its first kids Woot-off was on October 28, 2009.Deals Woot
A website operated by Woot, Woot Deals is a deals aggregator with two types of listings. One is the "Sponsored Deals" section, which has listings recommended by retailers and manufacturers, and also includes links to other daily deal sites. The second section, "Community Deals", consists of deals recommended by the users. User 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.