Woot

Woot, Inc.
legal form	Incorporated
founding	2004
Seat	Carrollton , United States
management	Matt Rutledge, chief executive officer
Number of employees	~ 30
Branch	retail trade
Website	www.woot.com

The Woot Inc. is an American Internet - sales platform of Carrollton , Texas . The company was founded by electronics wholesaler Matt Rutledge and went online on July 12, 2004. Woot was one of the American pioneers of the “ deal of the day ” sales model on the Internet. On its website woot.com, Woot offers exactly one product at a discount price every day. The offer is valid for exactly 24 hours. The offer expires every day at midnight and is replaced with a different product. The range of products offered by Woot is large, but mainly revolves around computer components and electronics.

Surname

The name Woot goes back to a term from the internet jargon . The exclamation “ W00t !” Is particularly common in chats to express joy or success. At the same time, Woot can also be used as an apronym for the phrase “Want one of those”.

Business model

Under the motto " One Day, One Deal ", Woot offers a product every day until either the stocks are sold out or it is exchanged for another offer at midnight ( UST-6 ). Even if a product is sold out before midnight, it will not be exchanged for the following offer until midnight. The so-called woot-offs are an exception . As a special feature of the business model, the products are never announced in advance. The impulse buying this stimulates can lead to the product in question being sold out within hours or minutes. The Woot system is based on simplicity and surprise. There is no display for the remaining stock of products at Woot, but the order button is animated as soon as only 10 or less percent of the stock is left. Only when a product is sold out does Woot publish the sales figures. Shipping costs at Woot within the USA are a flat rate of 5 US dollars per order. Woot shipping is limited to the USA, which is why it has found many imitators elsewhere in the world .

Marketing communication

The company's marketing style is all about disrespect. The product descriptions often mock the product, the customer or Woot itself. Product weaknesses are admitted preventively. The users of the Woot community often do their own research and post their opinion in the forum . Articles that Woot employees consider to be of particularly good quality are highlighted in full or in part, regardless of whether they cast a positive or negative image of the offer.

The users of Woot can exchange their opinions on the daily product in the internet forum of the Woot platform .

Photoshop competitions organized by Woot are an important part of the Woot community . The three best entries will receive cash prizes. Some posts also receive an honorable mention and a shipping voucher for the next order. Entries that miss the topic or that have been poorly processed will be given the chance to win the Monkey Prize (“monkey” for monkeys; “to monkey” for “mischief”). This is rewarded with a low price, which is usually related to monkeys . Some users who are specifically targeting this prize therefore make extra bad posts in order to get this consolation prize.

Sales promotions

Woot-off

Occasionally, Woot deviates from its one-deal-a-day business model. During a woot-off , a series of products is offered for a period not previously specified, usually 24 to 72 hours. During these sales phases, sales typically exceed $ 1 million.

Bag O'Crap

Even with the Bag O'Crap (short: BOC, “bag full of crap”) that is offered now and then , Woot deviates from its usual structure. The BOC, which is officially sold under the title "Random Crap", is mostly a dollar worth of trinkets. Significantly more expensive electronic devices are added to some randomly selected boxes. Usually the BOC is completely sold out within a few minutes of the start of sales. Due to the popularity of the BOC in the Woot forum community, the site's operators keep coming up with word filters that ironically highlight or change words or parts of words that refer to the Bag O 'Crap. On April 1, 2007, the Bag was released as an April Fool's joke O'Crap for $ 1,000,001 plus standard shipping costs. At the same time, a coupon code in the product image gave a $ 1 million discount on the offer.

Product launches

On a few occasions, beginning with the Gamma launch of the Neuros MPEG4 recorder, Woot entered into partnerships with other companies in order to be the first and only seller to exclusively offer a new product on its website. These product “ launches ” are indicated by an icon that shows an animated rocket, which some users jokingly refer to as the “ pope's hat ”.

2-for-Tuesday

Since January 10, 2006, Woot has been offering two different products combined in one package every Tuesday. Woot also uses Tuesday again and again for other offers of larger product quantities. The sales promotions are then also called 3-for-Tu3sday or 4-for-Fuesday depending on the product quantity .

Podcasts

Every weekday when Woot discontinues a new product, the portal also publishes a podcast . The podcast provides a brief description of the product for sale and features an often humorous song or a parody of the item for sale. The podcasts are produced by Matthew Shultz .

Another recurring podcast feature is the Podcast Mailbag ("mailbag"). Instead of a song, e-mails received by Woot.com are read out. The “Mailbag” is accompanied by piano music . Voicemail messages from users are also repeatedly fed into the podcast. The mailbag regularly ends with the words: “E-mails that are not answered on air may not be answered at all; Therefore, if it is an emergency, do not email podcast@woot.com but dial 9-1-1 ”.

