Woot

For the internet slang term, see w00t.

Woot, Inc.

File:Wootlogo.gif
Company type	Private
Industry	Retail
Founded	2004
Headquarters	Carrollton, TX
Key people	Matt Rutledge, Founder & CEO
Products	Electronics, Household Goods, etc.
Number of employees	30+
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. Woot was one of the early pioneers of the "One deal a day" business model on the internet. Woot offers one discounted product each day on its web site, woot.com. The product is available for 24 hours; it "expires" at midnight (US Central time) and is replaced by a different product for the next day. For the first several months of operation, the site only offered a new item from Monday to Friday, with Friday's item carrying over until Monday at 12:00AM, or until all items were sold. In 2005, Woot began offering products 7 days a week.

On September 12, 2007, Woot entered into a partnership with Yahoo! and created a new site, sellout.woot.com.

Woot has a community of customers who share their opinions on the site’s forums. Products vary but tend to emphasize computer components and electronic gadgets.

Woot takes its name from the widely-used online interjection “w00t!”. Each product sold is referred to as the "woot."

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 of frenzied buying. In contrast to a market characterized by ever-expanding consumer choice, the Woot.com approach relies on the elements of simplicity and surprise.

Customers may typically buy up to three of the day's item, although the site has been known to limit product quantity to one per customer on occasion. Woot does not reveal how many units remain available in a given sale, but animates the "I Want One" button when 10 percent or less remains. If the product sells out, the site lists how many were sold.

The company charges a shipping fee of $5.00 per order regardless of quantity of items purchased, shipping weight, or shipping destination. Woot mainly uses FedEx and ships only to addresses within the contiguous United States, although in June 2007, they started using FedEx SmartPost, a service that uses the US Postal Service for delivery, for some smaller items.

Marketing style

We are Woot.com

Our tiny profit is lost.

Haiku ads don't work.

The company’s marketing style is irreverent. 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 — positive, negative, or indifferent — 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.

Special events

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 indicating the usually undisclosed amount of product remaining.

During an average two day Woot-off, Woot's sales typically exceed one million dollars.

Bag O' Crap

In lieu of typical product sales, Woot occasionally offers a fukubukuro-like blind grab bag called “Bag O’ Crap” (“BOC”). This includes dollar store items and may also randomly include (significantly) more valuable/expensive electronics items . Customers may buy up to three "craps" for $1.00 each to go in their single bag. (In truth, the bag and the craps usually ship inside some sort of box) Shipping costs $5 regardless of the number of craps -- 1, 2, or 3 -- ordered. Customers normally purchase in quantities of three to both minimize the percentage cost of shipping as well as increase the chances to get a high-value item. The "BOC" typically sells out within seconds of furious ordering, overloading the woot.com servers in the process as potential buyers frantically try to reload the ordering pages. This is considered to be part of the fun by most Woot forum members, but leaves many people angry and frustrated.

Officially, the Bag O' Crap is sold under the title of "Random Crap."

Since "BOCs" are often referenced in the Woot forums, Woot's forum software filters the text to spell out tongue-in-cheek phrases with the same initials, such as "Blinged-out cabbage", "Braille on Cookies", "Bandolier of Carrots", and others. Sometimes, other common phrases in the forums are replaced, as well. For the June 1, 2007 BOC, the lone word "crap" was replaced with the phrase, "crizznap, foo." On July 12, 2007, "WTF" was replaced with "Where's the Feet?".

On April 1, 2007 as an April Fools Joke, the Bag O' Crap was offered for the price of $1,000,001.00 with the regular price of $5.00 for shipping. A coupon code ("please") was discovered in the product image and utilized by Woot users to receive a $1,000,000 discount on the BOC, thus reducing the price to the standard one dollar.

Product launches

On a few occasions, beginning with the "Gamma" Launch of the Neuros MPEG 4 Recorder, Woot has 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".

2-for-Tuesday

Since January 10, 2006, Woot has offered two-packs of products every Tuesday. These products have ranged from TV games to keyboard and mouse combos to toasters. A customer can purchase up to three two-packs, for a total of six items bought. Woot also uses this day to offer larger quantities, such as a 10-pack of keyboards, or a "4-for-Fuesday" offering of lighted USB cables.

