Meh
So, anyone that has followed the evolution of Woot.com (one of the original deal a day sites) knows that the company grew wildly after its founder Matt Rutledge really got some really great sales going. One of Woot’s most interesting things was that they were very strictly one item per day and that was it. They started to expand into things like t-shirts and other products, but it was mostly one item a day. They also had some of the wittiest product sales pitches in the universe and today, after they’ve been acquired by Amazon, they pretty much seem like Amazon’s dumping ground.
If Amazon can’t sell a product or needs to find a way to sell something quickly, they will either put it up on Amazon’s gold box deals, which are usually products people want, or they will more than likely throw it on Woot.com. The way that they do this is either through putting it up on sale in one of the categories available, or they will sneak it into a ‘Woot-Off’. A Woot-Off is when products MUST be sold out and once they sell out, Woot will move on to another item, eventually reaching the ever sought after Bag of Crap. You buy a bag, or bags of crap for basically $1 and pay the $5 flat shipping rate and you can basically get anything.
In fact, one guy paid basically nothing for an entire gaming rig thanks to Woot.com’s Bag of Crap sales.
Now, moving away from Woot.com and Matt Rutledge’s old project and look at his new project, Meh. Meh.com is quite literally Woot.com all over again, but with a much sharper edge and at least to me, much funnier. Meh is a project of his new company called mediocre. And he does some really interesting things with the data that Woot didn’t do in the past, which makes buying things on Meh all the less meh. For example, Woot usually tells you who bought the first item and which states bought what and how much of that item. But Meh does thing entirely differently, and even more openly. This is all thanks to a Kickstarter campaign that helped fund the creation of the new site.
Meh
And the best part? You can buy it, or just say meh. While they don’t exactly say what will happen if everyone meh’s a certain deal, it will be interesting to see how this new model does against Woot.com because they still are in direct competition with another. I think Matt is right to focus on one deal per day rather than flood users like Woot.com does now.
Mehs