The Sonic Trivia Quiz is an irregular woot podcast. It's a mix of different sound clips and it's about identifying each clip and figuring out what they all have in common.

Days on which the Bags of Random Crap are sold will receive a Random Crap themed song (except for Woot-Offs) . The woot-off campaigns are also accompanied by themed songs. Songs for products that are related to the heart always have a pounding rhythm that is reminiscent of palpitations. Blood pressure or heart rate monitors are an example of these products.

Whenever products with Bluetooth technology are sold, the podcast recommends a specific song. Sung by a pirate crew, the song tells the story of “ Bluetooth , the most fearsome pirate of the Seven Seas ” and his nefarious deeds. In the middle of the song, each time a single voice from the pirate choir comes in, complaining that Bluetooth is a technology and has nothing to do with pirates. Products from the manufacturer Magellan , mainly GPS systems, are accompanied by a special song. It always begins with " Ferdinand Magellan , the circumnavigator, crossed the darned meridians , crossed the daredevil equator ..."

Woot services and applications

Some members of the Woot community have also developed services and applications for Woot. Some of them specialize in informing users as soon as a new Woot product is offered. Others focus on exchanging items purchased from Woot.

Spin-offs

wine.woot!

On May 22, 2006, Woot began beta testing a Woot platform for wines . The project officially started on October 2, 2006 with the slogan “One Week, One Wine” and has since offered a different type of wine every Monday. After just 2 months, Woot began to offer its own wine brand called the Monkey Prize . Described as Woot Cellars Cabernet Sauvignon , it sells for $ 59.99 and received an outstanding rating from American oenologist Gary Vaynerchuk in his video podcast wine tasting.

Since October 2007, Woot Wine has had the Labrats (“laboratory rats”), a concept to automatically receive an additional bottle of the weekly offer with a purchase at the right time and a little luck. Woot encourages those who receive this additional bottle to give their opinion on the wine in the forum. In addition to the pure positive or negative rating, users can also put their thoughts on the wine into words.

On November 1, 2007, wine.woot! first time adding cheese to wine. This was announced and sold as a surprise offer after the weekly wine was sold out.

The current legal situation in the USA only allows delivery in 42 of the 50 US states .

shirt.woot!

With Woot Woot Shirts provides every day a new T-shirt - Design for 15 US dollars. The project started on July 20, 2007 every weekday and has also been running on weekends since September 1, 2007. The first shirt sold featured the “ Woot Launch ” design to celebrate the launch of the website. It featured the aforementioned rocket icon that is used on woot.com to launch new products.

The t-shirts are screen printed at Woots facilities in Carrollton, Texas . Design tendering and selection is handled by the Woot office in St. Louis . Most of the designs are from well-known, established designers . The printing is done on one-color T-shirts from American Apparel. The basic color of the shirt is selected by the shirt designer and submitted with his motif proposal.

Weekly, Woot hosts t-shirt design contests on its website. Submissions must adhere to precise guidelines. Only the submitted contributions that meet all criteria will also be posted in the Woot blog and can be selected by the users. The design with the most votes will go on sale the following Friday. The second-placed design will be sold on Saturday and the third-placed design on Sunday. The winners receive prize money and a share of the turnover. Only registered users who have made at least one purchase are allowed to enter the competition.

In order to accommodate friends and families of the artists who could not order a T-shirt the conventional way, Woot Shirt has expanded its one-deal-a-day principle to include a second chance option. T-shirts that have been sold out or missed by the customer can still be reordered after the actual sales date. There are no restrictions on who can buy a second chance shirt. However, there is a complicated procedure which, based on the demand for t-shirt reorders, regularly determines which 20 motifs will end up in the second chance pool. The order links for older Second Chance shirts are not published on shirt.woot, but are collected by users in blogs. Based on the Random Crap on the Woot main page, the Random Shirts have been available on Woot Shirt for 6.66 US dollars since November 2007 .

sellout.woot!

On 12 September 2007 Woot entered into a partnership with Yahoo ! and developed the page sellout.woot.com. All product offers and purchase transactions are handled by Woot. However, the site can only be reached via the Yahoo! Shopping site. New products are offered seven days a week at the same time as on other Woot sites.

Statistical

On July 26, 2005 , a Woot blog entry released some initial statistical data on Woot customers. The wooter with the most purchases, bought 338 products in 114 different woots. Another user had spent $ 16,285.62 on Woot.

