Woot (originally W00t) is an American Internet retailer based in the
Dallas
Dallas () is the List of municipalities in Texas, third largest city in Texas and the largest city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the List of metropolitan statistical areas, fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States at 7.5 ...
suburb of
Carrollton, Texas
Carrollton is a city in Dallas, Denton, and Collin counties in the U.S. state of Texas. As of the 2020 census, its population was 133,434, making it the 23rd-most populous city in Texas.
History
The area was first settled by Jared Ford i ...
. Founded by electronics wholesaler
Matt Rutledge
Matt Rutledge (born 1972) is an American Internet entrepreneur, best known as the founder and former CEO of the daily deal site Woot. Woot was acquired by Amazon in 2010, and Rutledge resigned his position at Amazon in 2012. Rutledge launched a ...
, it 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 daily deals for T-shirts, wine, children's items, household goods; two other sites offer various items. On June 30, 2010, Woot announced an agreement to be acquired by
Amazon
Amazon most often refers to:
* Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek mythology
* Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin
* Amazon River, in South America
* Amazon (company), an American multinational technology c ...
.
Sales model
Woot's tagline is "One Day, One Deal".
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. However, post-acquisition from Amazon, if a product sells out fast enough (generally before Noon CT), a new product will be offered for sale.
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.
Woot operates within the one-deal-a-day business model. Customers may buy up to three of the day items, 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 the Shirt. woot, items are shipped only to the United States, using
FedEx Ground
FedEx Ground, a subsidiary of the FedEx Corporation, is an American ground package delivery company headquartered in Moon Township, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Pittsburgh. The company began as Roadway Package System (RPS), founded in 1985 by t ...
,
FedEx SmartPost, or
United Parcel Service
United Parcel Service (UPS, stylized as ups) is an American multinational corporation, multinational package delivery, shipping & receiving and supply chain management company founded in 1907. Originally known as the American Messenger Company ...
. All items, regardless of size or weight, are shipped for a flat fee.
Woot sometimes sells refurbished items. In 2011, sales of 6,200 refurbished
Motorola Xoom
The Motorola Xoom is an Android-based tablet computer by Motorola, introduced at CES 2011 on January 5, 2011. It was the first tablet to be sold with Android 3.0 Honeycomb. The Verizon branded Xoom was the first tablet to run Android 3.1. The ...
s included a small number (about 100) that weren't refurbished properly and may have been sold with data from the devices' previous owners.
Marketing style
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 contest
A Photoshop contest, or sometimes Photoshop battle (often abbreviated to PS Battle), 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 ...
s 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.
Community members have contributed back to the site by offering Woot-related services. These include status checkers,
Dashboard For business applications, see Dashboard (business).
A dashboard (also called dash, instrument panel (IP), or fascia) is a control panel set within the central console of a vehicle or small aircraft. Usually located directly ahead of the driver ...
widgets, and
Windows Sidebar
Windows Desktop Gadgets (called Windows Sidebar in Windows Vista) is a discontinued widget engine for Microsoft Gadgets. Desktop Gadgets have been replaced by Windows 10 Taskbar Widgets. It was introduced with Windows Vista, in which it features ...
widgets to report when the next product is listed; there are also
webcast
A webcast is a media presentation distributed over the Internet using streaming media technology to distribute a single content source to many simultaneous listeners/viewers. A webcast may either be distributed live or on demand. Essentially, web ...
s and other methods to monitor the site's status.
Special events
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.
Beginning with the "
gamma
Gamma (uppercase , lowercase ; ''gámma'') is the third letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals it has a value of 3. In Ancient Greek, the letter gamma represented a voiced velar stop . In Modern Greek, this letter re ...
" launch of the
Neuros MPEG 4 Recorder on February 9, 2005, 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. 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 has been known to sell out in a matter of hours. 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
April Fools' Day or All Fools' Day is an annual custom on 1 April consisting of practical jokes and hoaxes. Jokesters often expose their actions by shouting "April Fools!" at the recipient. Mass media can be involved in these pranks, which ma ...
2008, Woot staged a Woot-Off offering the same product repeatedly, 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.
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. Happy Hour didn't quite work out and was put on an indefinite hold by August 2011.
World of Wootcrap
A special event was held on July 11, 2014 celebrating Woot.com's tenth birthday.
Acquisition
On June 30, 2010, Woot was sold to Amazon for a reported sum of $110 million. The CEO, Matt Rutledge, sent an E-mail
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.
Related sites
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
See also
*
List of deal of the day services
Deal of the day services, also known as flash sales or one deal a day, are websites that offer a single product for sale for up to 24 hours. For those sites that require membership, members may receive online offers and invitations in postal mai ...
References
;Citations
;Notes
Bibliography
''Time'' magazine's "50 Coolest Websites 2005"''PC Magazine'' site review''Motley Fool'' articleNational Public Radio ''All Things Considered'' interview with Woot writer Jason Toon and developer Luke Duff (Streaming Audio)
External links
Woot website
{{Amazon
Internet forums
Online retailers of the United States
Companies based in Carrollton, Texas
Retail companies established in 2004
Amazon (company) acquisitions
2010 mergers and acquisitions
Deal of the day services