Hilco Streambank Marketing Vanity.com

Elliot Silver
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5

According to an article in the Milwaukee Business Journal, Vanity Shop filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy this past March. Following this filing, Hilco Streambank has been retained to sell the Vanity Shop assets, which includes the valuable Vanity.com domain name.

Hilco Streambank Executive VP Jack Hazan told me “the assets include the Vanity trademark for apparel, retail and accessories and the premium one-word domain name – Vanity.com.” Hilco set up a marketing page on its website that has more details about what is included in the sale as well as some detailed information about the company and its background.

When I received the email from Jack, the first thing that stuck out to me was the Vanity.com domain name. As you may recall, Vanity.com was involved in a 2012 UDRP dispute. When the decision was published and the panel ruled in favor of the complainant (Vanity Shop), Mike Berkens wrote an article about it and called it “a case that should be VERY troubling for all domain holders.” He also wrote that

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Mike Berkens is “Ready for More”

Elliot Silver
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26

On occasion, I have read comments that called early domain investors like Mike Berkens “lucky” for getting into the domain investment business at an early stage. Some people have even said that those early birds couldn’t replicate their business if they started today. Well, those people are wrong.

Mike Berkens famously sold the majority of his company’s domain portfolio to GoDaddy for tens of millions of dollars in 2015. Mike could retire and/or live a life of luxury, traveling the world with Judi and never buy or sell a single domain name again. Mike is still buying and selling domain names, and he is continuing to prove that he is one of the smartest people in the business who could start over today and still do better than 99.9% of everyone else in the business.

Case in point:

Mike acquired the domain name ReadyForMore.com a little over a year ago at a public auction on DropCatch.com. Anyone could have bid against Mike and beat his bids, but he prevailed in the

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Personal Info May Be Used When Selling a Domain Name

Elliot Silver
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0

When I am negotiating the purchase of a domain name as an investment, I might do some cursory research to learn more about the seller. If I am trying to buy a one word .com from a guy who owns a $15 million townhouse in San Francisco, I can probably forget about gradually increasing my offers by $5k every few months.

My presumption is that most buyers of domain names will also do research to discover potentially helpful information about the owner of the domain names. In fact, I would imagine the research done by buyers and their brokers may be much more than cursory information. This information can be used to determine the owner’s financial position and may also be used to establish some rapport with the domain owner.

It is probably pretty easy for someone to find out a domain owner’s personal details – like a home address. This may give a buyer a general idea about the person’s affluence. I would imagine if the domain name is owned by a company, this information may be more difficult to obtain. In general, I would imagine trying to prevent a prospective buyer from uncovering this type of information is likely a losing battle and would take a ton of time and effort.

Investigating social media is a good way for a prospective buyer to gain intel on a domain owner. Many people publish various telling

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HH.com Domain Name Changes Hands (Updated)

Elliot Silver
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2

According to Whois records, it appears that the high value HH.com domain name has sold. Based on the current Whois records showing the domain name is registered to an escrow account at 62.com, it would appear that the domain name was acquired by a China based domain name registrant. I noted the Whois change in my daily DomainTools Whois Monitor alert email, and George Kirikos also wrote about it on Twitter this morning:

Prior to the most recent Whois change, the domain name was privately registered. Prior to the private registration, the registrant of HH.com was The Hecker Law Group, a law firm based in Los Angeles, California. The law firm used HH.com for its website, and for the time being, HH.com is now forwarding to HeckerLaw.com. Whenever a company sells a domain name like this, it is wise to negotiate the usage of the domain name for enough time to ensure clients understand that the domain name was sold and another domain name is going to be used.

Assuming the domain name sold, I would imagine this deal is  in the 7 figure range. I looked through my records, and I see that HH.com was being brokered by John Mauriello  of DomainAssets.com at one point last year. I reached out to John

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Heritage Auctions Gets Publicity for OC.com

Elliot Silver
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6

A couple of weeks ago, Aron Meystedt of Heritage Auctions emailed me because his company is brokering the sale of the two letter OC.com domain name. It’s a nice domain name made valuable because it is a two letter .com, and “OC” could stand for Orange County, among many other meanings (or nothing at all).

Because of the OC acronym, it looks like the domain name is getting some good local coverage in Orange County. You can have a look at the article in the Orange County Business Journal (found at OCBJ.com). I also embedded a copy of the print edition, so you can see how it looks to readers who receive the paper version of the publication.

The OCBJ is a weekly journal, and the article about OC.com was on the front page and appears on the website’s home page. I don’t know how effective an article in the local business publication will be when it comes to selling this high value domain name, but I presume

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Essential.com Acquired for Essential Phone

Elliot Silver
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11

One of my few domain name regrets is that I didn’t acquire the Essential.com domain name when it was being marketed and auctioned by Hilco Streambank via its HilcoDomains.com platform in 2014. I am not sure if Essential.com was sold via auction or not, but it was acquired by Media Options, the company founded by  Andrew Rosener.

Andrew’s company sold Essential.com for a reported $250,000, according to NameBio. This sale ranked as the 25th largest public domain name sale in DNJournal’s annual domain name sales report. After the domain name was sold, it went under Whois privacy, where it has remained ever since.  This meant that the owner of the domain name has been  unknown.

Based on some news I read yesterday, it looks like we now know who acquired the Essential.com domain name and how this domain name will be used. This was confirmed in a tweet from Andrew Rosener.

According to articles in various tech publications  yesterday and today, a new mobile phone company has been launched by Andy Rubin, an entrepreneur and technology expert who co-founded and was CEO of Android. The company is called

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