I read an article discussing Aerin Lauder’s aspirations of building a successful fashion empire similar to that of Tori Burch’s company. Of course, I was most interested in speculating how the granddaughter of the legendary Estée Lauder would potentially market her brand online.
A couple of quick historical whois searches likely produced the answer. Aerin.com is currently owned by Aerin, LLC on Fifth Avenue in New York City. While I could go and search business records for the state of New York to see who owns this LLC, I think a historical Whois search may be even more accurate, since it’s possible that a manager would be listed on the LLC instead of Lauder.
A historical whois search from January 2011 shows the name has been registered to a person with the same email address as the current registrant, but the physical address was listed as 767 Fifth Avenue Suite 4200. This physical address happens to be the same as the Ronald S. Lauder Foundation, and of course, Ron Lauder is Aerin’s father.
Even more interesting to me is the provenance of the domain name. In 2010, the domain name was owned by Frank Schilling’s Name Administration. Whoever bought it likely paid a handsome sum for the domain name. According to the NY Post, Aerin Lauder is the third largest shareholder in the billion dollar company founded by her grandmother.
Although Aerin.com doesn’t currently resolve, it would seem likely that the domain name will be used by Lauder, and it could become home to the next fashion empire.
interesting, love the investigative work. If you ever get bored of domaining, I bet you would make a good PI 🙂