Since there are a few discussions going around regarding these past few days, it'll be a good idea to move it all into one thread. Credit goes to Neuro for the title; the two of us were discussing this last night at way-too-late-or-is-it-way-too-early o'clock.
As we both saw it, running out of Royal Blue blanks caught shirt.woot by surprise, as this Holiday season's sales have been much stronger than trends would have indicated. Though I didn't run the full numbers, a rudimentary run through the numbers indicate that sales have been on par with last year ... which was A LOT!
Anvil blanks ran out with Thursday's shirt, Wrinkled, In Time; all women's sizes, all kid's sizes, and medium through x-large in men's sizes. By then, the derby winners would have been selected already ... and at that point, it was clear they need more Royal Blue blanks!
As I imagine, Thursday morning and afternoon was spent scrambling for shirts. It's the weekend before Christmas, folks will be off ... so there's only so much that could be done.
When I checked AA's wholesale inventory on Friday, they were sold out of M2XL and M3XL - perhaps by Woot. So it was then established that there's a finite amount that they can use for two designs ... what would you do? You conserve your limited resources, hence an explanation to why both Wrinkled, In Time and Counting Sheep have not resumed sales yet.
This isn't a finger pointing thread. This isn't a thread to argue about one shirt supplier or another. This is a thread to discuss why there are sales restrictions right now, and I have to commend shirt.woot staff for how it's been handled so far. Convoluted, sure, and many customers left scratching their heads, but given the circumstances, it's about the fairest approach they had for the three artists, NBlottie, Kevlar51, and Walmazan.
There's still the reckoning aspect that thedarkbunny raised in this post ... what's your take on how shirt.woot should handle it?