Another blog entry from September 20, 2005 revealed that on average 62% of customers buy exactly one copy of a product, 14% buy two and 24% buy three. On average, 27% of sales take place in the first hour. Woot reached its highest sales figures around 7 a.m. The US states with the highest number of product purchases per capita are Nevada (637), Washington (828), Maryland (865), California (876), and Utah (893).

In July 2007, Woot said it had over 800,000 registered members. According to Woot, the millionth item, a 4 GB USB stick , was sold on February 5, 2007. As a reward, the buyer of this article received the product from Woot. Even during and after a purchase, Woot publishes statistics on the daily supply. These include, for example, data on the first and last buyer, various measurement parameters for sales times, the level of experience of the buyer, among many other things.

Criticisms

Customer service

Woot does not offer a sufficient right of withdrawal and only accepts the return of defective products. According to his corporate identity , Woot is unfriendly to his customers and asks them to auction the products on eBay if they are dissatisfied and to attribute product defects to incorrect use.

Delivery times

To save costs, Woot uses FedEx Smartpost to deliver small and light items. This shipping method forwards the packages to the USPS state post before delivery , which extends delivery times . There is no paid overnight solution like with Woot Shirt on the Woot main page.

Server crashes

During a woot off or a BOC sale, the servers break down again and again due to the large customer request.

Competition censorship

Woot reserves the right to exclude contributions to its creative competitions without giving reasons.

Comparable German offers

Not only in the USA did Woot face competition with offers like "Zazz" and "MidnightBox". A 3 billion euro market for so-called live shopping has developed across Europe .

Around the same time that Woot was celebrating its first successes in the USA, the first sales platform based on a comparable system was launched in Europe. In 2005 the Dutch sales platform "iBOOD" went online.

The first purely German market successor to the American Woots was the Düsseldorf shop "Schutzgeld", which started operations at the end of 2006 and offered up to 20,000 users a price crime every day . Schutzgeld, however, closed its doors at the end of 2008.

After the Cyberport spin-off "Cyberport.24" had to give up shortly after its start, despite a participation by Hubert Burda Media , the Cologne sporting goods shop "Sportlet" was the fourth provider on the German market at the beginning of 2007.

In February 2008 there were about 14 German-speaking shops based on the "one-deal-a-day" business principle. Some of them operate like the American counterpart Woot! primarily the information technology and electronics sector. Other providers such as "ABeDi", "NIBOKI" or Sportlet specialized in travel, art or sport.

In addition to the sales system, some of the German shops are also oriented towards Woot's successful sales strategies. Among them, for example, the "Bag of Crap", podcasts and the "Woot Offs", which are offered in different variations and under different names. Some of you also surprised with your very own ideas: One of the big providers in the German market "Guut" introduced "vouchers". Another large provider "Preisbock" introduced purchase reviews and thus ensures the greatest possible transparency. "24Limit" offered themed offers such as condoms for World AIDS Day or a heart-shaped cake for Valentine's Day. At the end of 2008 there were already over forty live shopping providers in Germany.

Individual evidence

↑ "Jobs on Woot.com" (English)

↑ Woot Blog - July 12, 2007 - "Random Crap" ( Memento of the original from November 30, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (English)

↑ Woot.com: Winner Gallery: The Best of Contest No. 131 ( Memento of the original from September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (English)

↑ Adept Consulting: Woot-Off of April 26, 2007 (English) ( Memento of the original of April 21, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.

↑ Customer receives 61 "DLP TV as part of" BOC "purchase (English)

↑ Woot FAQ: What is Woot? ( Memento of the original from December 5, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (English)

↑ Sample Mp3s for a Woot! Mail Bag Podcast ( Memento of the original from October 31, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (English)

↑ Collection of various Woot services (English)

↑ Wootswap: Exchange site for Woot articles (English)

↑ Gary Vaynerchuks video podcast wine tasting (English)

↑ Woot Wine Newsletter (English)

↑ Wine Woot Blog Entry - Cheese Offer ( Memento of the original from March 2, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (English)

↑ wine.woot.com Woot Whine: Which countries are supplied to? ( Memento of the original from April 6, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (English)

↑ Woot Shirt Blog - Random Shirts ( Memento of the original from April 19, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. For the first time, Woot is also offering international shipping for 5 US dollars per order.

↑ Woot Sells Out! . In: Woot . Archived from the original on September 15, 2007. Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved September 12, 2007. @1@ 2

↑ Entry in the Woot Blog, July 26, 2005 (English)

↑ Entry in the Woot Blog, September 20, 2005 (English)

↑ Shirt.Woot: What is Shirt.Woot? ( Memento of the original from April 10, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (English)

↑ Woot Blog: Selling of the millionth article ( Memento of the original from January 19, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.

↑ Woot.com - What is Woot? ( Memento of the original from December 5, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (English)