Welcome to Domain Movers, where DotWeekly highlights corporate domain name transactions and reports them to you. Today, I also take a look at two recently launched advertising campaigns and note the domain usage of both. Plus, the normal really useful info that is always included in Domain Movers from DW!
Here we go:
Sumo.com was the big news yesterday with SumoMe announcing the purchase of the domain for $1.5 million with the founder explaining the reason and 7 year struggle to acquire the domain. Since a lot of business is about marketing, Sumo used the $1.5 million dollar domain purchase and used it to its full extent IMO and easily gained a large amount of exposure just in free advertising! The articles about the purchase where far and wide, on Entrepreneur.com, DnJournal.com, Digital Journal, podcasts, Twitter, Facebook and more.
General Mills acquired the Annie’s brand in late 2014 for $820 million, which also included the companies EMD Annies.com, which has just switched name servers over to General Mills. The current remaining risk is that General Mills still has Annies.com registered at Network Solutions, where the majority of its portfolio is with CSC Corporate Domains, a much safer and better managed service.
NaturesMiracle.com which I reported sold to a Brandon Dodge on February 1, 2017 and I mentioned “United Pet Group, Inc. offers a pretty popular pet brand of products under Natures Miracle but they own and use the hyphen version of the domain Natures-Miracle.com. Fairly big fail IMO by United Pet Group not to secure this domain when it was for sale if Brandon is not connected to the company.” In the end, United Pet Group, Inc WAS behind the purchase as they now appear in whois records. This is an EMD upgrade for them, since they use Natures-Miracle.com for the brand. United Pet Group, Inc. is part of Spectrum Brands Inc. that owns many popular brands.
Brandon Dodge happens to be the Sr. Manager Digital Marketing And Communications at United Industries Corporation, which is part of Spectrum Brands, so they hid who they were as Brandon used his personal gmail during the purchase.
TicketStations.com has been acquired by a currently unknown CSC Corporate Domains client. The domain had an offering price of $4,500. The domain was registered on October 19, 2016 after expiring.
NBA and the Milwaukee Bucks D-League (development league) team registered the domain name FoxValleyBasketball.com. This is a local news thing for me, as Green Bay is about 30 miles north of “Appleton”, which is in the “Fox Valley”. The Bucks announced yesterday (2/8/2017) that they will have a D-league team there and build an arena. They registered the domain on February 1, 2017 and redirect it to a specific page on NBA.com.
GoDaddy and its NameFind portfolio continue to do the mission they set out and that is to allow business easy and affordable access to great domain names by pricing them and making it easy to purchase. PureConcepts.com Inc. took advantage of this and acquired Throwbacks.com. McMillan Study Guides, Inc. also did and purchased TestRight.com. Steve Max, Inc. purchased SchoolPrograms.com and Dental Health Essentials LLC purchased DentalKits.com to mention just a few recent sales for GoDaddy.
Amgen, Inc. registered LiveAhead.net with the .com currently for sale for $5K on Afternic with a $3,500 minimum offer. Duh Tip: Acquire the .com, then register the .net if needed!
Mondelez International, Inc. registered the domain name SPKCookies.com, adding to the 3,000+ domain names they own. Sour Patch Kids? Not sure on the acronym but they do own the Sour Patch Kids brand. There are DIY recipes but nothing commercially available currently.
Advanstar Communications was acquired by UBM for $972 million in late October 2014 and the Advanstar domain assets are just now changing ownership names in whois records to UBM. Some of those include ModernMedicine.com and Geri.com.
Plum Organics gets “edgy” and uses a catchy domain name with it in a new ad campaign via DoYourPartner.com . Baby food company talking about sex, makes sense! The domain name was registered on November 8, 2016 and is owned by Campbell Soup Company, who owns the Plum Organics brand. Campbell does a great job with the campaign and specifically with the domain name, even down to “the little things”, capitalizing each letter of the keywords when displaying the domain, aka DoYourPartner.com to make each word “pop” read and remember. They also built a stand alone site on the domain to remove any confusion or mixed in feeling. To me, this is how it should be done and I think they will be rewarded handsomely for doing it this way! Easy to share (via the domain and not a long link (think word of mouth), funny and more!
Dominos Pizza didn’t want to be outdone by Plum Organics and has launched “Dominos Wedding Registry”, also on its own domain name and website via DominosWeddingRegistry.com. Several weddings I have been to have had pizza, so it makes sense for Dominos to focus on this. Dominos had some “fails” in its launch/announcement IMO though. In the press release, they do mention the domain name for the promotion, yet they didn’t make it a hyperlink, so you can’t just click to visit. That is a no/no IMO and adds a bit of unneeded friction. Secondly, they jumble the words together in all lower case: dominosweddingregistry.com so it’s hard to read and remember.
Liptis Pharmaceuticals plopped down $31,500 and acquired MomsChoice.com via Sedo which screams a brand name. Frustrating to me, because I own MomsFinest.com which I think is a great “food” brand name, with it fairly priced at $7,850. Moms Choice comes across to me by just looking at it, being a “baby related product”. I am not sure what Liptis plans are for it, but they are a health care product company. To note, there are many trademarks for Moms Choice and sites like MomsChoiceAwards.com for an example.
I would have never pegged Annies.com for $820 million. Maybe single digit millions. Just goes to show that many evaluations can’t take into account a buyers ravenous hunger for a domain, driving them to spend anything to get it.
Great research as always!
You have got a nice name too (MomsFinest.com) and reasonably priced considering what MomsChoice sold for.