Woot Wine

Woot began beta testing Woot Wine (aka wine.woot!) on May 22, 2006, and officially launched the spin-off on Monday, Oct 2, 2006. The slogan is "One Week, One Wine". They provide identical statistics to the main site, as well as the "percentage of sales per day". The week begins on Monday.

On December 4, 2006, Woot began selling their own private label on Woot Wine. The name of the wine is Monkey Prize and it is described as a Woot Cellars Cabernet Sauvignon. A Half case of the wine has been sold for $59.99 and received an 89+ review from Gary Vaynerchuk in Episode 137 of WineLibrary.tv, a video podcast wine tasting.

Woot Shirts

Also known as shirt.woot!, the site 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 are also offered on Saturday and Sunday. All shirts cost $10 on the day they are introduced. They can also be purchased later for $15 each. Unlike Woot's other sites, shipping is free via FedEx SmartPost, although an overnight shipping option is available for $5. The first shirt sold was a "Woot Launch" shirt to celebrate the launch of the site, modeled after the rocket ship, or "Pope hat" icon associated with new product launches.

Process

Woot shirts are silk-screened onsite in Woot's Carrollton, Texas facility. Shirt design submissions are reviewed and selected by editors in the St. Louis, Mo. offices of Woot. Most designs are from established artists, but Woot also conducts a weekly internet design submission contest (see Shirt Design Derby below).

Prints are made on blank t-shirts purchased from American Apparel. Base shirt color is chosen by the designer, and to date a large array of color selections, ranging from white to pastels to bright colors to black have all been used.

Shirt Design Derby

Each week, Woot Shirts accepts design submissions from the public via their website. A Derby theme is announced each Thursday at noon. Design submissions are accepted beginning on Friday at noon. Submissions must adhere to Woot guidelines (strictly enforced). Accepted designs are posted in the contest blog as they are received, and users vote on their favorite(s) throughout the week. The shirt design with the greatest number of votes is offered for sale on the following Friday. The 2nd place design is offered on Saturday, and the 3rd place design is offered on Sunday. During the voting period, the number of votes received for each design is updated and displayed, except for the top 4 candidates. To minimize vote padding, votes totals are hidden for the top 4 - Woot calls this process the 'Fog of War'. Design winners receive an award payment and percentage of future sales.

Second Chance

Primarily to accommodate friends and family of the artists who may want a shirt but could not order on the original offer date, Woot shirts has modified the 'one day one deal' approach of the parent site. They currently offer shirts on a '2nd chance' basis. Shirts that sell out, or were simply missed, may still be purchased, but for $5 more after the original offer date. There is no restriction on who can order a 2nd chance shirt. Shirt.woot does not publicize a direct way to find historical links to 2nd chance offerings, but contributors to the daily blogs have maintained a running list.

"Reckoning"

Beginning on Monday August 20, 2007, Woot shirts introduced the 'Reckoning' process for determining which shirts would remain available on a '2nd chance' offer. By compiling the sales statistics on shirts that are in demand after each shirt's initial launch day, Woot staffers eliminate weekly all but the 10 top selling shirts from the 2nd chance pool. These shirts are then designated RSVP (Reckoning Survivors, Very Purchasable) Shirts offered in the current week and in the prior week are not initially 'Reckoned', but begin accumulating 2nd chance sales statistics immediately for use in 'Reckoning' beginning in their third week.

Shirts no longer available become RIP (Reckoned Into Perpetuity). As a result of 'Reckoning', the total number of different shirts available for purchase at any time should always be between 17 (on Monday) and 24 (on Sunday).

Until further notice, Woot intends to continue the availability of the "Woot Launch" shirt, and will not subject it to the 'reckoning' review.

Sellout.woot

Beginning at midnight on 12-Sep-07, woot! launched a site in partnership with Yahoo! called sellout.woot. Sellout.woot claims to tap the potential market and vendor base of Yahoo! shopping to offer a separate daily deal seven days a week. While the site is a partnership with Yahoo! and accessible via the Yahoo! shopping front page, all product offers and fulfillment appear to be managed by woot.

