Canadian Tire Acquires Triangle.com from McClatchy

In early April, I noticed that the Triangle.com domain name had changed hands. I had made a couple of offers to buy the domain name, and when I went to do a follow-up, I saw that the domain name was no longer registered to the company that owned it for many years.

The Whois record for Triangle.com shows the Canadian Tire Corporation is now the registrant of the domain name. The McClatchy Company, a publicly traded media company had been the registrant and was using the domain name for a North Carolina news publication. When I learned the domain name had changed hands in early April, I reached out to a few people at Canadian Tire, and they said they could not comment on the acquisition.

Last week, Simeon Tuoyo mentioned on Twitter that the domain name had been acquired. I had a look at Triangle.com, and I see that the domain name is now being used for a program called Triangle Rewards. According to the website, “Triangle Rewards will be the new name of Canadian Tire’s My Canadian Tire Money program.”

In light of the Triangle Rewards website launch, I reached back out to the Canadian Tire Corporation to see if they could offer a comment. Unfortunately, I was told they “do not have any further details to share.”

Triangle.com is an exceptional domain name. I wouldn’t even speculate on the price to acquire Triangle.com, but I am sure it was a lot of money. Perhaps McClatchy will report the sale in a subsequent SEC filing, but my guess is the sale price won’t be reported or it won’t be possible to identify this particular domain name.

It seems that major companies often drop the ball when it comes to domain acquisitions, especially when it comes to brands that are rolled up under the main brand name. This seems like a very smart acquisition from the Canadian Tire Corporation, especially because the exact match TriangleRewards.com domain name appears to be owned and used by a different entity.