Yesterday afternoon, Kate Buckley reported the sale of the Chocolate.com domain name via Twitter. Her company, Buckley Media, brokered the sale of the domain name:
Congratulations to our buyer and seller on https://t.co/PwqSwd0ncB! What an amazing asset! #domains #marketing #scale #chocolate #buckleymedia
— Kate Buckley (@katebuckley1) March 6, 2019
I reached out to Kate privately to ask if she could share more information about the sale. Kate said both parties on the deal wish to remain anonymous, but it was a seven figure deal. She was able to share the following with me:
“Buckley Media announces they have brokered the sale of chocolate.com. “While the exact acquisition price is under a Non-Disclosure Agreement, I am free to tell you that it was in the mid-to-low-seven figures,” said Kate Buckley, CEO of Buckley Media.
Buckley Media, a branding and domains agency, will be working with the new owners (who wish to remain anonymous) on next steps.”
Chocolate.com is a fantastic domain name. Not only is the chocolate industry massive, but Chocolate.com could easily be used as a brand that is totally unrelated to the candy business.
If more details emerge, I will share an update. I am looking forward to seeing how the domain name will be used in the future.
7 is forgivable, and understandable given the state of things now, but that particular domain should be 8.
Industry News Alert:
In a big major slap in the face to the entire domain name industry and all domain investors everywhere, Estibot has REDUCED its magical “appraisal” of crypto.com from $48,000 to $31,000 after it sold in July for $12,000,000:
https://imgur.com/gallery/4INYuNF
Doubtless many noticed the many times I pointed out the $48,000 “appraisal” previously and long after the $12m sale, including Estibot itself, whose rep in the blogs has certainly noticed some of my comments before.
The bizarre reduction is certainly curiouser and curiouser indeed; has anyone ever *not* seen Estibot “fix” their appraisals to reflect the higher price of a sale afterward? I’ve certainly never seen such a strange departure from that. I suppose, however, that perhaps in some twisted fashion they felt doubling down and making it worse was better than doing the “fix” to reflect the sale price, since the latter might tend to greatly compound and highlight the extreme embarrassment of the original $48k figure to begin with.
Congrats. The problem I have with this deal is this. You either talk or don’t. Now that an nda is involved this will be the mystery and could go in the books as fund.com so called sale imo. If rick owned this he would help the domain market and no nda. Also an nda does not have a range. Good way to piss off a party. If both parties were ok with range why not just report the exact price in the first place IMO.
With her other stuff congrats and proper reporting. This one was kinda disappointed.
Sure, I would rather know the price, but we know the following:
1) The domain name was sold.
2) The broker is Kate Buckley.
3) The sale price was ” mid-to-low-seven figures,” so it is narrowed down pretty well.
I don’t know the exact details, but I do like hearing about high end names changing hands. I would rather know than not know, ya know?
Could not agree with Elliot more on that.
To many unknowns to states any knows.
These kind of whispers advantage the new buyer, and what’s the point of saying anything if your not going to disclose fully. Who can verify any of this?
Chinese started this, as they loved to overstate their purchase price.