Amazon purchases Woot in $110m deal
Online retailer Woot.com has been snapped up by e-commerce leviathan Amazon in a deal reportedly worth $110m.
The eccentric business model employed by Woot sees the shop adopt a zany approach to flogging stuff with the retailer substituting vast stocks of browsable useful items replaced with a solitary product or ‘bag of crap’ every day.
Buyers then pile in to purchase the item until it sells out or until midnight whereupon a new line is put up for sale. This business model saw the firm rake in $164m dollars in sales in 2008 and it has been named as the fastest growing retailer in the US.
Despite a dodgy returns policy - dissatisfied customers are advised to punt unwanted items onto ebay and a less than helpful helpdesk, buyers are asked to type any product queries into google -
Woot began life in 2004 as a vehicle for offloading surplus inventory from a computer components company. From there it has gone from strength to strength via selling random goods as varied as a tumble drier or ‘bacon flavoured salt’.
Matt Rutledge, Woot’s CEO, said: “We think now is the right time to join with Amazon because, quite simply, every company that becomes a subsidiary gets two free downloads until the end of July, and we very much need that new thing with Trent Reznor’s wife on our iPods."