See the woot announcement here: http://www.woot.com/Blog/BlogEntry.aspx?BlogEntryId=2892

Photoshop contests

Woot also offers Photoshop contests every weekend, with cash prizes going to the top 3 entries. There are also several honorable mention winners, each of which get free shipping on an order. One off-topic or poorly edited entry is awarded a Monkey Prize, which is typically a random monkey-related item of little or no value. Oftentimes, users will create an intentionally poor entry, inverting the typical goal of achieving the first, second or third prizes.

Certain images recur in contest entries. "Brave Woman," the name of one such image, is a woman who originally appeared in conjunction with the Oct 22, 2004 Woot-Off, which began with sale of the "Ab Tilt Abdominal Exerciser with Backrest" and culminated with the sale of item titled “Brave Woman Adventure Kit”.

Statistics

Currently

As of July 20, 2007, Woot states that it has "over 800,000 registered members". Woot says that it sold its 1,000,000th item, a 4GB micro hard drive, on February 5, 2007.

September 2005

On September 20, 2005, a post in the Woot Blog provided several statistics about Woot sales, including the following:

• On average, 62% of customers buy 1 of an item, 14% buy 2, and 24% buy 3.
• On average, 27% of sales occur in the first hour. The next highest sales (8%) occur at 7 am Central time.
• The top 5 states ranked by woots purchased per capita are:

1. — Nevada — 1:637
2. — Washington — 1:828
3. — Maryland — 1:865
4. — California — 1:876
5. — Utah — 1:893

July 2005

On July 26, 2005, a post in the Woot Blog provided several statistics about Woot customers, including the following:

• One wooter has purchased 338 products from 114 different woots.
• The top spender (a different user) has spent $16,285.62.

During a sale

During a sale, clicking on the "Product Stats" tab, or reading the first post in the product's forum page, will reveal:

• the "first sucker" to purchase the woot
• the "speed to first woot" purchase
• a quantity breakdown, how large a percentage of users bought one, two or three items
• the percentage of woot sold during each hour
• the purchaser seniority, how long they've been a woot member
• the purchase experience, how many woots each buyer has purchased previously.
• "Quality posts" — insightful comments or questions posted by Wooters about the product. (forum only)
• the purchaser experience for the particular .woot, how many woots each buyer has previously purchased from the particular domain

After a sale

After a sale, the item's page in the Woot's forum will usually list the above statistics plus:

• item quantity
• last order time
• "Woot Member to blame for sellout" or last purchaser (In the event of a non-sellout) (user who purchased the last item)
• order pace
• "Woot Wage" (a calculation of how much revenue Woot made per hour based on the order pace)

Podcasts

On every weekday, at the same time as products are announced, Woot.com also publishes a podcast. This podcast briefly describes the item up for sale, and features an often-humorous song or skit relating to the product up for sale. These podcasts are recorded by Matthew Shultz.

Songs/Skits of Note

There are several "special" podcast songs/skits that recur periodically. These include:

Podcast Mailbag

Occasionally, instead of the usual song or skit, the podcast features a "Podcast Mailbag" segment, where Matthew reads and replies to a piece of e-mail submitted to Woot.com. Both the listener's mail itself as well as Matthew's reply to it are often humorous and/or sarcastic in nature. These readings are accompanied by a piano melody, and previously ended with the sentence: "E-mails not answered on the air will probably not be answered at all; therefore, if you have an emergency, do not e-mail podcast@woot.com; instead, dial 9-1-1."

With the advent of SayNow, the Woot Podcast Mailbag has consisted of voicemails left by users using the SayNow system. Matthew plays the voicemails on the podcast, often with derisive and humorous comments. The podcast mailbag ending line has now become: "E-mail your comments or questions to podcast@woot.com, or click the goldenrod phone icon on the main page at woot.com for instructions on using SayNow to listen and reply to podcasts on your mobile telephone."

