Welcome to Domain Movers. This series highlights domain name transactions by companies and often brings to light potential new brand names, future advertising campaigns, domain name upgrades, rebrands, new products, services and much more!
Here are just a few detection’s over the weekend:
Cloud Buy Plc. of the UK, has acquired CrazeTrade.com at domain name aftermarket service Sedo.com for an undisclosed amount.
Marksmen has helped a currently unknown client acquire 22 year old domain name MinuteMan.com. The domain name held an offering price of $50,000 at the time of the transaction. Minuteman International, Inc. are the potential buyers, who make commercial floor cleaning equipment. There current domain name is MinutemanIntl.com, so it would be a big upgrade for them but the buyers could be somebody else also.
Clothing.com has moved out of Escrow.com’s DNHolding services. The domain moved into Escrow in December 2015 and appears to have likely been acquired by a domain investor, who used the past 2 years to make payments. There isn’t much on the website and focuses on a contact form currently.
Youthquake.com has been sold by Frank Schillings Name Administration Inc. The domain name held an offering price of $49,000. DotWeekly reader Louise had posted a comment on DotWeekly on December 15 about Youthquake.com being listed on Afternic and she had seen the word on the evening news, that it was named Oxford’s dictionary word of the year for 2017. 2 days later and it sells!
Youth Marketing service YPulse.com were the buyers.
Name Administration Inc. also sold ThreeDoors.com, which held a buy now of $27,300 and is now redirecting to STLRealEstateLLC.com. They also sold CallScan.com to QPC.com for an undisclosed amount.
David Wein Limited acquired MulticolorGems.com at Afternic for an undisclosed amount.
Viacom International Inc. has acquired SlimeFestival.com from its past owners. The domain was registered in March 2015.
1-800-FLOWERS.COM, INC. has acquired RoseBouquets.com from its past owners Top Notch Domains, LLC for an undisclosed amount, adding to the 5,600+ other domain names currently owned by the company.
Mondelez International, Inc. registered JoyDeliveries.com at GoDaddy on August 3, 2017 and has now transferred the domain to CSC, the main domain registrar they use.
Sony Pictures allowed Locomotion.com to expire on October 23, 2017 and the domain name followed the normal drop process and was released from the registry on December 14, 2017. The domain name sold for $13,555 on NameJet in the expired auction after the domain was grabbed on the drop.
MarkMonitor, the registrar and brand protection service used by Sony does not “partner” and send expired domains to any auction service but I’m sure MarkMonitor advised Sony that the domain name did have value and could be sold in the aftermarket. If the client takes this advise and decides to sell it, then they do, but MarkMonitor and any brand protection service can only advise and isn’t the final decision maker.
OD.com did it sell? That is unknown currently but the domain name is currently “Pending Transfer” out of Tucows and always holds the potential with the pending transfer status. 2 letter .com’s have had there up’s and down’s in 2017 but are always solid investments and loved by large corporations.
You’re genius!
As most people probably know, when you backorder a domain at DropCatch their system brings up a partial WHOIS, and this is a great feature.
I was so surprised to notice the following data on the following recent premium names that were in pending delete that I took screenshots:
ELISABETH.com
Registrar whois server: whois (dot) markmonitor (dot) com
Registrar: markmonitor inc
But the nameservers were to: ns1 (dot) katespadeandcompany (etc)
– – – – –
SLEPT.com
Registrar whois server: whois (dot) markmonitor (dot) com
Registrar: markmonitor inc
Name servers: ns1 (dot) markmonitor (dot) com (etc)
I don’t know anything about whether Mark Monitor is also just an open registrar where people hold names that are not managed by Mark Monitor. But you would assume that anyone who has names there of such quality would also be domain experts.
So added to Dot Weekly’s info today about LOCOMOTION, there are some very surprising domain movers happening here!
@Dave Tyrer,
Thanks for bringing Slept.com to my attention. That was a Pfizer owned domain. In general, MarkMonitor, CSC and most brand protection services do not partner with any auction services (conflict of interest), so any domains allowed to expire, simply follow the normal drop process. Why these companies are allowing valuable domains to just expire, I do not know, nor will we likely ever know. (to many cooks in the kitchen is often the reason). In general, MarkMonitor sells a lot of domains for clients that no longer need them, as I wrote about here: https://dotweekly.com/markmonitor-client-domains-sale-2/ but sometimes the clients do not take the advise given and simply allow the domains to expire.
Thanks for the extra info Jamie, and also for all your effort with the Domain Movers series.
I’ll read the article about client domain sales tomorrow, sounds very interesting.
It’s quite amazing that someone like Pfizer wouldn’t hold a name like SLEPT on the assumption that some time in the next 30 years they might need the name for some new sleep related product.
Frank continues his winning ways with his long-held .com investments.
Where you spend $30M+ a year acquiring domains, you need a return
Very Insightful Jamie.
Thanks.