Woot: 'Holy crap! We got acquired by Amazon!'

by Stevie Smith - Jul 1 2010, 06:10

Increasing its dominance in the world of online retail by pursuing more quirky means to attract consumers, Internet giant Amazon.com has this week acquired Dallas-based deal-a-day store Woot for an undisclosed fee.

“Holy crap! Woot has signed an agreement with Amazon – yes, the Amazon – to become an independent subsidiary of the ecommerce colossus,” offered Woot via its official blog.

“More details forthcoming after we pick our eyeballs up off of the floor,” it added. “Anybody see where Lefty rolled off to?”

That irreverent, tongue-in-cheek reaction, which is indicative of Woot’s presence in the online market, was echoed by company founder and CEO Matt Rutledge, who announced the deal to Woot staff in a joke-laden email, saying:

“It will be as if we are simply adding one person to the organizational hierarchy, except that one person will just happen to be a billion-dollar company that could buy and sell each and every one of you like you were office furniture.”

Rutledge opened Woot in 2004 as a specialised online outlet that focused on selling one heavily discounted item each day – with said item usually being a consumer electronics peripheral or snazzy gadget.

For example, yesterday Woot was offering Apple iPod Nanos for just $99.99 USD, which is a significant discount when compared to the $122.54 USD price tag attached to the same product on Amazon.

The service has since multiplied across several such sites, which centre on selling items such as T-shirts, toys, and wine.

Amazon’s decision to purchase Woot is unlikely to surprise many in the tech industry, not least because the online retail titan acquired a minority stake in the company (worth around $4 million USD) back in 2006.

According to the deal, Woot will remain headquartered in Carrollton, Texas, and will operate much in the same way as other autonomous Amazon stores such as Zappos and Audible.

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