Even Woot, the coolly irreverent Internet retailer that pioneered the flash-sale concept, screws up every now and then. Asked yesterday about woot.com‘s worst “daily deal” ever, founder/CEO Matt Rutledge recalled the sale of $150 Dick Tracy wristwatches from Richardson-based Fossil. Woot! tried to hawk the watches for about $99 apiece.
“We sold about 15 of them,” said Rutledge (pictured). “Then we went, ‘Oh yeah; nobody wants to wear a Dick Tracy wristwatch. Guess we should have thought of that.’ Luckily our wholesale distribution [division] cleaned up the mess.”
Spectacular failure is rare at six-year-old, Carrollton-based Woot, which was just snapped up by Amazon.com for a (reported) $110 million in cash. Rutledge and Woot CFO Derek Chapin made a rare appearance last night at a meeting of the DFW chapter of TeXchange, a technology entrepreneurs’ group.
