Fitbit has become one of the most well known brand names in the fitness space. In November of 2019, it was announced that Google would be acquiring the publicly traded company for $2.1 billion. In addition to having an app, the company primarily operates on its brand match Fitbit.com domain name.
Fitbit founder James Park recently participated in the How I Built This with Guy Raz podcast on NPR. In addition to discussing how he built the fitness tracking device company, he also discussed what went into creating the Fitbit brand name and how his team decided on the Fitbit branding. It should be no surprise that domain name availability played an important role in naming the company Fitbit. In the podcast, Park disclosed that he bought the Fitbit.com domain name for $2,000.
You can listen to the podcast embedded below for the details (beginning at the 26 minute mark), but here’s the brief synopsis. Park emailed the owner who asked Park to submit an offer, and he offered $1,000. The owner countered at $10,000 and Park responded by improving his offer to $2,000. The domain owner agreed to the $2,000 price, and the Fitbit.com domain name was acquired for $2,000.
Using historical Whois records from DomainTools, I can see that the domain name was acquired sometime between August to September of 2007. I can also see that the prior registrant of Fitbit.com has an address in Russia, as Park stated.
The entire podcast is worth a listen when you have a chance. Thank you to Adam Strong, Co-Founder of NameBio and Evergreen.com, for sharing this with me.
Interesting you would write about this today because I just had an offer to buy one of our domains Prowik.com that has similar potential. Thanks for sharing.
It seems like you feel the need to post one of your domain names within every comment you post here. I find that annoying.
lol…I feel like one of my domain also has great potential and I find that soothing 🙂
“….you feel the need to post one of your domain names within every comment you post here.” So true.
ABC…….Always Be Chumming
I suspect this is BS,
a) Because the name is very ordinary
b) You’ve done this before and like magic the name never sells.
I don’t know how I’d feel if I sold the name for 2k and fitbit turned out as big as they are… Same can be said with the guy that accepted 5k for Twitter.com
True, but it would be pretty neat to have owned a domain name that was turned into a major brand name.
I never regret if one of my domain becomes famous even if I sold for just ok money. I feel good about it.
I have sold domain even to CNN among others. I only found out about CNN after they update the whois info after the purchase.
If the seller had no idea of fitbit the company prior, no TM filings, no reason to believe they were anyone with any serious backing…$2k was reasonable on that name. I mean its fitbit, before fitbit what was fitbit? Unless there is more to the story here I see no reason for a Russian a year in advance of TM filings to have any reason to have asked for more than the original $10k. Then when countered likely assumed who would ever pay more for fitbit.
FitBuds.com just sold on wholesale marketplace DropCatch for 4x FitBit.com price LOL https://namebio.com/fitbuds.com
It’s a much better name.
You see, the ones leaving money on the table are not the original brand creators, or domain registrant; the little guy or gal, that came up with the brand; the actual culprit who is leaving money on the table, is that domain expert, or king, who knows it all; who determines in advance what a domain name is worth before it is sold to an end user. That is who breaks the chain.
These wealthy domain experts have no respect for other people’s names until a sale is made.
Their job, naturally is to buy these bargain deals from the sophomore domainers, and then sell them to these corporations, but no, they rather clutch on to their domains they got from Network Solutions a generation ago, and then disrespect hard working domainer’s names, and sales.