Quidsi was one of the most successful companies that utilized keyword .com domain names as standalone brands. The company was founded by Marc Lore, who went on to found Jet.com, and he is now CEO of Walmart’s ecommerce business operations.
Quidsi’s most well-known brand was Diapers.com, and it also operated Soap.com, Wag.com, BeautyBar.com, Casa.com, and YoYo.com. In 2010, Amazon acquired Quidsi for $545 million before shutting down Diapers.com and other brands it acquired from Quidsi in 2017.
One thing I don’t believe was ever shared publicly was how much Marc Lore paid to acquire the Diapers.com domain name. In an interview with Gary Vaynerchuk, Lore revealed he paid $600,000 to purchase Diapers.com. The company had started out on 1800Diapers.com before making the major upgrade to Diapers.com.
The acquisition date is not shared in the video, but some brief research using the DomainTools Whois History tool shows that Diapers.com was likely acquired between December 26, 2008 and January 1, 2009. On December 26th and for many years prior, the domain name had been owned by a registrant in Washington State. On January 1, the domain name Whois registration went private. Bolstering this Whois history research is the Archive.org history of Diapers.com, which shows a big change to the website in early 2009.
If this sale is retroactively charted by Ron Jackson, it would either tie for the #13 sale of 2008 or it would tie as the #11 sale of 2009. There is no sale price listed for the domain name in NameBio.
The video interview is embedded below. Thanks to Adam Strong for sharing this with me.
Nice history on Diapers.com . A little story that I can share, in 2010 I believe Amazon went and acquired many cctlds in about a months time – I sold Diapers.co.in to Amazon, little did I know that it was them. It was an email , that I couldn’t find out who was behind it, but ended up agreeing to the price of $20k for Diapers.co.in (India cctld) in a couple of days.
Thank you Amazon for making my city the most expensive and having the most millionaires in the world!
LOVE it…
Bring in the money!!
People who hates Amazon are those that shop the most at Amazon….go figure!!!
why,,,, because they are big fat Lazy ass!!..
Wonder what it would sell for today?
The value of EMDs has fallen pretty heavily.
An estimated 27.4 billion disposable diapers are used each year in the US, resulting in a possible 3.4 million tons of used diapers adding to landfills each year. -Wikipedia › wiki › Diaper
Beats the alternative.
Lore also started jet.com and sold to Walmart for $3+billion.