Sonic trivia quiz

A semi-periodic woot podcast where the podcast team "squish" together various sound clips so they are not to be readily identifiable. Then there is a competition to correctly identify each clip and what they all have in common. The winner gets a heartfelt congratulation and a prize of little or no monetary value. As of now, the 37th and final Sonic Trivia Quiz aired Thursday June 21st, 2007.

Random Crap Song

On days when Bags of Random Crap are being sold (except during Woot-offs), the podcast features a "Random Crap" theme song.

"Woot-off Song" or "Theme for Wooting-Off"

While a Woot-off is running, a podcast featuring the "Woot-off Song" is run.

Thump-THUMP

Whenever a heart related product is sold (blood pressure or heart rate monitor, etc.) the song features a thump-THUMP rhythm and is sung in a recurring style.

Bluetooth the Pirate

Whenever a product related to the Bluetooth wireless technology is sold (Bluetooth USB adapters, cell phone headsets, etc.), a special song is featured. Sung by the crew of a pirate ship, this song tells the tale of "Bluetooth, the most fearsome pirate on the Seven Seas" and his many nefarious deeds. During the middle part of these songs, a lone voice of dissent among the crew speaks out, complaining that Bluetooth is a technology, and has nothing to do with pirates. The Captain always comes back with a smart rebuke.

Ferdinand Magellan

Whenever a product related to the Magellan company is sold (mainly GPS devices), a special song is featured. It always begins with the lyrics "Ferdinand Magellan, the Circumnavigator, He crossed the danged Meridians, He crossed the danged Equator..." One notable listener mailbag consisted of a teacher writing in to ask for the chords of the song, so that he could use it in his class.

Related services and applications

Community members have contributed back to the site by offering Woot-related services. One of the popular ones is an alert service called WootAgent, which is a desktop application that alerts when the next Woot product is listed. Others include a forum, wootswap, to swap Woot-purchased items, an Apple Dashboard widget, a Vista gadget, an IRC bot that spits out the product name, and other programs that monitor what item Woot is selling.

Woot's success has also spawned multiple competitors and similar businesses. Woot's One Deal a Day business model continues to be copied by sites such as Zazz and MidnightBox. Woot's only known offshoot sales sites are Woot Wine and Woot Shirts.

Criticisms

Customer Service

Woot does not have a satisfaction guaranteed return policy, they only accept returns of defective products. "If you buy something you don't end up liking or you have what marketing people call 'buyer's remorse,' sell it on eBay. It's likely you'll make money doing this and save everyone a hassle. If the item doesn't work, find out what you're doing wrong. Yes, we know you think the item is bad, but it's probably your fault. Google your problem, or come back to that product discussion in our community and ask other people if they know. Try to call the manufacturer and ask if they know."

Woot Wine's Business Model

As of August 2006, various state laws only allow delivery to thirty two states (and DC) while Woot only ships to the lower 48 states in normal cases.

Woot, like all internet wine sellers, must be in compliance with state tax and liquor laws and therefore the wines are shipped directly by wineries to individuals.

Slow Delivery

To save costs, Woot is now using FedEx Smartpost shipping for small and light items. This shipping method hands off the package to USPS before delivery. shirt.woot.com offers overnight shipping for an extra $5, but no expedited solution has been provided for the main site as of yet.

Woot's e-commerce servers

During a Bag Of Crap sale, Woot's servers can get bogged down. Many customers complain that Woot should upgrade their servers to handle this load even though it only lasts a few minutes.

External links

General

• Official website
• If you don't know Woot by now - Informative blog post
• Woot Wine
• Woot Shirt
• Woot Wiki
• Wootoff checker (eases load on woot servers during wootoff)

Reviews

• Reviews of Woot from Epinions.com
• PC Magazine

References

• Time magazine's "50 Coolest Websites 2005"
• PC Magazine site review
• Dallas Observer article
• Wall Street Journal article
• Motley Fool article
• New York Times article (Registration Required)
• National Public Radio All Things Considered interview with Woot writer Jason Toon and developer Luke Duff (Streaming Audio)
• Involve Magazine article on Dave Rutledge