After watching Woot get bought by Amazon and raise its prices from $10 to $12 for shirts, at the same time resorting to using an inferior shirt, then to see them give weekly wootplus specials bringing back old designs that effectively nullified the original meaning of Woot's original 'one day one shirt' motto, I thought I had seen the end of the great fall of Woot. Woot had been a pillar of which others envied - One shirt, only available that day. Gone forever the next day.
I figured that Woot couldn't sink any lower - they already reneged on the idea that the design was one-day-only special by having wootplus.
Before, you could only get it that day, and if you missed it, it was gone forever. There was a special feeling from that. You had to make a choice, that day only, whether you were going to have that shirt or not.
And I had come to terms with what wootplus had done, with what Woot had become.
I figured that Woot already sank to it's depth, to the lowest it would go after raising prices and selling old designs on crappy shirts. I figured it wouldn't just turn into Threadless where the quality sucks and there's nothing special about your shirt. Millions of others had the same crappy starchy shirt.
But now that the 'woot catalog' is out, it's no longer what it used to be. Woot is no longer the "One design, One day." It's now "Every design. Every day."
Woot has lost the ineffable feeling it had before, where items were only available once, and gone forever after that. Now all of our woot shirts have lost their uniqueness.
I beg you to stop allowing the Woot concept to be wrung dry for every penny that you can get out of it.
The Woot concept is gone, in its stead is a dead, characterless, money-hungry Wal-mart of shirt designs.
I'm sorry to see Woot go like this. I suppose it's true, that it's better to die young with your ideals intact than to live long enough to sell it all for the sake of making money.
I'm so sorry to see you go, Woot.
A dear follower of Woot,
-JJrodny
