Axle Payments, a company that has raised $165.2 million in funding according to Crunchbase, announced that it has rebranded itself as Denim. The company acquired the Denim.com domain name in advance of the rebranding. The news was announced on LinkedIn by Co-Founder and CEO Bharath Krishnamoorthy. TechCrunch published an article about the company’s latest fundraising round and rebrand.
In early July, I noticed and shared on Twitter that the Denim.com domain name appeared to have changed hands:
https://t.co/RWGx0LOjRT, which had been owned by Reflex, transferred to Cloudflare under Whois privacy. Domain name does not yet resolve to a website.
— Elliot Silver (@DInvesting) July 8, 2022
Denim.com had been long owned by Reflex Publishing before the domain name transferred from Namecheap to Cloudflare under Whois privacy. I was able to see this Whois change in my morning Registrant Monitor alert email from DomainTools back in July.
The company published a blog post to share why it decided to rebrand itself. As one might expect, a specific name like Axle Payments proved to be too limiting as the company grew. Here’s an excerpt from the article about why it rebranded:
“Our new brand reflects our broader ambitions to weave ourselves into the everyday fabric of the global freight economy. We are Denim, and we’re on a mission to advance the supply chain by accelerating the movement of money and data. Come join us.”
I wouldn’t be confident enough to speculate on the price the company paid to acquire Denim.com. My guess would be seven figures but your guess is as good as mine. I will reach out to Bharath and team to see if they are willing and able to share the sale price.
Based on the move from AxlePayments to Denim.com, I will add this to the list of corporate domain name upgrades I maintain at Embrace.com.
Thank you to Tim Hargis for sharing this with me.
I wouldn’t exactly call it an upgrade.
Very peculiar choice for a payments company.
Great name for a textile or garment company.
Mark kind of took the words out of my mouth. My comment was going to be like:
Because nothing says payments company like “Denim.”
Nothing says payments company like “Stripe” is something that could also be said, and they’ve done well.
The point of this rebrand, I think, is to enable the company to expand beyond its “payments company” identification.
Personal preference, but I think names like this work much better as brands when they’re used outside the “obvious” category – they’re too “on the nose” and generic in those spaces, IMO. I’d much prefer a brand like table.com if I’m a SaaS company vs. a dining table manufacturer.
I’m going to have to disagree there. In my opinion, and I think it’s a good one if I can say so myself, “Denim” is a far more extreme departure from helping identify a business. “Stripe,” on the other hand, is actually pretty good and works pretty well. It’s not about immediate, definitive, complete EMD-level information in the name, obviously. Neither of them have that. But “Stripe” is not at all extremely distant from the mark as “Denim,” and is in fact well suited. The word Stripe strongly and quickly evokes imagery of the magnetic “strip[e]” of a payment card, and acts as an excellent and appealing naming metaphor. Superior as a name to PayPal even, if one can get past how famous ingrained the name “PayPal” is so as to be able to see that.
I don’t know what “Denim.com’s” expansion plans are, but I’ve been around the block enough times to surmise the quality of that name will still wind up being a hugely tough sell regardless of what they add or do, and would gladly bet on it. That’s just a figure of speech so don’t offer to make a real bet, but I would literally bet with someone I know. 😉 Some of us could probably make up a better new name for them, just like how “Google” and “Yahoo” turned out so well. I got rid of my TV about a few years ago, but isn’t a term like “Denim” even a bit archaic now too? And frankly I think a lot of people might misspell it as well for the “radio test.” Not liking it at all from a marketing perspective. Liking “Stripe” a lot though.
Hmm, not sure why it’s happening today, but my reply showed up all the way below. Team Stripe all the way.
If they’re expanding to Canada, I have a domain for them.