Laurel & Wolf was a popular and growing interior design business that had raised over $25 million in funding, according to CrunchBase. A March of 2019 article in a trade publication called Business of Home detailed the failure of the business and how the company was shut down.
It’s always interesting to track what happens to domain names owned by companies that are shut down. Oftentimes, the domain names are sold along with whatever valuable assets remain, such as a customer list, trademarks, and inventory. In the case of Laurel & Wolf’s domain name, LaurelAndWolf.com, it is up for auction today in a GoDaddy Auctions expiry auction.
At the time of publication, this auction is one of the leading auctions on the board at GoDaddy. There have been 46 bids from 10 bidders, and the high bid stands at $2,751:
I would imagine people are bidding on the domain name because of the presumed amount of traffic the domain name may have. On the auction page under Estimated monthly pageviews, GoDaddy estimates a total of 2,846.
Personally, I stay away from brand domain names like these, especially when it seems like there was a lot of negativity surrounding the brand before it folded. According to the Business of Home article I referenced, “the vast majority of Laurel & Wolf’s Yelp reviews flipped from a mixture of positive and negative to a wall of one-star rants.”
I am curious about how high the bidding will go, so I am going to keep an eye on it. There are just over 4 hours remaining in the auction today.
Terrible domain name.
Low value name, but…. buy sub $2500 and publish single page on-topic notice w redirect to an unbranded hub site for topic, with links out to competing active businesses. Tune as needed…to support those active businesses.
Better than a common monthly ad spend? After 3 months you break even? Sounds like a smart business plan.
Some professional seos (“competitive web publishers”) do this work full time…studying the web, search engines, economics of competitive web publishing…for this decision support. A very dynamic industry for analysis…but also full of opportunity.
Google says X or Y tactic doesn’t work. Marketers say N or M method isn’t proven… but business owners watch business metrics, make decisions that assume risk and hedge as needed.
No idea what they do or did, but it’s always interesting to see that a company can get $25M in funding and close. Only one of two things make sense:
1. Complete mismanagement
2. Fraud